A state lawmaker wants to force the city to allow curbside outdoor dining year-round after the city's arbitrary winter ban decimated the popular program.
Assembly Member Tony Simone (D-Manhattan)'s bill would outlaw the city's "stupid" December-to-March ban on al fresco roadway set-ups, he said at a press conference on Monday.
"We are the greatest city in the world, but sometimes we put a lot of rules in the way of making us even greater," Simone said outside Empire Diner on 10th Avenue. "We did a really stupid thing, we made it too restrictive. We made that you had to take it down after some businesses spent spent close to $20,000, $30,000 for beautiful places outside."
Roadway dining resumes on Tuesday in accordance with the new rules passed by the City Council and signed into law by Mayor Adams in 2023. But half as many bars and restaurants are participating compared to the earlier Covid-era program, which required significantly fewer bureaucratic steps to join.
The Department of Transportation has logged around 3,400 applications, including 1,178 roadway cafés, 617 of which the agency conditionally approved. Only 20 restaurants have full approval for roadway operations; another 34 have it for the sidewalk.
"What’s replacing them is not New Yorkers and tourists enjoying our streetscape, but cars parked," Simone said on Monday.
Making matters worse, just seven businesses have the green light from State Liquor Authority to serve alcohol outside — because the Albany booze bureaucrats only accept full city approvals. SLA leaders may now "expedite" their side of the process, Simone said. Industry experts told Streetsblog the authority could do so at their monthly board meeting on Wednesday.
The owners of Empire Diner, where Simone staged his press conference, had an award-winning roadside structure for four-and-a-half years until taking it down in August. They pulled their application to participate under the new rules because of all the red tape.
"Yes, we needed some guidelines — but the ones that are in place are completely untenable," said Empire Diner's Founder and Chief Operating Officer Stacy Pisone.
Under the city's new rules, Empire Diner's roadway café would have had to shrink in half, and was only allowed a covering that Pisone described as "essentially a sail."
"We did something really creative without bureaucracy, and we self-certified," she said of the pandemic program. "We need to get with the program and make it like it was."
Simone's state legislative push comes as the city's al-fresco initiative is set to shrink back to mostly Manhattan and wealthier Brooklyn neighborhoods thanks largely to the new, more cumbersome rules and steps for setting up outside.
The regressive trend is especially pronounced with seasonal roadway cafés — 59 percent of roadway applicants are located in Manhattan and 34 percent in Brooklyn, according to a new analysis by the public policy and advocacy group Open Plans [PDF], Streetsblog's parent organization.
A measly 33 restaurants, cafés and bars applied to build roadway structures in Queens — a borough of 2.3 million people known for its wealth of restaurants — along with just eight in the Bronx, and zero on Staten Island.
"During the pandemic we saw these roadway and sidewalk cafés blossom everywhere in the city. Neighborhoods that were car-centered before… finally had these public spaces they could enjoy and gather and build community. And we see now we’re right back to where we started," said Open Plans's Co-Executive Director Sara Lind.
In contrast, under the less-regulated, less expensive temporary "Open Restaurants" program officials established in 2020, outdoor dining reached most of the city.
The new program has particularly low buy-in among Hispanic restaurateurs, with less than 10 percent of New York State Latino Restaurant, Bar & Lounge Association's members taking part, according to the industry group's chairperson.
"Obviously the cost is just not feasible for them," said Sandra Jaquez. "It just doesn’t make any sense to have these structures up in April, down in November."
It's unclear how much support Simone's new law will get in Albany, but the legislator hopes he'll have some from Gov. Hochul based on her previous push to extend to-go cocktails beyond the pandemic emergency regulations.
"I have no doubt the governor will get on board, she promoted to-go drinking during Covid and post-Covid," Simone said, "I know she’s pro-business and pro-small business, and many of my colleagues agree with me."
A Hochul spokesperson said the governor will review the bill if it passes in the State Legislature.
