Charlotte City Council held its final meeting before the summer recess on Monday night, taking action on updated street vending regulations and hearing residents in a public forum among other business items on the agenda.

Charlotte City Council will now go on summer break, recessing until its next meeting on Aug. 4.

On the Agenda:

• Street Vending Presentation
• Street Vending Hearing and Vote
• Public Forum
• Other Business Items

Street Vending Presentation

Charlie Jones with Charlotte DOT led a presentation showing the details of a proposed pilot program that would coincide with the designation of NoDa as a Congested Business District, prohibit any street vendors who aren’t approved to sell in certain designated spots known as NoDa Street Market. 

Read more: City Poised to Enact Regulations on Street Vending in Charlotte

Jones presented a map that showed four potential spots where vendors would be allowed to sell as part of NoDa Street Market, potentially rotating in and out of the spots on a schedule that would depend on how many people were approved to participate. 

The proposed spots included one on North Davidson Street just north of Fire Station No. 7, two spots kitty-corner to one another on East 35th Street near the North Davidson Street corner, and another on North Davidson Street in front of the Johnston YMCA parking lot.  

A few new details about the proposed NoDa Street Market pilot program included in Monday night’s presentation: Permits would cost under $100 while allowable merchandise would include clothing, jewelry, art, etc. but not consumables.

“The intent is not to have food produced on site or beverages mixed on site. It’s really to keep with the character of NoDa as an arts community and give an outlet for people to sell art and things that they’ve produced,” Jones said.

The city will offer technical assistance and/or business counseling support to existing NoDa vendors who are impacted by the pilot, such as those who do not qualify to participate in NoDa Street Market.

“This is not to drive any street vendors out of business, that is not our intent, it’s to create a structured environment so that brick-and-mortar businesses as well as street vendors can coexist and add value to the unique character of the NoDa neighborhood,” said Dimple Ajmera following the presentation.

“We know people need a side hustle in this city or a second job … we advocated for a place for these street vendors,” said Reneé Perkins Johnson. “It is a safety issue in NoDa and we believe small businesses [should] have a permit if necessary. We were sensitive in striking that balance.” 

“There will be some overflow and we’ve already seen activities in other neighborhoods,” said Dante Anderson. “There are a few in District 1 that are beginning to see this activity occur.”

Anderson said she wouldn’t name the neighborhoods she was referring to but street vending has already come up as an issue among some business owners in Plaza Midwood.

“I want to make sure as we’re doing this pilot and we’re learning, we are also enforcing the peddler’s ordinance as it exists,” said Anderson, citing people cooking with open flame and carrying out other food and beverage activity that’s already prohibited by city ordinance but goes unenforced.

Street Vending Hearing and Vote

Later in the night, council heard from residents in a public hearing on the street vending issue preceding their vote. One of the first speakers was Irena Robinson, a street vendor who expressed her thoughts along the lines of an op-ed that Queen City Nerve published on Monday morning.   

One speaker representing the Plaza Midwood Merchants Association acknowledged multiple positive aspects of street vending but affirmed the need for regulation. She asked that Plaza Midwood also be considered to be designated a Congested Business District.

William Fulton, owner of The Jugo Bar, said NoDa is a congested area and, while he is supportive of the vendors’ efforts to support themselves, he believes the vending needs regulation on NoDa’s crowded sidewalks. He said he was emotional to learn the details about the new pilot program because it meant the city had heard him and his colleagues.

Fulton also stressed the need for technical assistance to the city’s smallest business owners and vendors, offering his time to assist in those efforts.

A street vendor who addressed council pointed out that claims about street vending leading to rising crime rates are not reflected in crime stats. “We do not need rules or more policing, we need fairness,” he said. “Let’s protect public space, opportunity and the unique spirit that makes NoDa a home for all.”

“The policy you are considering tonight is one of real-time gentrification. To adopt it would be not only wrong but unpopular,” said NoDa resident Micheal Roessler, who launched a petition in support of vendors in 2023 that garnered 1,600+ signatures.

Following the public hearing, council members had another chance to speak. Victoria Watlington said it is not her intent to gentrify or displace small businesses. “I don’t think it’s too much to ask that we regulate this so that people who are selling food and beverages are abiding by basic health and safety standards,” she said. 

“I don’t think it’s too much to ask that we expect that there is some sort of order to this so that we have some sort of expectation in how we are participating,” Watlington continued, pointing out that the pilot includes support for impacted vendors. “This is not an either/or.”

LaWana Mayfield said that for people who knew the North Davidson corridor as a Black and working-class neighborhood before it was called NoDa, “It is challenging to hear people now come and talk to us as if we are the ones removing and displacing. That feels so disingenuous to me.”

“The level of entitlement to say, ‘Yes, you may have a business, but I am going to bring my wares and I am going to set it up directly in front of your business and I very well may be selling some of the similar items that you’re selling, even though you pay taxes and fees,’” reminded Mayfield of Goldilocks walking into someone else’s house and telling them what’s right and what’s wrong with whatever she finds inside, she said. 

Dimple Ajmera clarified a point made earlier in the evening following the city’s presentation: “We are not pushing street vendors out of business. All we are doing is creating a structure that is safe for everyone so we can all live in harmony and coexist. We can have brick-and-mortar businesses as well as street vendors.”

Council unanimously approved the changes to the street vending ordinance, which also raises the maximum fine for violating said ordinance from $50 to $500.  The Noda Street Market pilot program is expected to launch by late July and will last six months before the city decides whether to make it a full-time program. 

Public Forum

Kicking off the public forum, Lauren Patterson with the city’s Bicycle Advisory Committee wished to raise three topics that the committee is currently focused on but was cut off after two, as her time had run out. The two that she did cover included supporting the city’s Vision Zero policies and doing more to connect interspersed projects in a way that would improve the city’s cycling network and encourage more people to ride bikes. 

Another speaker asked council to pass stronger ordinances regulating soliciting, which he said is currently allowed between 8 a.m.-9 p.m., seven days a week regardless of whether No Soliciting signs are posted or not. 

Maribel McBeath, a cabin cleaner at Charlotte Douglas International Airport (CLT), continued the call for improved standards and higher pay for workers like herself. She is part of a larger movement calling for the city to pass a Charlotte Acting for Safety and Efficiency (CASE) ordinance that would address CLT’s high turnover rate and understaffing, which workers say endanger them and passengers.

Read more: SEIU Stands Firm in Calling for City to Improve Pay, Safety at CLT

“Leadership means facing pressure, not avoiding it,” said Chris Baumann with Workers United. “It means standing with the people who use the Charlotte airport and who clean your terminals, push your wheelchairs and load your bags. It means standing for dignity.”

Local organizer Apryl Lewis spoke in support of more than 300 people who have been displaced from the Baymont Hotel off Sugar Creek Road. A woman and her child were found dead in the hotel earlier this month after operations at the site transitioned from Heal Charlotte to Cedric Dean’s HELP program. 

Dean has since shut down his program at the hotel, leading to more displacement. 

“This just wasn’t tragic oversight, it was the result of bad leadership, bad agreements and funding people who built platforms off pain with no real infrastructure of care,” said Lewis. 

Read more: Baymont Hotel Displacement Upends Lives of Already Vulnerable Tenants

A certified EMT and public health student at UNC Charlotte spoke in support of establishing a student-run rescue squad on the university’s campus. There is no internal EMT agency on campus despite its massive size. and she insisted that having an Atrium hospital nearby doesn’t make up for that shortcoming.

Another advocate for the program cited Chapel Hill, Wake Forest, East Carolina University, Appalachian State University and others in the state that have successfully stood up student-run EMS programs.

Other Business Items

Early in the meeting, LaWana Mayfield moved to remove Tesla from a list of vendors that the city can purchase electric vehicles from for its fleet. 

Ed Driggs worried that it would set an ugly precedent to make decisions based on the political actions or beliefs of a business’s owner, Elon Musk in this case, rather than base decisions solely on the quality and price of the product.

Mayfield acknowledged that the city already has Teslas in its fleet but said the market has grown since those were bought and insisted her motion was not made based on Musk’s actions but on multiple active lawsuits and other examples of Teslas being unsafe.

Mayfield’s motion passed 6-3 with Driggs, Ajmera and Edwin Peacock III casting the No votes. Tesla will be removed from the list of carmakers the city will consider for cooperative purchasing contracts.

Council approved a $1,997,003 contract to renovate and expand the 911 Call Center located in the CMPD headquarters. The contract will also add 15 telecommunicators with the goal of completely erasing the hold time that callers sometimes experience currently due to increasing call volumes.

Council approved the annexation of a 44.76-acre site near the McDowell Nature Preserve off Shopton Road that’s slated for the development of the Kenmore community, which will comprise 95 single-family homes.

In a discussion of the city’s community area planning process, which aims to hyperlocalize the Charlotte Future 2040 Comprehensive Plan by directing land use, urban design, transportation and infrastructure development in 14 areas around the city, council members mostly discussed how to better engage the community to let them know that these plans have been drafted and where they can find them and engage with them.

You can check out each plan on the Charlotte Future 2040 Comprehensive Plan website to see what city officials have in mind for your specific community. 

Council approved periodic donation of approximately 1,000 cell phones and other electronic devices that are left in CATS vehicles and facilities each year to the Charitable Recycling organization, which erases the data from the devices and donates them to law enforcement and agencies to distribute to human trafficking and DV victims.

Council approved $8 million in existing bond funding from 2016 & ’18 for the renewal of Symphony Park. Construction is expected to start in late summer 2026 and be completed nine months to a year later.