Alarcon Rejects Bid for Sidewalk Vending Zone : Pacoima: Councilman says request from vendors for district along Van Nuys Boulevard fails to generate enough support.

Citing a lack of support from local merchants, Los Angeles City Councilman Richard Alarcon has rejected a request by street vendors to create the city’s first sidewalk vending zone in Pacoima under an ordinance Alarcon himself championed last year.

The councilman said Thursday that the Street Vendors Assn. of the San Fernando Valley had failed to generate “sufficient community support” for a vending district along Van Nuys Boulevard, a street already dotted with pushcarts laden with everything from ice cream to cassettes.

“It is clear (in the ordinance) that you must garner active participation from the business community to accomplish your goal,” Alarcon wrote in a letter to the Valley vendors’ association, which petitioned for establishment of a city-sanctioned vending zone last July.

But Jorge Sanchez, the group’s coordinator, accused Alarcon of unfairly blocking the vendors’ proposal from receiving a public hearing as provided in the street vending ordinance--an ordinance that Alarcon wrote and helped shepherd into law to resolve a growing controversy over curbside peddling.

“We’re asking for the right to get a public hearing, and he’s denying us that,” Sanchez said.

He said his group had already done its part by turning in a petition with the required signatures of 20% of the merchants and residents in the proposed zone. A community advisory committee, composed of neighbors, merchants and vendors, was then set up to discuss the proposal to allow up to 270 vendors along a two-mile stretch of Van Nuys Boulevard between Remick Avenue and Glenoaks Boulevard.

Both Alarcon and Sanchez agree that attendance by business owners was low at the first few committee meetings. But Sanchez contended that responsibility for drumming up community support belonged to Alarcon’s office at that point.

“He’s trying to shift blame,” Sanchez said.

For his part, Alarcon said he appointed eight businesses to the advisory committee, then opened the meetings to any interested businesses after poor attendance by his own appointees.

A continued “weak showing” was “a sign that the timing wasn’t right” for creating a vendor district, Alarcon said. Also, he added, the number of curbside sellers proposed by the vendors group seemed too high.

Ultimately, Alarcon said, he decided to shelve the request until more community support emerged.

Robert Valdez, the city’s sidewalk vending administrator, said the city attorney’s office has advised him that the vendors can go ahead with a public hearing. But he said it would be politically foolish since any proposal would still be subject to final approval from Alarcon and his colleagues on the City Council.

“I’ve told Jorge, let’s try to work this thing out,” Valdez said.

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In addition to the petition from the Valley vendors’ group, two groups from the Pico Union and MacArthur Park areas have submitted requests to create one of the eight vending districts allowed by the ordinance.

Valdez said the request for a Pacoima vending zone was the furthest along in the bureaucratic process. But the other two requests now stand to leapfrog over the Pacoima petition.

Alarcon said he “really never envisioned the Valley being the first” place for a vending zone, even though a series of raids on East Valley vendors helped spark the fight for an ordinance to set aside vending districts.

“I envisioned places like Pico Union and on the Eastside of Los Angeles,” he said. “I was somewhat surprised when this proposal emerged in my district.”