Update April 28, 2021: Committee okays Algonquin Café food truck for Brendale Square while it debates wider policy
You could be forgiven if you thought the issue of where to allow food trucks seemed like a lot of smoke and mirrors at Monday’s council meeting.
Huntsville Councillor Bob Stone tried to amend a motion that seemed to target Brendale Square and the Algonquin Café specifically. The amendment would have ensured no exemption could be made to the Town’s current bylaw, which only allows one food truck per property, within 300 metres of the Downtown Huntsville Business Improvement Area (BIA).
Stone, who sits on the board of the BIA, also noted that the same amendment would not affect properties like Boston Pizza, which last year contained three food trucks, or Canvas Brewing Co., which he said plans on having two because the Town’s existing bylaw states that properties that contain a restaurant are exempt and can have multiple food trucks.
Stone’s amendment was in response to a request by the Town’s chief bylaw enforcement officer Andrew Stillar asking council to give him the authority to approve more than one food truck on a property, specifically at 6 John Street, which forms part of what’s popularly referred to as Brendale Square.
Stillar noted that council had already approved more than one food truck on that same property last year when it allowed the Algonquin Café to put a food truck there alongside the Thai Hut. But since licences of occupation for food trucks run from May 1 to October 31, permission for 2021 would be required. He also said interest to locate a hot dog cart on that same property had been expressed by another food vendor but an official application had not yet been received.
“I’m concerned about our year-round, brick-and-mortar restaurants in the BIA,” said Stone. “I’ve spoken to several of them in the past couple of days and asked the simple question: do food trucks impact your business? The answer was emphatically, absolutely, yes, for lunch and probably a little for dinner.”
Deputy Mayor Nancy Alcock spoke to Stone’s suggested amendment and said she didn’t think it was “an entirely equitable policy if it was approved, so I’m really uncertain about it. That space [Brendale] has created a bit of a buzz for people who might go have a beer at Canvas [Brewing Company] and want to eat something—it’s right there. I’ve talked to lots of people who find it’s quite a creative space.”
Councillor Tim Withey asked Stone how he came up with the 300 metres suggestion.
Stone responded: “The quick answer was I threw in an arbitrary 500 metres to begin with, and then thought, well, maybe that’s too much. The 300 is probably a short walk from the downtown.”
“Then if it’s a short walk from the downtown are you accomplishing the goal of protecting the restaurants?” questioned Withey. “I understand where you’re coming from with this… I’m just not sure that you’re accomplishing what you’re after with this.”
Stone recently tried to get the owner of the parking lot at Brendale Square to lease space for BIA patrons while the downtown was undergoing construction but in the end the owner said he was not interested.
Councillor Dan Armour said he was not prepared to vote on Stone’s amendment. He said he wanted to see a better report from staff. “I think we’re just throwing darts here on what the 300 metres [are], and who is it going to affect, and how many food trucks were established here last year that it [Stone’s amendment] will affect this year…”
Huntsville Mayor Karin Terziano said last year when council granted another licence of occupation for the Algonquin Café food truck at the Brendale property “we considered it quite quickly because we were dealing with COVID. Now we’re still dealing with COVID but we’re also dealing with Main Street, which is completely shut down for construction this year so it might change just how we looked at things last year. But the other thing is we do have a bylaw in place… that says one refreshment vehicle per property. I believe it has a different restriction if the property is owned by a restaurant.” She added that she would also like to see staff compile a report which would include the existing bylaw in order for council to determine “what we want to see with refreshment vehicles throughout the town.”
Others like Councillor Dione Schumacher noted that while she fully agrees with supporting local restaurants, Algonquin Café is a year-round restaurant that also has a food truck at the Brendale location, which is not the case for other food trucks in the area which only operate during the summer.
Councillor Withey noted that food truck owners are local too. “Also, with all due respect to the BIA, we have restaurants that are outside of the BIA as well, so I think we need a comprehensive report on just this whole situation,” he said. “We’re in strange times, I mean often you’d say bricks and mortar have an advantage because they’ve got indoor seating and alcohol sales and things like that but that’s not the case now, so it is a more level playing field, but I’d like to see a more comprehensive policy that takes in the entire municipality. After all, that’s who we represent not just the BIA.”
In the end, the majority of councillors shot down Stone’s recommended amendment although Councillors Brian Thompson, and Jonathan Wiebe supported it. Council also passed a motion asking staff to bring back a report for further discussion about the Town’s current policy regarding food trucks to their meeting at the end of May.
Armour pointed out that council was now in essence dealing with two different issues. Whether to allow another food truck ( Algonquin Café’s) to operate at Brendale Square this year and how to move forward with a policy regarding food trucks in general throughout the municipality.
Councillor Jason FitzGerald put a motion on the floor to allow Algonquin Café’s application to move forward, while council holds further discussions about the municipality’s policy in general. He said “that’s probably a fair and reasonable thing to do.”
Thompson noted that two-thirds of council would have to vote in favour of putting that new motion on the floor because it had not been included in council’s agenda. Before whether to entertain the application submitted by Algonquin Café was put to a vote, Stone said: “I just want to say that as much as I’d like to support the Algonquin Café, and they do have a brick and mortar business and that’s wonderful, we just directed staff to go away and bring back some real information and now we’re saying ‘well yeah but not this information.’ If you want the whole picture, then let’s get the whole picture.”
FitzGerald said if it’s a completed application it should be treated as such. He said council should “be respectful of the applicant and the time, regardless of who the applicant was, like I said, I didn’t know who the applicant was until Andrew [Stillar] told us so I think that’s the right thing to do.”
“That’s fair,” responded Terziano. “But our bylaw actually says that we can’t have more than one person on the lot so we’re actually contravening our own bylaw by doing this.”
“We’re kind of going at this all different directions here and I think we’re going to get ourselves tied up if we’re… contravening an existing bylaw,” said Withey. “As the mayor said, we’re going against our own rules.”
In the end, when put to a vote, council narrowly voted against allowing the motion to permit Algonquin Café’s food truck to return to the Brendale property this year to be voted on. Instead, the applicant will have to wait and see what happens when council discusses the issue again at its May meeting. A two-thirds majority to allow the motion to proceed in order to be voted on would’ve required six (5.3) out of eight councillors to pass it. Councillors Alcock, Armour, FitzGerald, Schumacher, and Wiebe voted in favour of allowing the motion to hit the floor, while Stone, Terziano, Withey, and Thompson voted against it.
Don’t miss out on Doppler!
Sign up here to receive our email digest with links to our most recent stories.
Local news in your inbox three times per week!
Click here to support local news
I am 100% for as many food trucks and food stalls we can cram into town.
This is the evolution of the consumer experience, this is what consumers want. No longer do people want to eat at over priced and under flavoured restaurants, how many banquet burgers and clubhouse sandwiches can one person eat?
BIA Bob’s thinking is stuck in the 80’s. Goodness knows he would have caused a riot if another Christmas store opened up. Talk about absolute communism, let’s have one shirt store, one show store, one drug store, one bank, one car dealer, etc…
Anyone else remember the LCBO’s of the 70’s and 80’s? That seems to be Bob’s goal; one type of beer, one type of rum, etc….
Huntsville, don’t let progress pass you by, again. We have a great opportunity to be a real destination for locals, cottagers, and tourists alike. Food options bring people into town, food options weed out those businesses that’s aren’t moving along with changing tastes and experiences.
Do you think NYC, San Francisco, or even Toronto for that matter, would limit the types of food available to citizens simply to protect a special interest?
The BIA needs to be absolved, they are nothing more than lobbyists for a select few businesses. They don’t represent anything or anyone else in Huntsville.
One quick note to Peter P. At the Brendale square. Socialism is far different from communism. Bob represents communism not socialism at all.
The town of huntsville has had a year worth of meetings to figure out their bylaw problems but waited until a food truck application was presented to try and decide whether they wanted to allow food trucks within a certain distance of the town center. This is just brought on by the town arranging to have the Main Street torn up and the area restaurants now going to suffer. The food trucks did not seem to bother the BIA when King William street was tore all to hell last year and it was a pain in the ass to patronize any of those businesses. The man invested a considerable amount of money in a food truck and all the other stuff that goes along with it and you wait till 4 days before his permit actually started to deny him income while you people discuss a new arrangement for food trucks. I would suggest like the mayor said you were dealing with Covid and we still are so grant the application and you have until next April 30 2022 to bring up the bylaw again. Or cancel all the food truck applications and make it fair for them all. Or if your that worried about the town restaurants send all the food trucks out to the fairgrounds and have a food truck village out there where it’s a pain in the ass for everyone and when the restaurants on Main Street still suffer you can come up with another excuse for their demise that had nothing to do with food trucks and maybe a little more to do with the NO PARKING AVAILABLE. Just one of the reasons I don’t go near town in the summer.
It seems unreasonable for the Town of Huntsville to have such tight restrictions on Food Trucks while there seems to be no restriction on the number of cannabis outlets allowed, since at least five outlets exist within the main core of the TOURIST/BUSINESS district of our small town.
Let’s not be so over-controlling that we dictate every step of every business that comes our way. If the people (locals and visitors) want choice of where and what to eat, let’s give it to them. Other cities and towns encourage and celebrate food truck culture but we in this small-minded town feel the need to direct what local entrepreneurs can and should do. Why do we make it so hard for our own residents to do business and why do we make it so hard for visitors to find interesting things to do in our town?? I fully support Algonquin Cafe (and any other entrepreneur) to set up shop in town and provide goods and services to townsfolk and visitors.
“B.I.A. Bob” appeared more concerned last night over the prospect that my lot might be allowed more than a single food truck even though my immediate neighbours (Boston Pizza & the Canvass) would be permitted to hold up to three (3). If he really “wanted to stem the tide of a growing Food Truck City”, and “protect” year-round restaurants; why not just one (1) truck across the board? Why the double standard?? That reasoning might make sense if my neighbours owned properties that were 3X larger than mine but my land area is a whole lot larger than theirs and a lot less congested ever since I’ve been telling all the freeloaders to take a hike. Funny thing is that B.I.A. Bob wasn’t too worried about protecting downtown restaurants, last year, when he voted to grant Algonquin it’s license, just before a Town employee was sent inquiring to see if I might be interested in renting my lot for the season during the Streetscape construction. “Sure”, Bob, everyone believes you when you say that this “was NOT an attempt to target” me, even after I showed you the door with a sternly written FB message, at that time.
The reality is that cumulative bad decisions of Town councils, both past and present, can be traced directly to the poor serviceability (vacancies) and noticeable physical decay of my property, in particular. As an owner with pockets deep enough to redevelop this site into the centrally located jewel that it should be, my hands have been tied for decades (Stop blaming the victim you IDIOTS!). This is unfortunate because poor decisions like the direction that council is now taking means that EVERYONE loses; not so much me as Algonquin Cafe, it’s employees, my tenants and neighbours and most importantly the entire community as a whole via the fewer choices and conveniences it would otherwise enjoy. I have no interest in spending money on parking lot improvements for a near empty plaza meant to service my tenants, EXCLUSIVELY. What I can tell you is that just last week, on April 21, I did obtain a quote from Muskoka BlackTop Maintenance for 400 linear feet of hot rubber crack fill and 50,000 square feet of black top sealant for a price that was even more than what Alquonquin would be paying me in rent, and I was just about to sign off on it since I was under the assumption that I, too, would be permitted at least three (3) food trucks including The Tai Hunt, The Algonquin Cafe and one other. Those improvements will not be happening now. Isn’t socialism and government control wonderful?!
Too bad the same consideration didn’t go into allowing 6 Cannabis shops to open in town. The town will have to be renamed Stonerville.
My wife and I opened a food truck here in Huntsville last year. We did so because the pandemic forced our hand. We used to be summer camp caterers and we loved every bit of it. When summer camps were cancelled last year (potentially again this year), we had to reinvent ourselves and our company. With culinary skills and a little money in our back pocket. Food trucks were one of very few options for us. Our goal was to make delicious food in hopes that we made enough money to SURVIVE. Our goal isn’t to harm our fellow restauranteurs or our community. We want to make good food and pay our bills, much like anyone else.
Please consider a renovation to that parking lot and set up a classy court of food trucks with designated, distanced pedestrian traffic and eating areas. We need a big improvement to that area and the lot owner is missing a big opportunity
Just make sure each food truck pays a fee similar to property tax.
Algonquin Cafe paid a lot of money to set up in that parking and I’m sure they are paying a very high rent for a return of only six months business. They should be automatically given permission as well as the Thai place..they have never been a problem! Boston pizza didn’t seem concerned about those food trucks in their parking lot..why is Town Council being so controlling? Food trucks can be great places for super, creative food and look very chic. Curb side dining at it’s best folks! Each restaurant in Huntsville is unique and has it’s own cache..short term food trucks won’t harm that. And just think..that parking lot owner will make so much money charging rent or is that the real problem perhaps….bygones people bygones.
I believe that the local restaurant business must be protected to an extent, we need these places to survive to give locals and tourists alike to have a place to dine out outside of the summer season. I like to be able to grab a quick bite from one of the trucks but not thinking of the loss of business to the brick and motor restaurants who may have hundreds of thousands of dollars invest and support large staff is just self-centred thinking. If three sports stores set up next door to each other, that is free enterprise but what is happening with the seasonal multitudes of food trucks, well that is something else. I am sure the local restaurants can survive a few trucks in town but what we have now is a runaway mess that needs to be addressed so everyone is considered.
Bob, what is wrong with a “food truck city” if there is suffciient demand? Tourists, boaters, locals, etc. will almost all welcome it. Supply and demand will keep the number of trucks resonable over time. The best vendors will stay in business. Going to a food truck is not at all the same experience as going to a restaurant. You say they do not pay taxes, but do they pay for a permit? Do they pay rent to the landowner who pays taxes? I would argue that successful year over year food trucks are just as much a part of our “downtown character” as restaurants. Don’t we want a vibrant downtown? I live just up the street from that area and I thought the vibe last summer was awesome with all the food trucks and Canvas in the middle.
Are we really going to trust the council to determine how the free market should operate? Is there a health issue? a safety issue? No, it doesn’t sound like it. So let the market decide. The food trucks are local businesses too and they have every right to operate. Especially when they are using wasted prime real estate next to downtown. They also provide much-needed eating capacity in the busy summer months. Who wants to wait in a huge line up of tourists at the pub when you can walk across the river? Council, please spend your valuable time on more important matters. If you gave Algonquin Cafe a pass last year, you should let them operate this year too. I happily support our local restaurants year round, and also the food trucks.
It was NOT an attempt to target Brendale Square or Algonquin Cafe’. I simply wanted to stem the tide of a growing Food Truck city that was developing along John St. and help protect the permanent year round restaurants in the BIA and surrounding area that employ staff, sponsor sports teams, pay taxes and are the fabric of our Downtown character.
I absolutely disagree that food trucks have a negative impact on local restaurants. Our family, and many others, would not go to any downtown restaurants regardless of food trucks, simply because the variety of foods offered at each restaurant does not match our families tastes. If would be unreasonable to travel to three or four different restaurants for each meal, but each of us going to a different food truck and meeting up together to dine is a common practice. I give my children some cash, and they are free to choose.
Council permitted Algonquin Cafe to occupy that spot for the 2020 lease year, there was significant money spent on electrical connections, water tanks, decking, propane contracts, ect. for only one summer.