New Look in Store for Street Vendors?

It’s lunchtime in downtown Santa Ana. People stroll along 4th Street, passing or stopping at the pushcarts where vendors sell fruit and churros. They step over big bags of chips and swat a fly or two attracted to the open containers of fruit syrup on the carts’ shelves.

It’s a scene that will probably change soon--at least in part--if the city reaches agreement with lawyers representing the vendors in a lawsuit.

The City Council on Monday night was told that negotiations were heading into the final phase. If approved by both sides, all vendors will have to adhere to new rules on food storage and cleanliness and don Mexican-style shirts. Many will have to buy larger carts and matching umbrellas.

No longer will the bags of chips be allowed on the sidewalk. The open bottles of syrup and the mismatched umbrellas that shade the carts will have to go too. Everything will have to be contained within the cart.

And though it may surprise some, that’s good news to the vendedores.

“It’s a good agreement, because we will be able to continue working and survive in this country,” said 67-year-old Reina Cruz Pineda, who owns her cart and has worked along 4th Street for the past 12 years. “They can’t send me to work in the factory; I’m too old. This is my work. This is my home. This is how I maintain myself.”

It’s a deal that’s been more than a year in the making since the City Council banned pushcart vending downtown. City officials had received complaints about trash and heard concerns about food safety from merchants and pedestrians.

The council said it wanted to clean up the image of the 4th Street shopping area, but the ban didn’t last long. Just days after the law was enacted, lawyers for the vendors won a court injunction that allowed the street merchants to continue selling their fruits and nuts and chips. Since then, both sides have been working to reach a compromise to avoid going to trial.

Some who patronize the carts think the proposed measures go too far, however.

Ricardo Nicol, an attorney, said requiring the vendors to wear uniforms is overkill. “Whatever reasonable measures to make the food sanitary is fine,” he said, “but why the uniforms?”

But Jose Rodriguez, who has been operating a cart on 4th Street for five years, said he welcomes the changes, though he knows it will be costly to replace the carts. “It would make a better presentation for the sellers here,” said the 36-year-old vendor.

The new carts, which measure 3 by 8 feet, cost up to $7,500 each, but the city and vendors’ lawyers are negotiating an agreement that would provide financing.

“Obviously they realize that the new carts are going to be bigger and they’re going to be able to put more produce inside and it’s going to be new,” said Moses Luna, an attorney for the vendors. “It’s an investment, like buying a new car. You don’t necessarily like to spend the money, but when you do, you feel good about it.

“The vendors want to look good, and they want the city’s residents and officials to be feeling good about their commercial position in the city.”

If both sides reach agreement, new rules could be considered by the council at its Nov. 6 meeting and go into effect a month later. City Atty. Joseph W. Fletcher said enforcement officers would monitor vendors and violations would be misdemeanors punishable by up to a $1,000 fine and six months in jail.

The larger downtown business community, which supported the ban in 1999, finds the prospect of enforcement reassuring.

“The ordinance will give the pushcart vendors regulations that they have to follow,” said Arturo Lomeli, a local dentist and president of the Downtown Santa Ana Business Assn. “We’re happy with that arrangement, because it gives the city some recourse if there is no compliance with the regulations.”

City officials are also satisfied with the compromise.

“We sat down with them and said, ‘Here’s what we want to see: We want to see uniforms, we want to see the carts and the area surrounding them cleaned up, we want to see the fruit and juices in storage,’ ” said Councilman Thomas E. Lutz.

“So I’m happy with the agreement. I think it’s the best that we can do.”