Outdoor Dining Might Really Be Doomed

Brad Lander, the city comptroller, is getting nervous about outdoor dining. The new version of the program, officially dubbed Dining Out NYC, is set to return on April 1. As of January 30, approximately 3,000 restaurants had filed 3,700 applications for the necessary permits for either sidewalk seating or new, city-approved streeteries. But Lander says his office — the last step for restaurants’ applications before operators are in the clear — has received just 40 approved applications from the Department of Transportation. “For a while I was worried that the applications were stuck, that the DOT had approved a lot more and hadn’t transmitted them to us,” Lander told me earlier this week. So he called Deputy Mayor Meera Joshi to ask whether he had the right number. “She was like, ‘No, those are the only ones that have been approved by DOT so far.’”

This past Tuesday, Lander’s office sent a letter to Joshi and Transportation commissioner Ydanis Rodríguez outlining his “grave concerns” over the lack of approvals and “the scale of DOT’s shortcomings.” He also recorded a video PSA with Andrew Rigie, the executive director of the restaurant advocacy group New York Hospitality Alliance. “We knew there was always going to be some sort of significant drop from the pandemic highs to the permanent program, but nothing like this,” Rigie says. “It’s almost like, at this point, are we going to have as many sidewalk cafes as we had before the pandemic?”

Lander will also take to social media, promising to publish weekly figures on outdoor-dining permits, but a rep for the DOT says Lander’s crusade against their department is misguided. They claim the agency has “reviewed every roadway application” it’s received. One-third of the applications were deemed insufficient and returned to applicants. The remaining two-thirds were moved along in the review process to community boards and the comptroller. “It seems the comptroller has concerns about the application process itself,” the rep says. “We’ve done our part. We did the initial review of every single application. That is now out of our hands.”

That does not explain the gap in approvals, however; only applicants wishing to build new outdoor structures — somewhere around 1,400 of the pending applications — need community-board approval. Applications for traditional sidewalk seating do not. So, the question is, where are all of these outstanding applications? Lander’s office doesn’t have them. The DOT says the City Council is responsible for the lengthy process. The license applications are essentially tied up in bureaucratic limbo and, as always, it’s the restaurant owners who are stuck waiting to hear whether they should invest the necessary money to build additional seating.

An owner of the Commodore says their location in Alphabet City received an email with final approval on January 15 — but that application hasn’t yet gotten to the comptroller’s office. Dylan Dodd, from Walter’s in Fort Greene, meanwhile, says the DOT has gone dark on them. “For our roadway set-up, they’ve said we’re approved.” He next had to send information regarding workers’ compensation, “which I did a couple weeks ago,” he says. “I asked them, ‘We sent it in. What’s up?’ And they just stalled, they didn’t want to answer.”

Alex Oropeza, a co-owner of Sunnyside’s Bolivian Llama Party, says he doesn’t know of any operators whose plans have been approved. His own restaurant’s application will soon be reviewed at a community-board hearing. “It’s the last hurdle we need to jump through,” he says. “If all goes well, I hope to be the first.”

On Dining Out NYC website, the DOT advises that it can require up to six months for applications to be approved after the agency “receives a complete and accurate application.” Lander is sounding the alarm because he says operators won’t have enough time to make plans if their licenses are approved just before the April 1 re-opening. “The DOT knew when the law was passed that they were going to have this responsibility. They knew that the applications were coming in by last August. And they just were not approved to hire up the staff necessary to approve all these applications.”