SPEAK UP ABOUT OUTDOOR DINING IN YOUR NEIGHBORHOOD

From the beginning of the Open Restaurants program, the City’s political leaders have not been straightforward about their long-term plans for outdoor dining – nor have they listened to residents and their experiences with a program that was supposed to be temporary.

Changing the zoning text was the first step in a cleverly-orchestrated and well-planned process the city decided to make unregulated outdoor dining permanent. In Fall 2021, at Community Board meetings across NYC, the Department of City Planning (DCP) presented a change to the city’s zoning code. That presentation was filled with evasions, misrepresentations, and outright lies. This was no surprise coming from former Mayor Bill De Blasio, who called restaurant lobbyists his “industry partners,” and a DCP that worked directly with these same lobbyists on the zoning changes.

The Permanent Open Restaurants Citywide Zoning Text Amendment removed all geographic restrictions related to sidewalk cafés, thus imposing a one-size-fits-all rezoning on all NYC boroughs and neighborhoods.

DCP Open Restaurants Text Amendment

Despite opposition from Community Boards throughout the five boroughs, the Text Amendment was approved by the City Planning Commission and by the full City Council in February 2022. Legislation to make Open Restaurants permanent was passed by the City Council on August 3, 2023 and signed into law by Mayor Adams on August 16, 2023. Throughout the entire bill-drafting process, the new Mayor and the new City Council listened only to industry and special-interest lobbyists while crafting the legislation. The wholesale rezoning of New York City in favor of one industry took effect once initial rules for the permanent program, Dining Out NYC, were adopted.

In the Permanent Open Restaurants law, Local Law 121, the responsibility for the administration of the sidewalk and roadway cafés will continue with NYC Department of Transportation (NYC DOT), which assumed this role during the pandemic. NYC DOT has had nearly four years to regulate the Temporary Open Restaurants program and has thoroughly failed at this task, creating a citywide quality of life disaster.

What is more, Local Law 121 allows sidewalk cafés anywhere and everywhere in our neighborhoods, on residential side streets as well as commercial corridors. There is no limit to the number of outdoor set-ups on any block. And, under this legislation, outdoor dining must be allowed from 10 am to midnight, or a full 14 hours each and every day. There is no prohibition on amplified music being blasted from an establishment’s open windows and doors to the outdoors. Roadway dining will be allowed eight months out of the year. Public sidewalks and roads will be licensed for as little as $5 a square foot per year – less than a latte! And the notorious street sheds that represent all that was wrong with the temporary program will remain on our streets until the end of November 2024.

Local Law 121 is a neighborhood wrecking ball, an affront to the communities that supported their local restaurants during the worst months of the COVID-19 pandemic. It has been written by industry lobbyists with their own profits in mind.

WE URGE YOU TO SPEAK UP AND TELL YOUR STORY ABOUT WHAT OPEN RESTAURANTS HAS DONE TO YOUR STREET, YOUR HOME AND YOUR FAMILY.