New York City restaurants will be allowed to keep outdoor dining setups on city roadways throughout the year under legislation signed Monday by Mayor Zohran Kwame Mamdani, ending a requirement that forced businesses to dismantle the structures during the winter.

The legislation, Intro. 655, sponsored by Council Member Lincoln Restler, changes the rules governing the city’s Dining Out NYC program. Under the previous system, roadway dining setups had to be removed from Nov. 30 through March 31, while sidewalk cafes were permitted to remain open throughout the year.

The Mayor’s Office announced on Aug. 31 that the New York City Department of Transportation will now develop rules allowing restaurants to temporarily winterize their roadway dining areas.

“Outdoor dining transformed our city once before, and now we are making sure” it remains part of the city’s future, Mamdani said. He argued that requiring restaurants to dismantle and rebuild their setups each year imposed unnecessary costs on small businesses and made long-term planning more difficult. The mayor said year-round dining would allow neighborhood restaurants to continue using the space in every season.

The change follows an Aug. 13 City Council vote approving the measure. Under the broader outdoor-dining package, service at both sidewalk and roadway cafes must end by 11 p.m., while restaurants face new requirements aimed at keeping the spaces free of trash, debris and vermin.

A woman looks at a mobile phone as she stands beside outdoor restaurant dining areas on a street in Manhattan, New York on May 7, 2021. (Image: ED JONES/AFP via Getty Images)

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Restaurant industry says seasonal rules hurt businesses

Restaurant advocates have argued that forcing businesses to dismantle, store and then reconstruct roadway cafes every year created costs that discouraged participation in a program originally launched as an emergency measure during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Andrew Rigie, executive director of the NYC Hospitality Alliance, told Spectrum News NY1 in April that outdoor dining provides a direct economic benefit to restaurants.

“It helps generate revenue, create jobs. People love dining al fresco,” Rigie said. He added that reducing regulatory burdens and permitting roadway cafes throughout the year would likely encourage substantially more restaurants to participate.

The storage requirement was a particular concern for businesses with limited space. Restaurants previously had to pay to dismantle their roadway structures, find somewhere to store them for several months and then reinstall them when the outdoor dining season reopened.

The City Council said when it approved the legislation that the year-round model is intended to remove those barriers while allowing restaurants to use weatherproofing and winterizing materials. The legislation also prohibits the Department of Transportation from allowing outdoor cafes to operate later than 11 p.m.

Critics point to parking, rats and neighborhood concerns

Not all New Yorkers have welcomed the prospect of making roadway dining permanent throughout the winter.

Opponents have long argued that structures occupying curb lanes eliminate scarce parking spaces and can create sanitation and quality-of-life problems. Those complaints became particularly prominent during the pandemic-era expansion of outdoor dining, when structures proliferated rapidly across the city.

“I prefer it go away. It takes up a lot of parking space and there isn’t a lot to begin with,” one New Yorker told Spectrum News NY1 ahead of the Council vote.

Other residents interviewed by NY1 raised concerns about rats and cleanliness while saying they could accept permanent roadway dining if restaurants properly maintained the structures. The Council attempted to address those complaints by approving sanitation standards requiring outdoor cafes to remain free of trash, food scraps, graffiti, debris, vermin and other unsanitary conditions. Violations can bring civil penalties ranging from $200 for a first offense to $500 for subsequent offenses.

Supporters contend those safeguards provide a compromise: restaurants gain permanent access to roadway space while facing tighter obligations to minimize their impact on surrounding neighborhoods.

Restler, who sponsored the legislation, argued in the Mayor’s Office announcement that the former seasonal restrictions had shut too many establishments out of the program and that eliminating them would help restore outdoor dining across all five boroughs.

Original article
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