by FERN SHEN
If Maria Kaimakis imagined that moving her popular pit beef (and lamb) cart across the street to another downtown Baltimore location would appease those who have complained about her, she found out otherwise yesterday.

About 20 stone-faced restaurateurs and hotel managers faced her at a meeting of the city Vendors Board. Many complained about the smoke from her grilling operation entering their first floor businesses, while others said the cart causes a traffic and pedestrian hazard.

But another big issue? They think Kaimakis — whose customers line up on the sidewalk for her $5 sandwiches — is taking their lunchtime business away. Peter Kimos really vented about it.

It’s “a cherry picking restaurant,” said Kimos, longtime owner of Peter’s Pour House on Water Street. He complained that Kaimakis can choose not to take her cart out on days when the weather is bad and foot traffic is light. Other restaurants, like his, must open up and pay employees, utilities and other costs, he said.

“They get to stay home and not have any incurred overhead . . . It puts us at a disadvantage: every single bar, every single restaurant,” Kimos said. “My point is that the competition is unfair.”

Vincent Arosemena, of the Water Street Tavern, who sat beside Kimos at the witness table said he pretty much agreed.

The wandering cart

As the Brew has reported, Kaimakis had a problem last summer when she started selling from the cart at the southeast corner of Redwood and Light Street.

She and her husband Vasso Yiannouris (co-owners of Cypriana Cafe) have had a vendors’ license to operate a food cart at that spot since 1991. They kept it current with annual fees, but after a few years stopped using it, until this past summer — when they figured they could hook recession-weary downtowners tired of brown-bagging it.

But their busy sidewalk operation quickly drew complaints from Patrick Miner, general manager of the Residence Inn. The hotel (which has a restaurant) hadn’t existed back when the cart got its license. Its entrance is right near the corner where Kaimakis has rights to run her cart.

After much discussion with city officials and intervention by the Downtown Partnership, Kaimakis moved the cart across Light Street near the city-owned MECU building at 17 East Light Street. (It’s also known as 7 East Redwood Street.) Their vendors’ license is up for renewal — which brings us to yesterday’s hearing.

Smoke gets in their eyes

“This is not meant to be adversarial,” said Irene E. Van Sant, of the Baltimore Development Corporation, one of several speakers who began by praising Kaimakis. She noted that Cypriana has great food and a great story (they started in the early 90s as a cart only, selling falafel and chicken pita sandwiches.)

But the series of complaints yesterday about the new location and the old one began to seem like a barrage. A major beef came from the chief tenant of the city-owned 17 East Light Street building, the Maryland Employees Credit Union.

“We started to get complaints about the smell in the bank area,” said property manager Lynn White-Huggins. She said the smoky smell gets sucked in through the front door “and goes up through our elevator shafts” to the rest of the building.

Douglas Hinkle, facilities manager at MECU agreed, hastening to add that “we’re not opposed to sidewalk vendors…at our former location we had a hotdog vendor everyone liked.”

Rats licking grease off the sidewalk?

Others, however, clearly had a lot of animosity toward the cart, especially at the location that sparked this controversy in July (the southeast corner of Light and Redwood.)

“Our main concern from the very beginning has been safety,” said Patrick Miner, of the Residence Inn.

(“Bull____!” Kaimakis said,  sotto voce, from her seat.)

Miner said the cart’s location near the hotel’s front door causes blind spots for people pulling up to the hotel and could cause problems for guests at the hotel, many of whom are Johns Hopkins Hospital patients who use wheelchairs or have other medical issues.

“We have quadriplegics that go to Kennedy Kreiger,” he said, 

Kimos was even more blistering on the subject, raising questions about whether the cart, which he called “a 4,000-pound rolling restaurant,” was properly run.  He called it a safety hazard because it couldn’t be moved fast enough if a fire engine had to get there: “someone could die!”

He said smoke from the cart at any of the locations where it has been lately  “permeated our outdoor seating area and my customers were leaving.” 

He questioned whether food was refrigerated properly and smoke was vented as high off the ground as it’s supposed to be. He said that, at whatever location the cart is operated from, a grease spot remains on the sidewalk.

     “There were rats licking the ground at every location ,” he said.

Kaimakis fires back

    The allegations — especially the greasy cement charge — prompted strong denials from Kaimakis, both before and after the meeting. “I get my girls to bring buckets of soapy water to the sidewalk every day we’re out there and scrub the sidewalk,” she said.

    She said she follows city Health Department rules religiously and has passed numerous inspections and spot-checks. She said she makes sure the line of customers stands out of the way of pedestrians and hotel guests. “We control that line, we’re very careful, it’s like a little system that we have,” she said. She argued that the hotel’s planters do more to block sight lines than her cart does.

Much of her testimony was aimed at explaining why the spot many are suggesting she move to, the northeast corner of the intersection, won’t work. She said a fence around the parking lot obscures pedestrians’ view of the corner. Because of the design of the cart, she said, it has to face the sun when it’s on that side of the street, making it too hot and unpleasant for the staf and the customers. The parking lot doesn’t get any foot traffic because it’s a parking lot for a law firm and the employees don’t return until well after the lunch hour at the end of the day.

“It costs me money every time they move me and I have to build up my business from a new location,” she said, before the meeting. “It’s not fair that they keep moving me whenever some big hotel or developer complains. This is the fourth time I’ve been moved.”

What’s next?

It’s clear that vendor board chairman Alvin Gillard still wants Kaimakis to consider that northeast corner. There was a sharp exchange between him and Kaimakis on the subject after he asked if she’d be amenable to a board meeting at that spot to discuss possible creative ways to make the location work for her.

“You mean I have to bring the cart out to that parking lot and set it up?” said Kaimakis, saying she wouldn’t do that. It wasn’t what Gillard meant and he didn’t like her tone: “I would suggest you not dictate what we should or shouldn’t do.”

Asked what she objected to about the northeast corner, after trying it briefly last summer, Kaimakis was equally blunt. “I couldn’t put enough money into the bank at the end of the day.”

Today,  City Council members Mary Pat Clarke and William Cole IV are scheduled to address the board at a 2 pm meeting. Gillard said they will make their decision 7 to 10 days after that.

Bonus Links:

WJZ  TV did a piece on yesterday’s hearing.

Here’s Joan Jacobson’s 1992 Baltimore Sun story on Maria and Vasso’s run-in with city officials and neighboring businessowners.