An idea for a permanent food truck park is starting to take shape in Sand City.

More than any other city on the Monterey Peninsula, Sand City feels like a place of possibility, somewhere that new ideas can take root and flourish.

The latest such idea is something not unlike Night Market 831, a monthly music and art festival in the Sand City Art Park with live music and food trucks. The first Friday of every month since late 2021, the Art Park becomes a crush of people with long lines and not enough places to sit.

But what if there was a food truck park open seven days a week? That’s the vision for The Yard, the brainchild of Jeanne Colletto. The concept seeks to turn a vacant, rectangular lot between California and Dias avenues into a landscaped food hub.

The property has been in Colletto’s family for three generations – her grandfather used it to dry his fishing nets, and in the adjacent house, which he also owned, for himself and his friends to drink and play cards – John Steinbeck was a frequent visitor, she says.

Colletto, her husband Gustavo Carvalho and her two sons Joshua and Noah Reeves are all collaborating on the project. They’ve yet to submit a full site plan for the project to the city. Colletto is working out a contract with the Carmel Valley-based firm Wild Land Workshop to help with the designs, and she estimates the site plan will cost $25,000 or more.

Both she and Carvalho are concerned about making that kind of investment without more assurances from the city that it’s a project it wants, but City Manager Vibeke Norgaard says the city has been trying to move the project forward, it just needs the plans in hand.

In concept, there is support. “The city wants this,” Norgaard says, “[but] we’re now at the stage where we need real plans.”

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Correction (5/30/24 9am): The print version of this story misspelled Norgaard's last name. The Weekly regrets the error.