Food truck park gets City approval

By Randy Bell

Special to The Clinton Courier
This site on Northside Drive is the location of a new food truck park, Food Haul, planned by Andrew King of Clinton.

Andrew King wants to bring more dining options to a section of Clinton where few now exist. King, a general landscape contractor by trade, plans to do this by creating a food truck park called the Food Haul on Northside Drive.

The Board of Aldermen approved his site plan and a conditional use permit at its meeting June 20.

Special to The Clinton Courier
Rendering of a proposed site plan for the new Food Haul food truck park, approved for an area on Northside Drive behind Clinton’s Fire Station #2 on Old Vicksburg Road.

“It will be a premier food truck venue,” King says. “It’ll be gourmet food, but off of a truck.”

He says he’s not targeting concession-type food.

“We’re not going to try to keep those from being a part of it; but, at the same time, we really do want to have a place that is a very nice, wholesome food source, so that somebody can come and get really good, quality food.”

King says the key is having a wide variety of food offerings.

“If you’ve got a family of five or six and you all have a taste for something different, that’s fine. Just come down to the Food Haul, and everybody can get something off a different truck. We would like to see ten to twelve trucks there full-time.”

King’s plan is to use the existing building at 901 East Northside for indoor dining and restroom facilities.

Special to The Clinton Courier
A rendering of the design King plans for the building, which would be used for indoor dining and restroom facilities.

“We plan on having runners available, to where you can sit down at a table, order off of any of the trucks that’s out there in the lot, [and] have a runner go and get your food and bring it back to the table,” said King. “It would be a restaurant without the kitchen.”

A sample provided to the Board of Aldermen showing what the interior of the Food Haul building might look like.

The food trucks would be parked on leased City property adjacent to the building, with customer parking in the rear, where the old Clinton Park Elementary School once stood.

For months, the City had been working to find a centralized location for several food trucks which are scattered around Clinton and operating under short-term permits. Some Board members had hoped a food truck park might be a good fit in the Clinton Boulevard or Highway 80 areas, with possible locations behind Dairy Queen or in the Clinton Plaza parking lot.
But King believes he’s found the sweet spot for such a project.

“I thoroughly exhausted all of those options [elsewhere],” King reports. “I went through there. I looked at everything. I just couldn’t see the ambience ever coming together there as far as having a relaxing atmosphere, a place that kids could enjoy playing. That just doesn’t exist anywhere in that area currently.”

“You’re just not going to have this type of atmosphere there, no matter how much you invest in it,” said King. “But over here by Kid’s Towne, you already have the park, you have the dog park, you have all the Traceway [Park] traffic coming through.” “You have a need for restaurants on that side of the city,” continued King. “It checked far too many boxes here to not give it a go. So, we’re giving it a go.”

The food truck park would be located in Alderman Robert Chapman’s ward.

“I think this is a fantastic idea,” said Chapman. “It would be a good shot of B-12 for that section of town. I think having food trucks across the city is a great thing, [but] there are some who don’t necessarily believe that.”

“So, this allows us to meet in the middle and truly do something great for the city: corral [the food trucks] into an aesthetically pleasing area that revitalizes a spot,” Chapman said. “It allows families to gather, and it allows the food trucks to be located in a great location.”