Year-Round Roadway Dining Could Come Back Under ‘Do-Over’ Bill

City lawmakers are working to save the outdoor dining program by making it year-round, an attempt to repair the law passed by the Council under Speaker and would-be mayor Adrienne Adams that decimated the popular pandemic-era "streeteries" by handing the curb exclusively back to cars for four months of the year.

Council Member Lincoln Restler (D-Brooklyn) told reporters at a hearing on Wednesday that he and others were working to introduce a bill "in the very near future" that would include year-round roadway dining and make it easier for businesses to participate.

"We need an outdoor dining program that is year-round, that is accessible and convenient for businesses to be able to participate in, and we’re going to do our best to introduce legislation in the very near future and get that over the finish line," he said.

Restler, who had voted against the seasonal program in 2023, slammed both the Council and Mayor Adams for "killing the program" by allowing restaurants to set up in the roadway only from April through November.

“We’ve prioritized parking spots over having space for our bars and restaurants to be able to expand into our communities and make our streets more vibrant and dynamic," the lawmaker continued. “I am working on legislation to totally revamp outdoor dining, because I think it’s a failure."

The Council passed its outdoor dining law in 2023 and Mayor Adams signed off on it, following the emergency Covid-era initiative that for the first time allowed restaurants to repurpose the curb for al-fresco seating and reclaimed the street scape for people from the private automobile.

When the Council pushed for a seasonal plan, many advocates and owners of establishments warned it would deal a devastating blow, and have since blamed the law for participation dropping from a peak of 6,000-8,000 participants to fewer than 3,000 applications.

Only 2,603 restaurants have been approved to serve outside, including just 759 in the roadway, according to DOT stats. Roughly 1,800 of those are left over from the sidewalk cafés that restaurants could keep up after the old program lapsed by applying for the new program by Aug. 3 of last year.

Only 77 outdoor dining setups have made their way through the full new application process, but DOT gave 726 roadway cafés a conditional approval to set up if they cleared a public hearing phase.

Restler was the sole politician who voted against the 2023 law, with other Council members saying that even a flawed bill was the best shot at keeping some form of roadside dining. This time, Restler hopes the tide has turned.

"I think that many of my colleagues who voted for this bill felt like it was a half-loaf, but it was the only option we had to keep the program going at the time," the north Brooklyn legislator told reporters.

Council Member Chi Ossé (D-Bedford-Stuyvesant) was one of the pols who voted for the 2023 law who now says he wants streeteries to be allowed to operate all year long.

"I was put between a rock and a hard place when we had to vote on that legislation," Ossé explained to Streetsblog. "Voting for it was to preserve it and to see how this would work out. We clearly see how it’s working out and it’s preventing a lot of restaurants from actually doing what it’s doing. A 'No' vote would have been 'No' to the whole program."

Ossé also posted a snappy video on social media on Monday highlighting the demise of the program.

Lower East Side Council Member Carlina Rivera agreed that roadway seating should be allowed year-round "no question," but also justified backing the law at the time, saying the temporary version of outdoor dining had gotten "a little out of control."

"We did limit the potential, but there were so many competing voices and concerns and now that we’ve had time and we’ve lived with it a bit I think we can fully realize it while still being considerate to our community board capacity, to local neighbors and restaurants," Rivera told Streetsblog. "The program got a little out of control, and we really wanted to make sure that we had some rules and regulations."

The Council's influential chairperson of the Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure was also open to the idea of bringing back year-round roadway dining.

"It is something to seriously consider because the entities that are participating in this program are largely small businesses, and so we want them to thrive, and so ... it’s trying to find that balance that makes sense," Selvena Brooks-Powers (D–Queens) told Streetsblog.

During the four-hour-long oversight hearing on outdoor dining, Brooks-Powers and her fellow Council leaders tried to shift the focus of the blame to the Department of Transportation, which took over outdoor dining from the Department of Consumer and Worker Protection during Covid. The consumer agency had operated the much stricter sidewalk café program up until 2020.

"DOT should never have been given the jurisdiction over this program, it should have always gone to DCWP," said Council Member Julie Menin (D–Upper East Side), who chairs the committee on Consumer and Worker Protection. "Why would we give this program to a transit agency, why wouldn’t we give the program to a licensing agency?"

Splitting hairs

The Council released a "policy brief" on the same day as the hearing, which listed the application delays under DOT's auspices. But the report downplayed the responsibility that lawmakers had in crafting the program's legal framework, making no mention of the impact of the seasonal restrictions.

"We warned from the start that seasonality would kill the program and, yes, many owners have said seasonality is the main reason they can’t, or don’t want to, participate this year. That’s the first order of business from our perspective," said Jackson Chabot, director of advocacy at Open Plans (which shares a parent company with Streetsblog). "The Council cannot be so gun shy about a simple and relatively small reallocation of curb space."

The study also dismissed comparisons to the pandemic program, given that it was an emergency program resulting from a mayoral executive order, not legislation. Many hairs were split.

"This distinction between what is allowable within an environment where local laws are in effect and one where they are suspended has skewed an understanding of the outdoor dining landscape," the Council's press office said in a release.

Lawmakers urged DOT to cut fees and streamline the application process, which by law from the Council involves multiple opportunities for opponents to speak out against, delay, or even veto outdoor seating, as Streetsblog has detailed.

The cost factor is also in large part thanks to the seasonal restriction, with restaurants having to shell out tens of thousands of dollars to build, disassemble, and store their setups.

One Brooklyn bar owner testified at the hearing that she expects to drop nearly $70,000 over a four-year license period for her roadway dining café.

"I’m not rolling in money, I had to forego paying myself a few times to make sure that I could afford outdoor dining," said Megan Rickerson, owner of Someday Bar on Atlantic Avenue in Boerum Hill. "I decided to go head-first into the program and, I’m not gonna lie, I feel a little duped."