The Return of Year-Round Outdoor Dining

**Bridget Bergen** (0:10)
It's The Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC. I'm Bridget Bergen, Senior Reporter in the WNYC and Gothamist Newsroom, sitting in for Brian today. When the city shut down in 2020 and restaurants lost business overnight, the city relaxed its outdoor dining rules. Al Fresco became the norm.
At its peak, over 12,500 restaurants offered outdoor dining. Then in the fall of 2024, former Mayor Eric Adams required all roadside cafes to shut down for the winter, citing concerns like rats, noise and the loss of parking spaces. Ever since, restaurant owners who want to offer outdoor dining have had to go through a lengthy permitting process. There are hefty fees, strict building requirements, and they still have to take down their sheds in the winter. Altogether it became too expensive and frankly, too much trouble for many restaurants who ended up scrapping their outdoor spaces altogether. Now just 1200 restaurants have outdoor seating, a fraction of what it was just a few years ago.
But outdoor dining may be making a comeback. Joining me now is City Councilmember Lincoln Restler, who represents parts of Northern and Downtown Brooklyn, to talk about legislation that could make outdoor dining a year-round affair. Councilmember, welcome back to WNYC.

**Lincoln Restler** (1:29)
Bridget, thank you so much for having me. It's great to be with you.

**Bridget Bergen** (1:32)
I want to start with some background on this whole topic.
I mentioned during the pandemic that the number of outdoor setups skyrocketed because of that emergency program. What exactly did that emergency program do?

**Lincoln Restler** (1:46)
So during COVID, the de Blasio administration kind of adjuly created an emergency outdoor dining program that quite simply saved the restaurant industry in New York City. Thousands of restaurants across the five boroughs quickly set up outdoor dining structures so that all of us could safely eat a meal outside and continue to support our beloved neighborhood restaurants. It was a lifeline for the hospitality industry and it was glorious for New Yorkers to be able to come together and eat our favorite meals and be in community together.
Unfortunately, there were some issues with the program. There's no question that we had these kind of outdoor dining sheds that had rat issues and garbage issues. Some were used for storage.
The program was created under emergency rules and it hadn't been as fully thought through as it might normally have been. But it was what we needed to do in the circumstances to save the restaurant industry and altogether it was a major rethinking of how we use public space in New York City.

**Bridget Bergen** (2:59)
So at that point, as you mentioned, it came together sort of quickly, grappling with this emergency. What were the regulations that were in place for it?

**Lincoln Restler** (3:10)
So the idea was that the city government was trying to make it easy for restaurants to participate, easy for restaurants to operate, and they weren't cracking down too hard on restaurants that maybe weren't following the rules perfectly. And so it was a year-round program. The outdoor dining structures could essentially be enclosed structures. There were all kinds of liberal requirements around how the structures could be heated and electrified, and there were limited requirements around cleaning.
And we didn't, I think, think through all of the necessary policies around snow removal, around how to prevent flooding issues, and making sure that water could access catch basins on the corners. It was a program that was created under emergency circumstances, and it did the trick, but there were definitely some challenges in how the program operated. And that's why the Adams administration and the City Council updated the program in 2023 and created a new seasonal program. And, you know, there were, I voted against that legislation because I could see then that it was too onerous and burdensome for restaurants and that they wouldn't be able to take advantage of it anymore.
And, you know, we've had some real challenges with the seasonal program as well.

**Bridget Bergen** (4:36)
Yeah. So before we get into how the program changed in 2024, I want to go back. You mentioned some challenges. Specifically, there were a lot of complaints. I think you mentioned flooding.
There was issues with snow removal. Let's talk about something New Yorkers love to talk about, which is rats. How much of an issue were rats if you had to look at the numbers?

**Lincoln Restler** (4:59)
It was a huge issue. I mean, we got, it was one of the top complaints we got in our council office. It was a major quality of life concern in the neighborhoods all across the city, because restaurants quite simply weren't required to clean the structures regularly. The structures were not designed in a way to prevent rats from getting in there. And there was a buildup of garbage and debris that was often gross. Some restaurants did an amazing job of maintaining their outdoor dining structures and they were beautiful and creative and like wonderful spaces to enter into. And other restaurants frankly didn't.