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NYC Takes Major Step Toward Making Outdoor Dining Permanent
By
Ben Yakas
Published Nov 16, 2021
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By
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Published Nov 16, 2021
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Despite some ongoing litigation, New York City took a major step this week toward making outdoor dining a permanent part of the city's infrastructure. On Monday, the City Planning Commission voted unanimously for a zoning text amendment that will create a clean slate for the city to develop and regulate a permanent program, and will ultimately allow more restaurants to set up outdoor dining structures across the city.
The amendment—which was proposed by the city—removes restrictions regarding the location of the outdoor space being used by restaurants. This helps to wipe the slate clean for the incoming Adams administration to set new specifications and standardize how outdoor dining will work henceforth. As the city puts it, this will "cut red tape for restaurant owners" and make the application process for sidewalk and roadway eateries much simpler.
"The necessity of moving dining outdoors during an emergency gave New York City the rare opportunity to pilot a significant land use change on a citywide scale, and in doing this to recognize the incredible vibrancy outdoor dining can bring," Planning Commissioner Chair Anita Laremont said during the vote.
The City Council and mayor will have to approve the text amendment now that it was given the green light by the City Planning Commission, but considering that the City Council voted last fall to make the program permanent and both current Mayor Bill de Blasio and incoming Mayor Eric Adams have pledged support for the initiative, advocates feel confidant that this is a done deal.
"Since its inception, Open Restaurants has saved more than 100,000 industry jobs and countless small businesses from financial collapse, and this yes vote is a critically important first step towards developing a sustainable future for this very popular program," said NYC Hospitality Alliance executive director Andrew Rigie.
After the mayor signs off on it, the city will begin developing the specifications of the permanent outdoor dining program. That will include public hearings and other forms of community outreach—the Department Of Transportation has already announced that they are launching a public engagement process to improve the designs and rules regarding the setups.
The DOT says that the public's input will help determine how to best "integrate these new setups into the complex environment of NYC streets." That input will come via in-person and remote roundtables over the next six months—the schedule of those events will be listed on the DOT site and on NYC Engage—culminating in the release of new design guidelines in 2022.
As it stands, the current temporary emergency Open Restaurants program will run through the end of 2022, so the city has until the start of 2023 to get the details ready for implementation.
The current set of rules in place for outdoor dining requires a clear path for pedestrians to walk by; in addition, no structures can be bolted down or drilled into the sidewalk, no structure can cover or touch a tree, and you can't block fire hydrants or street signs.
An outdoor dining set-up in the East Village
Scott Lynch/Gothamist
Opponents have complained that outdoor structures affect quality-of-life issues around their neighborhoods—that there are more rats and more build up of trash, that restaurants are noisier late into the night, and that parking spaces are blocked.
A group of 22 New York City residents cited the above reasons in their recent lawsuit attempting to block the program. One man described the noise beneath his window as "a steady maddening presence that goes on for hours into the night, causing him to feel like a prisoner in his own home and bringing on anxiety, depression, and pure fury."
Assemblymember Deborah Glick, who was against the text amendment, said in a statement that while **"**New Yorkers accepted the temporary measures during the worst parts of the pandemic in order to support restaurants which are vital to our economy, it is wrong to bypass local community review and give up public spaces which will be difficult to get back...We must ensure that limitations which consider the public space use of our sidewalks and the interactions between restaurants and residents be upheld."
There have been some contentious community board meetings as well, but Aaron Hoffman, the owner of sports bar Wogies, argued to the NY Times that opponents are just a vocal minority. “Only the complainers will show up to these community hearings, so it’s only one side that is heard,” Hoffman, a longtime West Village resident, said. “The people who are happy and content won’t do that because they have lives. They have other things to worry about.”
There is evidence that seems to bear that out: one survey found that two-thirds of New Yorkers think the city “was right to close its streets to cars and open them to pedestrians and restaurants."
Il Violino
Jen Chung/Gothamist
Tammy Meltzer, chair of Community Board 1, said in a statement that the process of organizing the new system is flawed because it throws out "decades of time tested zoning regulations, to replace it with a process that hasn't yet been determined." But Rigie, the NYC Hospitality Alliance director, counters that this is exactly why the program needs to be better formulated and regulated now.
"To put it in perspective, the current program we see on the sidewalks and streets were born out of a crisis," he told Gothamist. "The system was created quickly to save jobs, save small businesses, and let New Yorkers eat, drink and socialize safely after they had been locked in their apartments and homes. In creating the permanent program, it needs to be more standardized, more sustainable, it needs to address concerns of restaurant owners, workers, and local residents. It should be able to operate and thrive more harmoniously with all the different uses of public space."
As for the lawsuits, he added, "Whenever you're engaged in transformative change of the city streetscape, New Yorkers are going to have a lot of opinions. Good public policy should address as many of the different perspectives as possible while creating the greatest good for the greatest number of people. And there's no doubt outdoor dining is beloved by so many people."
Mayor de Blasio enacted the Open Restaurants program under an emergency executive order in spring 2020 in the midst of the pandemic; over 12,000 restaurants currently take part in the program.
Tagged
department of transportation
dot
open streets
restaurants
outdoor dining
Ben Yakas
Ben Yakas is a former Gothamist reporter.
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Gothamist is funded by sponsors and member donations
Gothamist is funded by sponsors and member donations
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