ST. PETERSBURG — Downtown is going to party like it's 2011: The city's urban core is finally getting its own regular food truck rally starting later this month.

"Lunch Truck it" is a collaboration between the city and a local organization, the Gulf to Bay Food Truck Association. The first event will take place May 17 and Mayor Rick Kriseman is scheduled to be there along with a lineup of Mediterranean, Vietnamese, California, seafood and specialty ice cream trucks.

Going forward, the event will take place every third Wednesday of the month in Williams Park at 330 Second Ave. N from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m.

Downtown St. Petersburg is getting its own regular food truck rally — something that has long been commonplace in Tampa — after the city spent years struggling with the food truck phenomenon.

Food trucks rode onto the foodie scene in 2011. But city regulations prohibited food trucks, and the city's leaders didn't know how to handle the hot new trend. They feared that food trucks would take away from taxpaying brick-and-mortar restaurants, and once bandied about keeping food trucks as far away as 500 feet from restaurants, which would have virtually banned them from downtown.

But in 2014, after three long years grappling with the issue, the City Council finally relented and eased up on the old rules that were hampering food trucks, allowing vendors to buy annual permits instead of more expensive temporary use permits and enabling parking on downtown streets.