12 MONTEREY COUNTY WEEKLY may 2-8, 2024 www.montereycountyweekly.com news Over the past few months, Salinas residents have seen an increase in street vendors in high-traffic areas, including food trucks. This can make it easy to grab a bite to eat, but also comes with issues. Residents have been calling city officials to report things like litter and oil on the streets. On Monday, April 22, the Salinas Police Department announced officers had shut down seven illegal street vendors over the weekend of April 20-21 after receiving complaints. “It’s not about trying to impact anybody in a negative way. It’s just about making sure we’re looking out for the health and safety of our community,” says Sophia Rome, community relations manager for Salinas. Permitted vendors echoed that message on Tuesday, April 23 during a meeting of Salinas City Council. Unpermitted vendors operate mainly on weekends at busy corners such as East Alisal and North Sanborn near Cardenas Market, or North Main Street and Boronda, by Northridge Mall. According to police, they aren’t local and some come from as far away as the Central Valley. “They arrive and set up in a caravan throughout the Alisal,” Jesus Perez says in Spanish. Perez owns La Paloma, a food truck that sells tacos and seafood on Griffin Street. For Perez, the issue is lack of regulations. He fears customers could get ill from eating at unpermitted locations and regulated businesses would be blamed. He pays about $2,000 per year in city and county permits, including health and fire inspections to make sure his truck is clean, the fridge is properly cold and fire extinguishers are working. Perez notes he isn’t against entrepreneurship. “The sun shines for everyone,” he says. “They also have the right to sell.” Food Fight Salinas begins cracking down on an increased presence of unpermitted street food vendors. By Celia Jiménez On a recent morning, the whirs of construction carry through the air at 2300 Garden Road in Monterey, and Brad Slama, a developer, leads the way through a massive former office building that he’s converting into 64 apartments. It’s the type of building that’s become a dinosaur in this digital age, and Garden Road is full of them. Slama currently has three active projects to turn offices into housing on the road, and a fourth in the pipeline, if things work out. As he walks through the site, he draws attention to a quirky feature. In office buildings, there’s dead space in the middle, and apartments need to have windows to the outside. That means creating units within these bones can be complicated. In this case, Slama has decided to create a community room for the residents, and in another dead space, a laundry room. All throughout the building, walls have been knocked out and pillars of fresh 2-by-4s reveal its future layout, rectangular units that Slama thinks will hit the market in the $1,700- $2,400 per month range. As a developer, Slama has to respect his bottom line, but he also seems genuine in his desire to mitigate the housing crisis. “We’ve got to find a way to build more,” he says. His Garden Road projects are a way to do that, and unlike so much development on the Monterey Peninsula, they’re not facing heated opposition. Notably, 13 of the units— 20 percent—will be deed-restricted for low income residents. Slama is also working on a development that would combine both 2560 and 2600 Garden Road by demolishing the structures and building anew, and another at 2000 Garden Road on a site that’s already been cleared of trees. Kim Cole, Monterey’s community development director, credits Slama with helping to change the city’s zoning overlay so as to allow multifamily development on the road. “He saw that development opportunity, he approached the city, and in response we changed a lot of the codes,” Cole says. It’s a win-win for the city, which is compelled to meet the state’s regional housing allocation requirements to zone for at least 3,600 more housing units by 2031. Elected officials in many cities statewide have bristled at those requirements, but Monterey officials and residents have largely been receptive, recognizing that the hospitality workforce that fuels its economy could benefit from a home closer to work. The City of Monterey tried to give Slama water credits to upsize his plans at 2600 and 2000 Garden Road, but the state refused, as the ceaseand-desist order against Cal Am prohibits intensification of water use. Slama says the project at 2300 Garden Road is expected to be done in the first three months of 2025, and he expects it to fill up quickly; in 2022, he completed a conversion of the Rabobank building in downtown Salinas into 50 apartments that filled up within five months. He grew up in San Benancio Canyon, and hopes this project— and others he has in the works on Garden Road—helps reduce traffic on Highway 68, which he’s long seen go both ways. “The middle class is getting crushed, and we just need more units,” he says. “Until we get the shackles off of the supply, we’re going to be at an imbalance.” The inside of the former office building at 2300 Garden Road is humming with construction, and what were once cubicles are being converted to apartments. Growing Anew Disused office properties on Garden Road are finally turning into something useful: homes. By David Schmalz In 2021, Salinas changed its food truck ordinance, relocating existing vendors away from busy streets. Permitted vendors include Whitey’s Classic Burgers, owned by Anthony Azevedo. “We’ve got to find a way to build more.” Daniel Dreifuss Daniel Dreifuss
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