Mayor Vincent C. Gray recently announced proposed new regulations that update the 30-year-old rules governing street vending – including food trucks – in the District of Columbia. The proposed regulations, issued by the Department of Consumer and Regulatory Affairs (DCRA), would open up additional locations for sidewalk vending, reflect new design standards for vending carts and update a rule originally designed for ice-cream trucks that currently exposes some of the newer food trucks that operate in the District to potential citations.

“Street vending, food trucks and farmers’ markets are important components in increasing the District’s quality of life for residents, workers and visitors, and my new regulations are designed to strike a careful balance between encouraging business innovation and respecting our laws as well as brick-and-mortar businesses that have long played according to the rules,” said Mayor Gray. “These proposed regulations eliminate outdated requirements, make it easier for the smallest of entrepreneurs to set up a business here and expand the food options available to consumers.”

Among other improvements, the new regulations would:

Update the outdated “ice-cream-truck rule” that has led to food trucks being cited and fined for having no customers in line even though they were obeying other laws:

-Trucks preparing and selling food would have to park in a legal spot, pay the meter, and can remain there for as long as allowed by the meter or posted parking rules.

-Trucks selling ice cream and desserts would have to park in a legal spot, pay the meter, and can remain there for as long as they have a line of waiting customers or for no more than 10 minutes when customers are not waiting.

Allow the permitting of new sidewalk vending locations throughout the District while grandfathering in existing, long-time vendors at their current locations.

Allow the creation of new Vending Development Zones, which would allow local communities to design plans best tailored for their needs that could include sidewalk vendors, food trucks and farmers’ markets.

Update and expand the ability of DCRA to issue citations for violations of the regulations to ensure vendors clean up any litter and maintain all required health and business licenses.

Clarify street-photography provisions around street vendors to make clear they are not applicable to journalists or photography enthusiasts.

“Street vending plays an important role in maintaining vibrant and active public spaces, as well as allowing entrepreneurs to start a new business,” said DCRA Director Nicholas Majett. “Many of today’s street-vending entrepreneurs will become tomorrow’s bricks-and-mortar entrepreneurs.”

Two Fifth Avenue merchants blocked a food cart from parking on a bustling street corner by illegally bolting benches to the sidewalk at the street vendor’s usual spot, attorneys for Sammy Kassen, the manager of Middle Eastern Halal Cart, claimed this week.

Lawyers from the Street Vendor Project, a advocacy group that fights for the rights of street vendors, slapped Lone Star bar owner Tony Gentile and Brooklyn Bagels Cafe co-owner Mike Boutross with cease-and-desist letters last week, demanding that the duo stop harassing the purveyor of gyros and sodas.

“They placed benches in the spot illegally and they’ve been harassing them through lots of different ways, through the media, and in person by blocking the cart,” said Sean Basinski, a spokesman for the Street Vendor Project.

But Gentile and Boutross denied that they moved the benches, and Boutross added that he had no intention to listen to the request because he hadn’t done anything wrong. He also claimed he threw the note in the trash upon receiving it.

“That guy’s lying through his teeth,” Boutrouss said. “Maybe he doesn’t know who I am or what I look like, and he has me confused with someone else.”

Still, Boutrouss was quick to criticize the cart, claiming that Kassen doesn’t have to pay rent or utilities as brick and mortar merchants do.

“It’s not right that I’m paying $5,000 a month in rent, and this guy is there in the hottest spot in Brooklyn with a permit he pays for once a year,” said Boutross.

Some claim that neighborhood merchants are against the food cart because its run by Middle Easterners, but Boutrouss, who is Lebanese, say his hatred toward Kassen’s rolling kitchen is purely business, not personal.

“You aren’t going to hear me saying ‘those filthy Arabs,’” he said. “I’m a filthy Arab! It’s not about that. It’s about fair competition,”

Gentile has been accused of trying to physically block the cart from parking on Fifth Avenue on March 24 – getting hurt in the process – and took steps to install flower boxes on Kassen’s usual hang out spot.

Yet no one knows who put in the benches, which sprouted up on Fifth Avenue overnight on March 22. Merchants say that one of the benches was uprooted from Fifth Avenue and 87th Street and moved to Middle Eastern Halal Cart’s usual spot.

Kassen said he’s seen both Gentile and Boutross lurking around the cart with tape measures and believes the two men are plotting against him.

“I’m 100 percent sure they’re in it together,” said Kassen. “I’ve seen them together, measuring the spot.”

Basinski said he wants to meet with Boutross in person to alleviate the bagel shop owner’s concerns.

“We’d like to explain to him the cart is not a threat to him,” said Basinski, citing studies that say mobile vendors do not harm from brick-and-mortar businesses. “They’re half a block away, on the other side of the street, selling a completely different product.”