Hell's Kitchen Residents Sue To Block Permanent Outdoor Dining

HELL'S KITCHEN, NY — A pair of Hell's Kitchen residents have signed onto a lawsuit trying to block the city's outdoor dining program from becoming permanent, arguing that it has sent the neighborhood into a "downward spiral."

The two residents, Larry Roberts and Gordon M. Stanley, are among the 22 residents who filed the suit Monday in state court. Most of their fellow plaintiffs live in the West Village and Lower East Side — neighborhoods that, like Hell's Kitchen, have seen a proliferation of outdoor dining setups through the city's Open Restaurants program.

The pandemic-era program allows eateries to create dining setups on sidewalks and roadways. Popular among diners and credited by restaurateurs with saving their businesses, Open Restaurants may now be made permanent if the city gets its way.

The lawsuit presents a decidedly different picture of the program, which the plaintiffs say has clogged sidewalks, created noise issues and permitted the spread of visually unappealing dining structures.

Roberts, who has lived on West 47th Street since 1991, describes the dining sheds as "gigantic, plywood monstrosities" — a far cry from the "quaint French style cafes" portrayed by the city.

As an example, Roberts cites Lilly's Craft and Kitchen, a bar around the corner from his home, whose dining setup includes a 10-foot-tall shed and a tent that stretches across the sidewalk —leaving little room for pedestrians to pass, he says.

"Hell's Kitchen is now experiencing a profound downward spiral," Roberts wrote in the suit. "[T]he decreased quality of life is both apparent and alarming and the Open Restaurants Program has played a significant role in this over the last year and a half."

The other resident, Stanley, has owned a home on West 44th Street near 10th Avenue since 1998. Dining sheds near his home have "become magnets for the homeless population at night," he wrote, adding that they attract rats and obstruct emergency vehicles.

"Very few of the sheds are attractive; many are downright ugly and when they are close together, as they are on 10th Avenue between 44th and 45th Streets, they create an anarchic atmosphere," Stanley wrote.

In the suit, both men tout their neighborhood credentials: Stanley is a leader of the West 44th Street Better Block Association, while Roberts was a longtime member of Community Board 4.

Their opposition to Open Restaurants, however, puts them at odds with the board itself, which is "on record for supporting the program," board leaders wrote in an August letter to city officials.

Still, the community board has expressed reservations about the program in its current form, saying the permanent version should be tweaked to better accommodate pedestrians, people with disabilities, and neighbors who file complaints.

The new lawsuit centers around the environmental review that the city conducted as part of the permanent Open Restaurants application, which found that the program would have no significant adverse effect on the environment. That "negative declaration," the residents argue, failed to take into account neighbors' complaints like those contained in the lawsuit.

The city did not immediately respond to a request for comment about the lawsuit.

The suit comes on the heels of a series of contentious community board meetings where furious neighbors have lambasted the program, holding signs reading "Outdoor Dining Destroys Our Peace" and lamenting the noise and vermin that followed the sheds.

Supporters of the program have suggested that those meeting attendees are simply a "vocal minority," and expressed alarm about the possibility that residents could kill a largely popular program that served as a lifeline to local businesses.

Ultimately, community boards have no power to stop the program, though their recommendations can be influential. Once each board has weighed in, the "Permanent Open Restaurant program" will head to the borough presidents, and later to the City Council, to be ratified. The current emergency program would last until 2023, when the new, permanent program would take effect.