ST. JOHNS COUNTY, Fla. – A St. Johns County property owner who fought back against a county administrative ruling won, and the food truck vendors who depend on the space are back to work as of Friday.
The Outpost is located at 2025 Old Moultrie Road. The food trucks were closed in late April.
The commission voted to uphold the property owner’s appeal, overturning the county staff’s administrative ruling and allowing The Outpost to reopen.
At the heart of the dispute was whether the property qualified as improved or unimproved land under county code, and whether food trucks could legally operate there at all.
The Outpost had been a gathering spot for families and local entrepreneurs, hosting food trucks, small vendors and an airbrush art studio before the closure.
“They’re saying that we no longer have retained our vested rights as a commercial property in St. Johns County,” said owner Justin Tahilramani back in April.
According to court records, county planners first told Tahilramani in August 2025 that he could not move forward until the site was properly developed. The property previously had a structure on it that Tahilramani demolished. By March 2026, the building was gone and food trucks were operating without paved parking or restroom facilities on site. A magistrate also ruled that an airbrush artist operating out of a shipping container on the property was an unpermitted use without a main structure present.
“They want us to spend millions of dollars to activate this in the interim as a food truck park,” Tahilramani previously said.
Now, for vendors like Javier Cornejo of Dogtown, the closure wasn’t just a legal battle; it was his livelihood.
“Since day one I knew it was going to be, I’m a positive person, you know. I don’t see no bad days,” Cornejo said. “But I always had that feeling that the rules had to be applied equally.”
The property investors tell News4Jax they were willing to meet the county halfway and install a split-rail fence to separate pedestrians from vehicles, wheel stops to define parking spaces, and a dumpster enclosure and an ADA-accessible portable bathroom trailer to address the county’s safety concerns.
“It was an olive branch,” said Sheena Tahilramani, an investor in the property. “We believe that we’re entitled to be open. We believe that we’re entitled to have food trucks. But if there’s something immediately that would make you more comfortable with us reopening, we’re happy to listen to what it is and do it. And that was the fence, the wheel stop.”
Commissioner Ann Taylor said the closure had exposed a clear gap in the county’s land development code.
“We’ve definitely identified a significant gap in our land development code, and that’s really putting small businesses in jeopardy,” Taylor said. “I fully support overturning the appeal and working — I fully support that. We’ve got to get these people back to work.”
Commissioner Christian Whitehurst called on staff to move quickly on a code fix.
“We didn’t know this was an issue until we learned it was an issue, but it’s incumbent upon us to create policies that are business friendly,” Whitehurst said.
Following the appeal ruling, the full board voted 5-0 to direct staff to rewrite county land development code to give food truck parks their own separate category — with less restrictive requirements than traditional commercial businesses. No formal timeline was set for when those changes would come back to the board.