“Restaurant owner frustrated by lack of action on vendors”

Restaurant owner frustrated by lack of action on vendors

Posted: 23 Sep 2010 07:51 PM PDT

Thursday, September 23, 2010 10:48 PM EDT

By Steve Collins
Staff Writer

BRISTOL — Six months after the city's downtown restaurants begged City Hall to oust a growing number of food vending carts and trucks downtown, nothing much has changed.

"I feel like I'm alone without anybody's support," said John Spaniotis, owner of Center Restaurant and Pizza on North Main Street.

Spaniotis was one of a handful of owners of brick-and-mortar eateries who asked the city to crack down on vendors who are gobbling up business without adding to the city's tax base or employment rolls.

City councilors initially expressed tentative support for the idea, but backed off when hundreds of people who buy fast food from the vendors rallied in their defense. The Ordinance Committee is still reviewing legal options, however, and may proposed changes to city statutes.

Mayor Art Ward said he doesn't want to take a stand because it's important the three-person ordinance panel operate without interference.

"I don't want to be infuriating the situation," the mayor said.

When the city "kicked me out like a dog" from his restaurant's longtime home in the mall downtown, Spaniotis said, he was "out on the street" and unsure what to do next.

He said he decided to invest $150,000 and open across the street from the mall in the hope that the city would "do something" with the 17-acre site that it had evicted him. He also got $60,000 from the city's restaurant recruitment program to help ease the move.

Looking back, Spaniotis said, it's obvious he made a mistake.

Any revitalization downtown is "years and years and years away," he said, and businesses are struggling to hang on.

Spaniotis said his complaint with City Hall is that its leaders won't act to protect the businesses that are hanging on.

"I have a nice place here with a variety of food at reasonable prices," Spaniotis said, but competing with vendors who have few expenses is tough.

"This area is dead," he said, and taking customers from existing businesses doesn't help.

He said he wants the city "to stop giving permits" to vendors and to move them out of downtown to the degree possible. Most of the vendors, Spaniotis said, are not even from Bristol.

Hundreds of customers who buy from the vending carts and trucks have signed petitions this year demanding the city leave the peddlers alone. They said the free market should prevail.

Spaniotis said the crowds who showed up at city meetings to defend the vendors "are not Bristol." They are, he said, just a fraction of the population.

Even so, he said, politicians are scared to defy them because they're worried they'll lose votes if they back the restaurant owners.

Spaniotis said that other towns don't let vendors run their restaurants out. That only happens in Bristol, he said.

If the laws and attitudes at City Hall don't change, he said, then vending trucks will be the city's future.

Spaniotis said he can't understand why the mayor doesn't get in touch with him.

"I'm expecting to hear a phone call from him and he doesn't call," Spaniotis said.

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