Prescriptions - Making Sense of the Health Care Debate
November 10, 2010, 4:06 pm
Other Cities Eye Green Carts
By STEPHANIE STROM
Uli Seit for The New York Times Laurie M. Tisch visits the Green Cart of Muhammad Ali in Bushwick, Brooklyn.

Every philanthropist dreams of financing a model program that proves so successful that others want to replicate it.

But Laurie M. Tisch had no idea that she would pave the way for other cities when she offered to donate $250,000 to help get a New York nutrition program off the ground.

Ms. Tisch, daughter of Preston Robert Tisch, who together with his brother Laurence built the Loews Corporation, had just started a new foundation, the Illumination Fund, when she got a call from the mayor’s office asking her to attend a news conference about regulating food carts.

Almost two years and $1.5 million later, the NYC Green Carts program is attracting attention from other philanthropists and food organizations. Even the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation considered it as a potential economic stimulus program in Philadelphia.

“It’s attractive because of the success it has on multiple levels,” said Jim Slama, president of FamilyFarmed.org, which works to expand the production and distribution of locally grown food in the Chicago area. “Not only does it address the problem of food access successfully, its success in stimulating economic development and job creation has been significant.”
Uli Seit for The New York Times

Fitting Green Carts into a Chicago setting, however, is challenging. Street food is not a part of Chicago’s culture the way it is in New York or Los Angeles, in large part because the city has tough rules regulating the sale of food on its streets. “The bottom line is that there are enough regulatory issues that the city would have to be a major stakeholder before anything could even begin to happen,” Mr. Slama said.

For that reason, his organization is looking into permutations of the street cart model, like the installation of kiosks in corner stores that could be replenished every day.