Food trucks in Denver’s LoDo neighborhood will have their weekend operations limited for the next six months, city officials announced Thursday, a month after a police shooting near a food truck injured six bystanders. 

Food trucks will now only be allowed to operate in a small block bordering the Central Business District on Friday and Saturday nights and, with limited exceptions, can only do so from 5 a.m. to 9 p.m. on those days; the rules also apply to holidays. Seven trucks approved by the city can operate until midnight in selected spots on Blake and Market streets.

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No changes are being made to permits on Sundays or weekdays, the city said.

The new rules are in response to “a significant increase in violence and crime” downtown, officials wrote, a spike that they attributed in part to some “patrons of mobile food vendors.” The city earlier this month had blocked food trucks from operating in the area entirely, more than two weeks after the police shooting.

Under the new rules, trucks can operate in what the city has dubbed the “mobile food vendor restricted area.” It broadly falls into two joined rectangular-shaped areas. The northwest area extends from Market Street to Wynkoop and from Speer to Coors Field. The northeast area runs from 22nd Street nearly to 20th and from Broadway to Coors Field.

Armando Saldate, the executive director of the city’s Department of Public Safety, said in a statement that the rules “strike the right balance in our efforts to keep people safe and allow mobile food vendors to operate.”

“The rules,” he continued, “are intended to prevent large gatherings of individuals on the sidewalks and in the streets when the bars let out on Friday and Saturday nights to reduce the potential for conflict and facilitate the movement of people headed home.” 

Food peddlers and pushcarts can operate from 5 a.m. to midnight on Fridays, Saturdays and holidays. The rules will remain in place for 180 days.

In the document describing the rules, city officials wrote that incidents involving food truck patrons in the LoDo area have “created public safety concerns with business equity, meter accessibility, traffic code compliance, sight lines at intersections, noise ordinance, crowd control and impacts” on city agencies. 

Last month, several Denver police officers in the area approached a man who appeared to be in an altercation with another person near a food truck in the area. The man began to walk away, before he stopped, pulled a gun and tossed it to the side. Police then opened fired on him, striking him and injuring six bystanders gathered on the sidewalk next to the truck.

Three weeks ago, the city announced that food trucks would no longer be permitted in LoDo because of safety concerns. Police said then that efforts to move food trucks from the area had been in the works since 2021 and that it was part of an effort to create a “safer environment.” It was not prompted, they said, by the police shooting. 

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