New York City has released the final rules of its permanent outdoor dining program designed to keep sidewalks clear for pedestrians and put limits on how long restaurants can keep their structures out on the road.
Among the biggest changes to the program popularized during the COVID-19 pandemic is the elimination of the much debated shed structures. The city is eliminating the use of enclosed structures by requiring outdoor dining setups be open-air and easily moveable.
Previewed in renderings published last fall, the city says outdoor structures have to be wheelchair accessible. They also must be a certain size and will have to include drainage and barriers as well.
Permitted restaurants can serve food in sidewalk seating all year round, but the structures out on the road will only be allowed from April until the end of November. The road structures must be constructed in a way that crews can take down and store the setups during the winter months — using things like canopies and soft top umbrellas, with no hard enclosures allowed.
Get Tri-state area news and weather forecasts to your inbox. Sign up for NBC New York newsletters.
Also, restaurants can now use loading zones for their outdoor dining areas, but cannot take up metered parking spots. The outdoor areas also must shut down by midnight, not 1 a.m., as restaurant owners had proposed. There will be more options for the design of barriers as well.
The rules come down a month before they're scheduled to take effect -- March 3 -- when applications come online for restaurants seeking city approval. Officials expect restaurants will be able to get their new outdoor setups ready in time for the summer.
"The new program draws on lessons learned from the temporary outdoor dining program created during the COVID-19 pandemic, which saved 100,000 jobs across the city but led to quality-of-life issues as a subset of restaurant owners were unable to maintain loosely regulated outdoor dining setups," the mayor's press release said Friday.
News
There are also specific specifications laid out for sidewalk structures to maintain a clear walkway for pedestrians. Restaurants will also be required to keep emergency lanes clear.
According to the mayor's office, the final rules are designed to create a more robust, "lighter-weight" experience across all five boroughs of the city. Once in effect, the program will look significantly different from the state of the outdoor dining just a couple years ago.
“Between Dining Out NYC, our campaign to get trash bags off of New York City streets, our efforts to remove scaffolding that has been up for far too long, and the hundreds of millions we’re investing in public realm projects across the city, we’re fundamentally transforming what it feels like to be outside in New York,” Mayor Eric Adams said in a statement.
