Food truck park coming to Clinton

By Randy Bell

By Tammie Stephens

After several false starts, it looks like Clinton’s food trucks will soon be in a central location instead of scattered across the city. When preparations are completed in about a month, food trucks will be required to move to a parking area at Fire Station 2 on Old Vicksburg Road near Kids Towne Park.

“We found a spot for five food trucks,” says Ward 1 Alderwoman Karen Godfrey, who’s been leading the efforts to find a suitable location for a food truck park after a local couple couldn’t get the owners to sell them a vacant building on Northside Drive that would have been a key element of their food truck project.

“We set a date of September 16 to have that [parking lot] ready, to have that lined off, so they know where to park,” Godfrey says. “They can go to [the Department of Community Development] to get a permit to be able to have a food truck there. All the food trucks that we have in the city will have to be in that area. We’re going to put some picnic tables out there and make it a fun place to go.”

Godfrey says the proximity to Kids Towne, the pickleball courts and a future skate park make it an ideal spot for the food trucks.

“There’s so many things right there, and, with us improving that park, I think it’ll be a perfect location,” said Godfrey.

She says the question of where the food trucks could operate was complicated by the initial expectations.

“We were thinking the whole time that the City had to provide water and electricity. And, after we really stepped back from it, it was ‘no ,we don’t’ because they’re independent, [and] each one has their own water and electricity. Some places provide that, but we don’t have to, and we’re not going to. And that kind of opened it up for [the food trucks] to go wherever we could find a spot for them.”

Mayor Phil Fisher says the City will have a policy in place for the food trucks to follow. He says an ad hoc committee headed by Godfrey is working out the details, and the proposal will go before the Board of Aldermen for a vote.

Godfrey says Fire Chief Jeff Blackledge had no objections to a section of Station 2’s parking lot being repurposed.

“He gave us his blessing and said that, as long as [the food trucks] didn’t block his bays where the [fire] trucks are coming out, it would be good,” said Godfrey.

She says many of the food trucks’ best customers may be only a few steps away.

“Some of the firefighters were excited about having food trucks there.”

In a nod to Station 2, the City plans to call the new dining destination the “Firehouse Food Park.”

By Tammie Stephens