What is the Future of Outdoor Dining in New York City?

 

By Mark Chiusano

The outdoor dining setup at Artesano on Chambers Street had some of the soaring dignity of its location. Patrons savoring the high-end Peruvian food could look through an arched, see-through roof at the classical limestone exterior of the David N. Dinkins Municipal Building, topped by the towering gilded statue “Civic Fame.”  

It did not feel like eating in the street. It was an “extension of our restaurant,” said Roman Cervantes, a founder of the restaurant. The roadway construction was airy and plant-filled, heated or cooled for the season, and it cost about $50,000 or $60,000 to install. Yet it’s not long for this world. 

“Literally everything is gonna go to the garbage,” Cervantes said in late September.

Many New York restaurants have faced the same dilemma as Artesano this year, as owners debated whether to apply for the City’s new outdoor dining program. Their decisions will help answer a larger question: what will the future of the city’s street culture be? 

More than 2,900 restaurants have submitted over 3,600 license applications for roadway or sidewalk dining – a big jump from the just over 1,000 establishments that had outdoor dining under the pre-pandemic regime, according to an NYU Wagner estimate. But it’s a significant drop from the 10,000+ businesses that did outdoor dining in the COVID-19 era.

In other words: These early numbers could be the seeds from which a widespread permanent program grows, cementing a new New York tradition of more socializing outdoors and changing the way we use public space. Or the numbers could be a sign that the city is retreating back toward the pre-pandemic status quo. 

In 2020, a cornucopia of outdoor dining options exploded as city government allowed restaurants to temporarily throw up chairs, tables, and dining huts on sidewalks and streets. The new rules helped supportsome 100,000 jobs and became crucial for struggling eateries that couldn’t conduct business as usual inside due to the virus. Outdoor dining was also popular for many New Yorkers, described in the AP as giving the city a sidewalk cafe scene as “vibrant as Paris or Buenos Aires.”

But as Mayor Eric Adams and the City Council hashed out a permanent, non-emergency version of the program, they weighed complaints from residents about rats, messy structures, noise, and parking limitations, as well as the individual preferences of lawmakers who did not always want the pandemic dining style to stay. In 2022, Council Speaker Adrienne Adams praised the program but also said she wanted to “rein in” street structures.

Meanwhile, many restaurants and open space advocates fought to keep much of the new outdoor atmosphere, railing against the argument that street dining took too much parking. “There were parking problems before and there will be parking problems in the future,” Felicia Park-Rogers, then of Tri-State Transportation Campaign, told Streetsblog last year. “That’s not a reason to take away these spaces and give them back to cars.”

The resulting compromise was the new outdoor dining regime passed into law last August, with final rules released in February. Celebrated by Mayor Adams as an initiative helping to transform “what it feels like to be outside in New York,” the new program, administered by the Department of Transportation, allows sidewalk dining year-round, and roadway dining from April 1 to November 29 only.

The program lays out requirements for everything from clearances and overhangs to electrical connections, and provides a marketplace for a one-stop-shop of compliant structures and materials. The restaurants are also charged, including $1,050 for a four-year license fee for a roadway or sidewalk setup, plus an annual revocable consent fee based on size and location. 

New obstacles appear to have scared off some restaurateurs, according to an NYC Hospitality Alliance survey released October 9. The survey of 477 businesses found that 214 restaurants didn’t apply, with 40% of those citing stricter clearance rules that would reduce the number of tables, and 38% noting the expense of removing and storing the roadway structures every winter. The online application process also proved difficult for 31% of the restaurants that sat out the program. 

“Clearly the survey results show, and the less-than-had-hoped-for submitted applications show, there are modifications that could be made to get more restaurants to participate,” said Andrew Rigie, executive director of the industry group.

There is some debate over exactly how many restaurants offered outdoor dining in recent years and haven’t opted to continue under the new rules. A pandemic-era open data map of participating restaurants logs approximately 13,000 restaurants that applied to the temporary Open Restaurants program over time, though the Department of Transportation says that many had already stopped participating. DOT estimates some 6,000 to 8,000 restaurants were still offering outdoor dining as of this summer, and argues that the program keeps the best of the pandemic-era experience, while addressing “important quality of life concerns.”

Either way, the dip to around 3,000 restaurants would be large.

To get more restaurants to join in, Rigie suggests a reduction in some fees, an easier application process that could include the ability for an applicant to meet with someone in person – and a change to the winter lockout and storage requirements for street setups. 

“If streeteries were year round, more restaurants would have applied for them,” Rigie said, addressing the seasonal break that was a controversial part of the outdoor dining legislation. After the bill passed, then-City Council Member Marjorie Velázquez, the bill’s lead sponsor, described the break as “realistic” given that “it’s going to be freezing outside”– despite some outdoor dining advocates arguing that climate change is already extending the calendar of mild days in New York.

Food businesses with existing outdoor dining had an August 3 deadline to apply for the new program or take down the old setup, so New Yorkers have already seen many familiar street huts disappear. But restaurants can still apply to host outdoor, and the new accommodations won’t appear until the spring – which will be the first glimpse of the new, approved construction. The program provides some out-of-the-box designs – including roadway setups with rigid polycarbonate “roof” panels or simple fabric canopies – while also allowing businesses to build on their own within strict parameters, most of which prioritize easy removability. 

One possible trend for outdoor dining in New York City could be more restaurants choosing the sidewalk option, which still comes with fees but slightly fewer hoops to jump through. More tables and chairs in front of restaurants could still be a “nice amenity and activates the sidewalk,” Rigie said.

New Yorkers can now enjoy outdoor dining citywide, which Rigie called an important shift from pre-pandemic, when the old sidewalk cafe program’s geographic limitations kept outdoor dining mostly to Manhattan.

Though customers at Artesano will be eating inside at one of the restaurant’s 20-odd tables going forward, CityLand spoke to other restaurant owners around the five boroughs who want to double down on outdoor dining despite the challenges, providing a preview of the program’s future. 

One such spot is Sean Og’s in Woodside, a bar that applied to keep an outdoor setup that was a “lifesaver” during the pandemic, says the owner, Sean.

Sean Og’s is used to setting up and taking down the long red canopies held up with sturdy black struts. The bar already did so when the weather got cold. 

That took “a couple days work” but was worth it to provide a drinking option that turned out to be “popular,” Sean said. And crucially, he’s accustomed to the kinds of change that mark life for a New York City food business – whether it’s permit paperwork or demography. Traditionally an Irish American bar, he said Sean Og’s is now “like the United Nations almost. Everyone comes, everyone enjoys.”

***
Mark Chiusano is a Senior Fellow in New York Law School’s Center for New York City and State Law and the author of The Fabulist: The Lying, Hustling, Grifting, Stealing, and Very American Legend of George Santos.