Sandy Romero opened the Echo Park Eats at the corner of Sunset Avenue and Douglas Street in the fall of 2023, and Sandy Romero said her neighbor was occupied by a delivery driver.

“Their first day of business was chaotic, unorganized, and now it’s so annoying.”

Echo Park Eats is a ghost kitchen that is a meal hub for app-based delivery orders. It rents kitchens from 26 different food suppliers. The facility is part of Cloudkitchens, led by Travis Kalanick, co-founder of Uber Technologies, which has kitchen locations across the country, including 11 in Los Angeles County.

Romero said there is a long list of suppliers and the ease of placing online food orders, saying delivery drivers that pour into her daily are already soaring, with drivers often occupying parking spaces, idle, red areas and double parking spaces.

In an already high-density neighborhood with seasonal traffic less than a mile away at Dodger Stadium, residents of Douglas Street said the opening of the Ghost Restaurant suddenly flooded more people, cars, garbage and crime.

The district of Congressman Hugo Soto-Martínez, who represents the community, said an obvious problem is far more than just parking and traffic safety. He said the Ghost Restaurant, which replaced the medical office, was designated as a catering business, allowing it to operate adjacent to the residential area.

The commercial phenomenon of Ghost Kitchens has been around since the 2010s, so there is no latest definition of land use.

Cloudkitchens did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The facility is a nuisance and “does not belong to residential areas, especially on residential streets,” said Erika Torres, a resident who has lived on Douglas Street for more than 30 years.

Torres lives in the facility's rear parking lot away from two houses, frustrated by the army of food carriers accelerating along the sidewalk, traffic jams on her neighborhood and the excessive smell of oil, onions and other cooked food permeates her house.

She and other neighbors said they heard an angry confrontation between drivers trying to enter and exit the parking lot and exploded loud music in the morning and late at night.

Several neighbors in question asked them to identify them on the grounds of safety concerns.

Another neighbor, JC Arias, said he suspected that there was a link between the increase in people entering the neighborhood and thefts, including stolen tools and license plates.

The email threads created to discuss security issues and possible solutions to the Ghost Restaurant issue have as many as 90 people, including neighbors, Soto Matis’ regional staff and other city staff. The email chain is still active today.

Soto-Martínez is proposing two possible restorations to the city council. One possible solution is to ask city staff to create specific land use names for ghost kitchens while assessing how these existing facilities affect the community.

If the classification of ghost kitchens is different from that of other commercial operations, it may have to operate in designated industrial areas. However, changes in land use rules may only apply to future ghost kitchens, rather than the exit facilities of Echo Park.

Another solution proposed by Soto-Martínez will use geofencing technology to immediately enable drivers to roam around the block while they are waiting for delivery.

The technology is currently used on lime scooters to perform remotely at speeds, parking restrictions and dead zones. Soto-Martinez asked city staff to study how this would work for application-based delivery drivers.

"The theory behind this is that the flow will be a little dispersed or it will be more classified because at the moment, they are actually hanging from (facilities)."

But some neighbors worry that the idea of ​​geofencing won’t solve the problem and will only force delivery drivers to hang out in other communities.

"We feel sad because we don't want to do this to anyone else," said a resident who asked not to agree.

Douglas has adopted incremental changes to alleviate traffic and other concerns, such as adding allowed parking last year and deploying more parking enforcement officers.

In December 2024, the Los Angeles Department of Transportation received complaints about frequent illegal parking nearby and began weekly patrols to address community concerns, said Colin Sweeney, a spokesman for the department.

Outside the patrol, the department deployed officials to respond to complaints or calls for services.

The situation in Douglas has escalated so far in February, with neighbors saying traffic law enforcement officers being beaten up while trying to enforce parking laws.

Sweeney confirmed that LAPD is investigating “the alleged attack on traffic officers during his duties on February 8” but refused to provide more details.

Echo Park Eats also implemented five minutes of parking on their lot in 2024, but neighborss Assuming this will only prompt more delivery drivers to linger on the sidewalk on the street or on the sidewalk.

Last summer, Arias said the food carrier (mostly men) parked or idle cars, hanging out in the shadow of the big trees in front of his home, near across the street from the Ghost Restaurant.

These people will bring chairs, snacks, and sit under the trees until they claim delivery. Arias often asked these people to pick up the garbage and keep the vehicles in the street.

Arias was so upset with the wandering delivery driver that he cut off the branches that obscured the driver.

The driver stopped hanging out under his tree, but many simply moved to another shaded area on Douglas Street.