PORTLAND, Ore. — Friends of Green Loop, which is a city-backed initiative to bring a 6-mile linear park around Portland, has started a GoFundMe page to help the food cart owners at Southwest 10th and Alder Street make their move.
The carts have until June 30 to vacate the parking lot where some have been residing in for more than a decade. Ritz Carlton plans to build a new high-rise hotel to take its place.
The GoFundMe page says it is seeking $300,000 to help with towing expenses and electrical hookups for the carts to move to the North Park Blocks, which Friends of Green Loop hopes will be a temporary home for the carts.
The group's long-term goal is the creation of a culinary corridor along Southwest 9th Avenue between Director Park and O'Bryant Square.
"It's an experiment of moving food carts into the right away," Keith Jones with Friends of Green Loop said. "The reason we need to start thinking about this is because this is not the first parking lot that is gonna go. We are a growing city right now, therefore some of these parking lots are gonna be developed."
For now, a move to the North Park Blocks in the Pearl District is a viable option put forth by the city. The city’s renderings show what a food cart pod could look like, but the earliest it would reopen would be mid-July.
North Park Blocks in the Pearl District
"The reason we have to move people to the North Park Blocks right now is because we're still testing and figuring the details out of the culinary corridor,” Jones said. “We don't want to rush something and do it poorly."
That means between the time the carts must leave their current location and when the Pearl location is up and running, food cart owners are left wondering where they will end up next.
"I've been kind of worried about the situation and nervous and this week I feel very confident," said Jane Kim, owner of Number One Bento. "I'm very happy that the city and Green Loop People is helping us. I have great faith in them."