Earlier this year, Mayor Adams declared that “it’s time to retire those COVID cabins and replace them with something better.” We couldn’t agree more. But the question is: replace them with what?
Acting at the urging of the Mayor, the City Council will soon take up legislation that could make the worst mistakes of the pandemic program permanent. We think that would be a colossal blunder. But we also believe that there’s still time for the Council to get it right. And we know that a world-class city like New York deserves a world-class outdoor dining program — not one pieced together from a makeshift emergency intervention masquerading as a model for the future of outdoor dining.
Rather than creating an innovative new program, the City Council bill (Proposed Intro 31-A) prolongs and extends the damage the emergency restaurant program has inflicted on many neighborhoods across the city. The bill allows for the blight of sheds and roadway setups in our communities to continue, possibly as long as through October 2024, saddling restaurant-dense neighborhoods with another 18 months of the trash, noise, rats, and congestion that we’ve endured for nearly three years.
The new law would reward scofflaws by setting fines as low as “zero dollars” for unlicensed outdoor dining, ensuring that the havoc of unregulated outdoor drinking and dining will become a permanent feature of our city. And the legislation allows restaurants and bars to cut to the front of the line to stake their claims to public spaces — before there is any open public discussion of possible new uses of our shared sidewalk and curb lanes.
Perhaps most disturbing, if passed in its current form, Intro 31-A will trigger provisions of the companion “zoning text amendment” passed by the Council one year ago. That earlier action eviscerates protections for residential areas. Restaurants and bars will be permitted almost anywhere, and there will be nothing to stop bars, pubs, taverns, and clubs from operating with fully open windows and facades, blasting amplified music and crowd noise directly into the windows of neighboring families, elders, and children.
But there’s still time for the City Council to get this right. And New Yorkers are all in to help — just as we were all in to support our restaurants when the pandemic required emergency restrictions.
Over the past year, stakeholders from across the city have been meeting, sharing stories about conditions in their neighborhoods, and sketching a blueprint for the future of outdoor dining.
The result is the Community Blueprint for Outdoor Dining, an outline that incorporates the lessons learned in the pandemic emergency with the best features of the former sidewalk café:
- reasonable limits on restaurant density in residential neighborhoods that encourage restaurant investment in the outer boroughs
- sensible closing hours in residential areas to mitigate noise
- climate-friendly restrictions on heating and air-conditioning the outdoors
- an equitable role for community boards in café licensing
- clear pedestrian walkways with 12-foot sidewalk minimums for dining setups, and
- the return of program oversight to the experienced Department of Consumer Affairs (now DCWP) that successfully managed the pre-pandemic sidewalk café program.
We still welcome the opportunity to present the Community Blueprint to the Council at a public hearing. But since no hearing is planned, we are sharing the plan publicly.
The City Council intends to supersize New York’s outdoor dining. But we all know that bigger rarely means better. And that millions of New Yorkers have no interest in making a lifestyle out of pandemic precautions.
Read the Community Blueprint for Outdoor Dining. And if you agree that outdoor dining needs to work for both residents and small businesses, write your City Council representatives today. Tell them to join us in rebuilding New York for a post-pandemic, climate-friendly future that serves all New Yorkers.
— The CUE-UP Facilitation Committee
Kathy Arntzen
Leif Arntzen
Leslie Clark
Micki McGee
Stuart Waldman
Sad enough to see the restaurant shack shantytown on the West Side, but truly unbelievable to see the Lower East Side, East Village and West Village – trash; rats; impassable sidewalks and streets; building entrances blocked by lengthy restaurant shacks. And in good weather, partying all night…
“the havoc of unregulated outdoor drinking and dining ”
Havoc? Holy hyperbole, Batman.
I wish my life was so cushy that my biggest problem, one worth launching a silly crusade over, was the “havoc” of outdoor dining.
Try living in a second-story apartment above one of the shanty-restaurants with a newborn infant and a wife with post-partum depression.
Try to get a good night’s rest when there are loudmouthed louts lingering until 4AM.
Cush that.
It is so rude these greedy restaurant don’t care.
Jamie –
BTW the shacks also impact on local shops.
Besides the trash,-rat issue, shacks block visibility of adjacent stores & make it hard for stores to get deliveries.
And know of a situation where restaurant threatened store owner who didn’t agree to shack extension that blocked store.
Plus unfair that City gave free space to restaurants – but no help to stores.
You obviously don’t live near one.
The shacks when first built were a good idea but now so many have turned into urban blight. Probably best to have outdoor seating available for the Spring, Summer and Fall warm weather months and make them less permanent structures that can be removed. Also glad to see all the ramshackle sheds on 72nd have come down recently.
Thank you! Finally a plan not written by the Hospitality Alliance with all their exaggerated job statistics and shopped around to ‘yes people’ politicians. The restaurant industry thinks they can take over city streets, double and triple their capacity on the public’s dime by wining and dining the mayor, borough presidents, council people. Sad thing is it might work, the greed of these restaurants knows no bounds. Let’s stop the restaurant land grab and rid of these dangerous, filthy shacks in the street.
I thought it was a done deal that the sheds were coming down. I didn’t know this was still being discussed and that there was a possibility of them being up until October 2024.
The mere fact that the Mayor has not struck these abominations down with a stroke of a pen is a complete travesty of governance. Emergency precautions and healthcare measures are gone, Heck, even printing money has been proven (as if anyone doubted!) to be a recipe for disaster. Yet, the filthy shacks live on….
While I appreciate a detailed plan, just no to this:
“In residential & mixed-use areas, outdoor dining should close at sunset.”
Not all of us want to be in bed by 7pm. I would think 9-10pm would be a reasonable time to close down outdoor dining.
Hard to say, Erica, given what’s going on with this legislation.
The companion outdoor dining legislation (changes to the City’s zoning regulations called “the Zoning Text Amendment) that the City Council approved in February 2022 removed all zoning restrictions on outdoor dining.
That provision removes all restrictions on outdoor dining in residential neighborhoods and also allows restaurants and bars to have open facades, blasting music and crowd noise to the street and to adjacent residences. All of this is new, and hasn’t yet been applied: the provisions of that law go into effect when this new administrative part of the law gets passed and enacted.
That means that in any residential neighborhood — possibly even under your bedroom window — there can be outdoor drinking, dining, and music until all hours of the night and into the early hours of the morning.
The Community Blueprint argues for that sunset closing time provision only in residential neighborhoods. In commercial areas, hours can be whatever they need to be and whatever the community board approves. But residential areas need to protect residents’ right to sleep.
And the proposal here is for a seasonal program. The sun sets around 8:30 in the summer. Seems fair to me. Walk to a commercial area if you want to up out later; dine on your residential or mixed-use block in a later afternoon, or first seating on summer evenings. Balanced.
Seems like they thought about balancing all sorts of needs/interests.
While outdoor dining and drinking until “all hours,” music would not be because amplified music would still be regulated under noise regulations and wouldn’t be allowed after 10pm (I think that is the legal limit without a special permit). Noise complaints fall under different statutes and are regulated by the Department of Environmental Protection rather than DCA (now DCWP) or DOT.
Hard disagree. Outdoor dining should continue until at least 10pm. This is NYC, not Boca Raton, Florida.
Easy to disagree if you’ve been raising a family in New York, and have kids that need to do homework and sleep, and now a block where outdoor dining was never allowed has suddenly turned into Bourbon Street. But if you don’t have a shed under your window, you’ll not understand your 11-year-old weeping uncontrollably because she hasn’t gotten enough sleep. Visit the Lower East Side or MacDougal Street in the Village and you’ll see what I’m talking about.
Would the 12 foot minimum on sidewalk width apply to all streets? How would that work on side streets that currently have narrow sidewalks (some not even wide enough for two people to walk together side by side)? I think it’s a great idea to widen sidewalks just looking for more details!
Just get rid of the shantys already.
Why wont anyone think of my God given right to free street parking?! Its the Big Garage lobby that keeps these abominations up still. Dont even get me started on those city bike stations!
Cars and drivers are always so quiet and respectful of neighbors, especially after 7pm 🙂
I see the outdoor sheds- as trouble for all of the reasons folks have stated – trash, traffic, blind spots, etc. Think it would be very difficult to enforce rules around the sheds including cleanliness, and what about underneath the sheds? My vote is to have outdoor dining only where the restaurant’s outdoor sidewalk space is suited for it, as I believe was the situation pre-pandemic. Time for sheds to go. Thx
Community Committees and politicians don’t design buildings so why let them plan our NYC streetscape for us? Please hire qualified design professionals to develop the guidelines to “make the good easy and the bad difficult” (in the words of Albert Einstein.) for outdoor dining. For starters did anyone think to survey the existing COVID “experiments” we have all around us now, to document which work — for all constituents — and why.
Just curious: Who’s funding The CUE-UP Facilitation Committee?
Ken,
Actually a neighborhood acquaintance has just gotten involved with the group.
BTW the neighbor and kids live above a shed 🙁
I think I’ll make a contribution too
I realize that there are some people who are steadfast against the dining sheds. Hearing that the pandemic is over and emergency restrictions are over is not quite true though. My family and I only eat at outdoor dining areas and do not eat out inside a restaurant because we still take Covid seriously. We also still wear masks indoors. And while we are the minority these days, there are still a large number of us.
What I am in favor of though, is intelligent regulations and enforcement of the regulations. Here are my thoughts:
-Sheds should be well maintained – failure to maintain them or allowing them to collect garbage etc should result in fines and/or the loss of permission for the shed. Plant shed, for example, has gates they close at night. This should be required on all sheds.
-Sidewalk right of way needs to focus first and foremost on pedestrian needs. Any dining structures must not put an undue burden on pedestrians. This differs based on locations, ie the avenues with wider sidewalks and side streets with narrower sidewalks.
-Sheds should not be allowed within 15 feet of an intersection to daylight the intersection for crossing pedestrians.
-Shed depth should not be such that it directly abuts a bike lane – the shed should not come directly up against the green paint. This is a safety issue for both diners and cyclists. Either the sheds should respect the buffer zone built into protected bike lanes or sheds should be required to sit directly against the sidewalk. I prefer the latter with the bike lane then being behind the shed with a safety barrier, such as concrete or metal bollards separating the bike lane from motor vehicle traffic.
-Music should not be played in the outdoor sheds at any time.
-Sheds should have a dining focus and not a bar focus. Like there was back when, food should be required at any outdoor tables. When the kitchen closes, the sheds close.
-Citibike pays the city for any of its stations that are located on the roadbed and therefore take up parking. This same model should be used with the sheds; sheds should not be free but should have a reasonable use cost in line with what Citibike pays.
-Lastly, sheds need to be in use – sheds not in use need to be removed.
Thank you for this.
I am immunocompromised and would like to be able to eat out sometimes. Outdoor dining sheds allow people who have been pretty isolated the last few years to do something out of the house.
The shacks near me are completely enclosed building with heat and AC. How does that help with covid?
They don’t, and we don’t eat at those. And they shouldn’t be. In the future, maybe. With proper insulation for the sake of efficiency. But for now, sheds are supposed to be open on at least two sides, with at least one of the sides being a long side. But this has NEVER been enforced, but definitely should have been and should still be.
“My family and I only eat at outdoor dining areas and do not eat out inside a restaurant because we still take Covid seriously. We also still wear masks indoors. And while we are the minority these days, there are still a large number of us.”
While I too restricted myself to outdoor dining longer than most other people I know, my perspective is that my “right” (my word, not yours) to covid safe dining has to give way to the greater good. In my mind, that means eliminating or severely restricting outdoor dining. The filth, the inability to easily walk on sidewalks, the excessive noise are more of a problem to me and the neighborhood than my inability to eat out.
They are not on the sidewalks, but in the street, so you have NO argument there. The dining on the sidewalk is by permit. If there is filth that is the problem of the individual establishment. There is lots of filth in NYC, it has nothing to do with dining.
I cannot remember the last time that this Coty Council got something right.
If the restaurant industry gets its way, I promise never to eat in one of these shacks. I hope that others will follow suit. Perhaps picketing in front of one of these might help. Does anyone know where people in the construction labor unions get their giant, inflatable rats from? I’m sure that people dining in these shacks would love to see them while eating.
Your plan is to picket a single restaurants dining shed? Great thinking, picket all 13,000 of those restaurants for trying to make ends meet within the law.
New Yorkers love outdoor dining. New Yorkers also love to live in clean, safe neighborhoods with easy access to outdoor dining. The first item in your outline calls for encouraging restaurant investment in outer boroughs! I’ve worked very hard for 48 years to be able to afford living in Manhattan with easy access to great restaurants. I’m not living here because there are spaces for people to park their cars on the street! If this is what you want, you shouldn’t be living in Manhattan. Instead of encouraging restaurants to leave Manhattan, you should be encouraging those who don’t appreciate what Manhattan has to offer to leave Manhattan.
Julia,
I’ve lived in Manhattan for my whole life.
I want the sheds removed.
The sheds were supposed to be for the Covid emergency – not a land-use giveaway to the restaurant industry.
Not everything can and should be a restaurant.
BTW there is already over-saturation of restaurants.
If a parking space on Amsterdam turns over 6 times in a 12 business hour day, that is 6 people (most not New Yorkers, since few NYers park at meters) that benefit. A single table could have the same benefit in an hour. A shed taking up 3 parking spaces could easily serve more than 5 times as many people in a day, or more. Most of whom would be locals – our neighbors – rather than outsiders who would benefit from parking spaces. And let’s be honest, those out of towners are going to come no matter what. They aren’t coming for the metered parking spaces, they are coming for the stores and restaurants.
Start taxing for the use of sidewalk space. That will vastly reduce the sheds.
They are NOT on the sidewalks. They are IN THE STREET.
two restaurants that i can see out my window have two sheds—one curbside on the car side of the bike lane, and then they recently enclosed their what-used-to-be sidewalk seating into much bigger spaces. in fact, the eight foot clearance between those sheds and any given city ‘furniture’ (streetlight, bike lockup, cel tower) is grossy violated. two strollers can not pass. revert to open air sidewalk seating, at the very least.
The City should return to sidewalk café seating and get rid of the sheds. The sheds create trash and attract rats. It is also unfair to local to stores and local businesses that don’t get any free space.
This has been my beef almost since the beginning. When restaurants were not allowed to serve indoors or when most people still didn’t want to eat inside I was in favor of special programs since restaurants as a category suffered more than other storefront businesses.
Now when many restaurants are packed inside, so why are they given this freebie while other small businesses can barely pay rent?
Case in point, Jacob’s Pickles which has since the beginning taken over the curb well past the storefront’s footprint (which was the original guideline) . Also a large part of the public sidewalk adjacent to a playground, and the people who are waiting for tables block almost the entire sidewalk.
I’m happy their business is thriving and the inside is always full but these sheds were meant as an alternative and a way to catch up for businesses faring poorly.
I LOVE outdoor dining. The outdoor facility across the street from me (Rosa Mexicano) has never had rats or trash as a problem, nor noise. The bike lane is a danger as e-bikes zoom along right into waiters and pedestrians, but that is a different issue. If there is any noise, trash, or rats, it’s not a by-product of dining, but of bad maintenance. I am bored and tired of the whiners and complainers on this issue. If parking is a problem, too bad. The street should be enjoyed by the many, not the privileged few who have autos. If the other issues are a problem, have the restaurant handle it. If they don’t, file a City complaint. But don’t penalized the diners.