From taxpayers to freeloaders.
With the passage of a city deadline on Friday, more of the city's beloved roadside dining structures made way for parked cars as many restaurants and bars declined to bring their pandemic-era structures up to the city's new code and earn an extra month of outdoor serving.
Demolitions of popular spots from the East Village to the South Bronx have unfolded against the backdrop of a warm autumn with record-low rainfall — ahead of Nov. 29, when all businesses must surrender the curb for the largely free storage of motor vehicles until April as part of the city's spring-, summer- and fall-only Dining Out NYC program.
Businesses enrolled in the program had to either conform their set-ups to city's new designs to get the extension to Nov. 29 or take down their old-set-ups on Nov. 1. Many opted to simply give up their street seating sooner rather than set up new streeteries for just a few weeks.
"We’re done. That’s going to come down," said John Kastanis, co-owner of Casita, of his streetery on 11th Street in Park Slope. Kastanis spent $15,000 on his black-and-white shed in 2021. He applied to reopen with the city-mandated design, only to decide not to participate due to the city fees as well as needing to pay someone to store the shed during the government-mandated off-season.
The Brooklynite is not the only one, as New Yorkers across the city see cherished dining hubs — once filled with many sales-tax-paying customers served by income-tax-paying servers — be demolished and turned back to free car storage.
The city required restaurants to either apply for the permanent program or take down their sheds by early August, which caused the first wave of restaurant demolitions. Those that did sign up for the new program had to bring their roadway set-ups in line with the new design guidelines by Nov. 1; all street seats must come down by Nov. 30, even if they've been updated.
The numbers of sheds dropped significantly after the new regime first kicked in over the summer, with around 3,000 applications for roadway and sidewalk cafés as of late September, according to the Department of Transportation. Transportation officials estimate that the program peaked at 6,000 to 8,000 participants, including some 5,000 setups as of this summer.
DOT's regulations no longer allow for fully enclosed hard structures. Setups must be easily removable and are limited to screens on the side and covers on top such as umbrellas, retractable fabric, or sheet panels. All roadway café applications have to go through a public hearing, but it's unclear how many restaurateurs will do so.
Thanks to the law passed by the Council last year, restaurants will be barred from paying a fee to use the streetscape for chairs and tables from December through March.
The changes mean the curb is back to being the sole domain of the automobile, said Fred Kent, a co-founder of the Placemaking Fund, who has been cataloging the loss of outdoor dining on the Social Life Project.
"It just shows how deep the car culture is and how hard it is to get away from it," Kent said. "We’ve lost a whole era that could have been evolved into something far more significant for neighborhood main streets to thrive."
One of those community hubs — a dining structure built to resemble a subway car outside Boogie Down Grind on Hunts Point Avenue in the Bronx — came down in recent weeks due to the deadline, according to its owner, who hopes to rebuild it in some form come spring.
"We’re looking forward to putting it back up again," said Majora Carter. "It was an award-winning piece that was just very appreciated by the community."
Some businesses, meanwhile, are just giving up roadside eating altogether — even if their space was popular — due to the new costs and the challenge of finding storage options in between seasons.
"We didn’t want to deal with that," said Jerry Hsu, the owner of the tea shop Alimama Tea on Bayard Street in Chinatown (pictured at the top of this story).
Both Hsu's shed and another down the block have been replaced by a cordon of parked cars in recent weeks, removing popular spots for New Yorkers and out-of-towners, he said.
"The whole street took it down," Hsu said of the changes on the block. "A lot of people used it on a daily basis."
On 11th Street just off Fifth Avenue in Park Slope, Casita relied on 12 seats in the roadway and on the sidewalk to more than double its capacity since shortly after it opened in 2021. The cafe, which has just seven seats indoors, has kept its shed up even as the businesses around it take down theirs.
"[They] all took it down, almost simultaneously," said Nicoletta Estran, a manager at the café. "We're one of the last ones."
