After inviting food carts on property, Vancouver church hits owners with $45,000 bill

This was the church’s mistake. It’s the church’s job to fix it.

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In Vancouver, Washington, just beyond the parking lot of Living Hope Church, there are five different “food carts” for anyone who wants to drop by for a quick bite. Cheaper than owning restaurants, the carts are a good way to sell products without having to worry about excessive expenses. Given how many people attend that church and how many weekly events they have, there’s a large crowd of Christians already in the parking lot who might make for potential customers, and that's in addition to people outside the church who just want a new place to eat.

All five carts in the food pod pay a lease to Living Hope Church for the use of the space (which is on church property).

The food pods can be seen in a line just on the outside of the Living Hope Church parking lot (screenshot via Google Maps)

But now, because the Church failed to do its due diligence when applying for the land use permit, there’s a $45,000 bill that Church leaders want to force upon those food cart owners.

According to reporter Chrissy Booker at The Columbian, all five carts—Winston’s British Fish N Chips, Maya Fruits and Juice Bar, Krisey’s Kitchen (Southern comfort food), El Jefe (Mexican food) and Backyard BBQ—had signed leases with the church as of this past March agreeing to pay about $1,500/month for rent.

When the church asked the city for permission to allow food carts on their property, though, they were supposed to go through a lengthy (but manageable) process. That included paying for an analysis of the impact all the new traffic would have on the area. (Having five new mini-restaurants on the same block would mean more cars on the road, more wear and tear, etc.) They only found out about this necessary permit in January, months after the first food cart set up shop.

In May, the city of Vancouver calculated that the food cart pod was projected to generate 333 new daily trips around Andresen Road. The traffic impact fee rate of $424 a trip, in addition to the 30 percent “business enhancement factor” and 15 percent “tax reduction factor,” yielded a bill of $84,009.24.

The land use permit for Living Hope was approved on May 17.

Living Hope Church was expected to pay the almost $85,000 fee, but in a meeting between Lead Pastor Doug Fraizer and Mayor Anne McEnerny-Ogle, the city and the church agreed to recalculate, yielding a new fee of around $45,000.

The problem with this is that the church didn’t seem to realize they were on the hook for this amount. They wanted the food carts, but they didn’t think they had to pay different kinds of fees to make them a reality. A city official said the conflict “could have been avoided if they had reached out to the City’s Permit Center before the food cart pod was established.”

And now, in typical Christian fashion, the church is trying to push the bill on the food cart owners, raising their rents to nearly $3,000/month to pay off the costs the church neglected to understand.

The owners of the food carts are frustrated, as they were not prepared to take on part of the fee, which doubles their rent to $3,000 a month, they said. With no promising resolution, the owner of Maya Fruits and Juice Bar said she plans to leave the lot at the end of the month; Winston’s British Fish N Chips and Krisey’s Kitchen are in the same predicament.

“We’re either going to all pitch in and pay them or we’re going to have to be forced to shut down because we cannot afford that fine,” said Timothy Johnson, co-owner of Winston’s British Fish N Chips.

Maya Fruits and Juice Bar has already announced the food cart’s exit on Facebook, blaming “unrealistic city expectations and miscommunication from multiple parties that impact small businesses like ours.”

It’s hard to imagine the church can’t afford this, given that it’s a megachurch with thousands of members attending services each week. Despite making news in the past for raising lots of money very quickly, the church has since fallen into harder times. (Its pastor and founder, John Lee Bishop, made headlines years ago for smuggling drugs into the country. He later served three years of a five-year sentence in a federal prison.)

But still: This all boils down to their sense of responsibility. If they wanted to invite food carts to set up businesses on their property, they should’ve done the proper legwork to make it happen, not punish the people who took them up on the offer.

This was the church’s mistake. It’s the church’s job to fix it.

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