Nearly 12,000 restaurants have taken part to date in the city's Open Restaurants program, the spinoff initiative from the Open Streets program which allows restaurants and bars to use street space for outdoor dining structures. While most New Yorkers seem to have embraced the changes to our urban landscape with open arms—one survey found that two-thirds of New Yorkers think the city “was right to close its streets to cars and open them to pedestrians and restaurants”—many believe there is still plenty of room for improvement. And with Open Streets and its various offshoots set to become permanent parts of the NYC landscape, the city is working on just that.
The Department of City Planning (DCP) and Department of Transportation (DOT) announced this week that they are launching a public engagement process to improve the designs and rules regarding permanent outdoor dining setups.
“Open Restaurants not only helped save New York’s world-renowned restaurant industry, it also showed how we can dynamically reimagine our streetscape,” said DOT Commissioner Hank Gutman. “Developing design guidelines will ensure that this emergency program can be transformed into a permanent part of our city, anchoring restaurants in our communities so that this program continues to flourish.”
While Open Restaurants was enacted under emergency executive order by Mayor Bill de Blasio in 2020 in the midst of the pandemic—the mayor has said that the program has helped save around 100,000 jobs—the city and legislature are now engaging with the more complicated task of making it permanent. That includes a zoning text amendment which many restaurateurs are in favor of (it's currently in public review) that would remove geographic restrictions of where sidewalk cafes can be located.
Where the public's input will come in is in trying to determine how to best "integrate these new setups into the complex environment of NYC streets," as the DOT put it. That input will come via in-person and remote roundtables over the next six months—the schedule of those events will be listed on the DOT webpage and on NYC Engage—culminating in the release of new design guidelines by Spring 2022.
"The success of this program should encourage us to continue exploring and expanding on initiatives that will help New Yorkers reclaim their streets,” said Council Member Ydanis Rodriguez, chairman of the Transportation Committee. “Through this public engagement process, I hope that we can continue discussing how we can improve the Open Restaurants Program. We should ensure that we’re doing the necessary outreach to the small businesses located in the outer boroughs."
READ MORE: How Will NYC's Next Mayor Improve Our Open Streets Program?
There are of course already a set of rules in place for outdoor dining—there must be a clear path for pedestrians to walk by, no structures can be bolted down or drilled into the sidewalk, no structure can cover or touch a tree, you can't block fire hydrants or street signs, etc. Some locals have complained about the outdoor structures affecting quality-of-life issues around their neighborhoods, and the DOT says the new regulations will include more rules and a new fund for enforcement.
Among the primary areas the city is looking for feedback on is how to better foster safe interactions between diners, drivers, cyclists and pedestrians. They also want to increase ADA compliance and increase the number of platforms and ramps.
They are also looking to improve upon the types of structures that are permitted—currently, the sheds out there can span a wide range of style, incorporate a variety of design elements, feature unsafe additions like "roof decks," and some are downright eyesores. Looking at some of the city's award-winning outdoor dining structures could be a path toward creating a more unifying look or standard for them.
Ultimately, it's about finding a balance of rules that will be "standardized, sustainable and transformative" for the city's streets, says NYC Hospitality Alliance executive director Andrew Rigie. Because this is not something that anyone in the industry wants to lose: "I know from the restaurant perspective it’s extraordinarily popular and critically important," he told Gothamist. "And gauging from people dining outdoors throughout the five boroughs, it’s very popular."
