Alarcon Proposes Tax Help For Restaurants

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L.A.’s brick-and-mortar restaurants may soon be getting a boost from city officials in their ongoing battle with gourmet food trucks.

City Councilman Richard Alarcon introduced a motion Tuesday calling for a report on how to make restaurants more competitive with the some 4,000 food trucks that roam the streets. The report, which is to be submitted to the Jobs & Business Development Committee, will include proposals for decreasing the business tax rate for restaurants, creating a “Dine LA” campaign and allowing restaurants to open up sidewalk cafes.

“The landscape of the restaurant and food service industry in Los Angeles is changing, particularly as a result of gourmet food trucks,” Alarcon said in a statement, “and it is high time that the city review our policies on restaurants to find new and innovative ways to help local restaurants grow and thrive.”

Alarcon’s motion followed a panel of City Council members who met Tuesday to discuss solutions to the dispute between restaurants and food trucks.

For the past year, a block of Wilshire Boulevard in the Miracle Mile has been ground zero for the city’s food truck battle. Sometimes a dozen or more food trucks have lined the stretch of Wilshire each day at lunch time, angering operators of the eateries located in the block’s Museum Square building.

The conflict escalated recently when truck owners claimed that employees of Museum Square management have been parking cars on Wilshire to take up parking spaces, and truck owners called for a boycott of the restaurants. In an interview with the Business Journal earlier this month, real estate developer Jerry Snyder, whose company owns Museum Square, declined to comment on whether Museum Square management was having employees park cars along Wilshire.

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