NEW YORK (1010 WINS) — A New York City nonprofit advocating for more open streets across the five boroughs set up an illegal curbside cafe in the East Village on Friday afternoon to show the value of public space, and criticize the city’s new outdoor dining program.
The pop-up cafe was organized by Open Plans, which was founded in 1999 and promotes civic engagement for livable, people-first streets. Co-executive director Sarah Lind told 1010 WINS that the group used the event to emphasize the importance of bringing back year-round curbside dining.
“People are able to sit down and talk to their neighbors,” she said. “This is how we create community.”
The NYC Council prohibited curbside dining between December and March when it passed a permanent version of the pandemic-era Open Restaurants program in 2023. Citing numbers from NYC Comptroller Brad Lander, Open Plans noted that the change to the new Dining Out NYC program dropped restaurant participation 90%.
“You know restaurants in New York City are running on the thinnest of margins, so any little extra fee, it’s like they’re balancing the extra income they’re going to get from an outdoor dining structure,” Lind said.
The city Department of Transportation—which approves applications for the program—denied that participation dropped by that significant a margin.
There were an estimated 6,000 to 8,000 restaurants participating in the program before the city council made the program seasonal, and over 3,000 applications have already been submitted under the new rules.
“The New York City Council passed a permanent outdoor dining program with a series of requirements that elongated the approval process and established seasonality for roadway operations,” a DOT spokesperson said. “Despite these barriers that are outside of NYC DOT’s control, the agency has cut through this bureaucracy by granting conditional application approvals so the vast majority of participating restaurants can hit the ground running when the roadway outdoor dining season starts on April 1.”
New program requirements include city council and community board reviews that are outside the NYC Charter and DOT’s control.
Despite the DOT’s effort to streamline approval, Lander said that the process needs to be simplified to allow more restaurants to participate.
“The City mismanaged its outdoor dining rollout at every turn. The requirements to get approvals are so onerous that restaurants find it confusing to navigate and City agencies can’t even implement it,” Lander said. “DOT’s effort to streamline the process with conditional approvals still leaves restaurants operating at risk if other issues come up in final review that force restaurants to make big changes to their outdoor dining cafes. We need a smoother path forward.”
Ali Sahin is the owner of C&B Cafe on 7th Street, between avenues A and B. He got the green light from the city to put up an outdoor shed on April 1, after keeping his pandemic-era shed in place through last fall.
“It was amazing. Neighborhood loved it, I loved it,” he said. “Obviously it was extra income.”
Transportation Alternatives joined Open Plans in its demonstration, with executive director Ben Furnas stating that “the current program is too tangled in red tape to be successful.”