Friday’s Headlines: Refining Outdoor Dining Edition
New York City restaurants and bars must pack up their curbside outdoor dining set-ups on Nov. 30, per city regulations banning roadway eating during the winter months. A bill from Council Member Lincoln Restler would change that.
The Brooklyn Democrat’s legislation introduced on Thursday would restore year-round outdoor dining, allow smaller businesses to expand their outdoor set-ups in front of adjacent business (with those business’ approval), permit roadway dining areas closer to the corner and let grocery and speciality food stores that sell coffee and sandwiches to participate. Jonathan Mak at amNY broke the news.
The City Council-written seasonal outdoor dining program launched last year with significantly more limitations than its pandemic-era predecessor, resulting in many restaurants dropping out of the program altogether. Some 12,000 restaurants have set up outdoors since the start of Covid in 2020 — yet just 1,400 applied for roadway dining permits this year.
“The restrictions of the current program have severely limited restaurants’ ability to run roadway cafés given the demands of taking down and storing structures every year,” Restler said in a statement.
“Restoring year-round open dining will significantly boost participation and allow New Yorkers to continue to enjoy outdoor dining at many of their favorite restaurants again.”
Likely next mayor Zohran Mamdani pledged during the primary campaign to restore year-round outdoor dining and ease the bureaucratic red tape to make it easier for businesses to set up in the street.
In other news:
- Mamdani is leading in the polls and playing it safe in the final weeks of the mayor’s race. He spent Thursday morning addressing the city’s business community. (Gothamist, NY Times, Quinnipiac Poll, City & State)
- Gov. Hochul and NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch blasted the Trump administration for withholding public transit security funding from the MTA. A decision in New York’s lawsuit over the issue is expected soon. (amNY, NY Times)
- Law? Less: A grand jury in Virginia indicted Attorney General Letitia James. (NY Times, NBC News)
- No surprise: Central Park tourists like the horse carriages. (NY Post)
- Meet the NYPD’s newest SUVs. (NY Post)
- Street repair work on Riverside Drive West is way behind schedule after the contractor walked off the job last year. (Gothamist)
- New York’s street parking is so underpriced (free) that someone is actually making money “car-sitting” for drivers for less than the cost of a $65 street-sweeping tickets, reported the New York Times in what amounted to an extended Metropolitan Diary story. Really? When is the Times going to abandon its obsession with city car owners?
- A Brooklyn man spent the last month only getting around the city by foot. (NY Post)
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