Community Board Opposes Bills that Aim to Enable Outdoor Dining
With the return of warm weather, outdoor dining is slated soon to resume on the streets of Lower Manhattan, in the form of sidewalk cafés, regulated by the City’s Department of Consumer & Worker Protection (DCWP), and roadway cafés on streets adjacent to restaurants, overseen by the Department of Transportation.
A database compiled by DCWP indicates that within Community District 1 (the area south of Canal, Pearl, and Baxter Streets, and the Brooklyn Bridge), there are currently 18 sidewalk cafés in Lower Manhattan, along with 15 more that have applications pending. A similar dataset from DOT documenting roadway cafés shows 67 applications pending. These totals represent a significant decrease from pandemic-era levels, when the Coalition United for Equitable Urban Policy tallied 582 such facilities in Lower Manhattan.
But even the scaled-back proliferation of dining spaces on local sidewalks and streets has sparked concern. On March 3, Tammy Meltzer, chair of Community Board 1, testified before the City Council’s Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure, which is considering three new laws. She explained why CB1 opposes all three measures.
The first of these, Intro 655, extends outdoor dining to year-round operation, and reduces the required distance for roadway cafés to crosswalks to eight feet from the previous requirement of 20 feet. Ms. Meltzer said, “the bill provides no clear standards for how pedestrian-clear paths, accessibility requirements, or service aisles must be measured or enforced. And no environmental review, traffic analysis, or pedestrian safety study has been provided to demonstrate that reducing this buffer to eight feet would maintain adequate safety for pedestrians, deliveries, emergency vehicles, or cyclists.”
Regarding the second bill, Intro 710, which would narrow the minimum permissible width of sidewalk around cafés to eight feet, Ms. Meltzer said, “Lower Manhattan experiences some of the highest pedestrian volumes in the city, particularly in the Financial District and surrounding neighborhoods. The full width of sidewalks is often necessary to accommodate daily pedestrian traffic generated by offices, residents, transit access points, and tourism. Even under current conditions, when sidewalks become congested, pedestrians are routinely forced to step into the street or bicycle lanes to pass others, creating dangerous conflicts with cyclists and motor vehicles. In high-density districts like Lower Manhattan, maintaining wide, unobstructed pedestrian pathways is essential to safety and mobility.”
The third measure, Intro 628, would establish a physical office to assist applicants with outdoor dining permits. Ms. Meltzer said, “while the goal of helping small businesses navigate the application process is understandable, the City already provides multiple avenues for assistance through agency offices, online portals, and permit support centers. Creating a new stand-alone office would require additional staffing, space, and resources at a time when agencies already report being under-resourced for enforcement and inspections and the City is in a budget deficit. If additional resources are available, CB1 believes they would be better directed toward improving DOT’s application processing times and strengthening field enforcement of outdoor dining rules.”
She added, “if the Council proceeds with establishing such an office, it is essential that comparable in-person resources and accessibility also be available for members of the public to obtain information, raise concerns, and file complaints regarding outdoor dining operations.”
NYC does not need year round outdoor dining. Sidewalk cafes in the warmer weather can be ok. Street sheds are ugly, create noise for neighbors, block traffic, take sidewalk space and parking spaces AND ARE FULL OF RATS. Once again, the city council is pushing a program that most NYC residents do not want.