Restaurant Owners Say They’re Under Fire, Urge Changes to Outdoor Dining Shed Rules

When it was first unveiled by Mayor Eric Adams, it was hailed as a compromise that kept outdoor dining sheds intact for eight months of the year.

But a hearing slated for April 23 underscores the problem that many restaurant owners have with the new regulations.

”The public clearly supports outdoor dining,” said Kevin Mulligan, owner of The Laurels on the northern end of the East Village, who told Straus News he plans to testify at the hearing.

But his restaurant has been hit with fines totaling at least $2,500 since April 1 because his sidewalk shed is fully enclosed and, while legal under the old rules, is now deemed to be in noncompliance. He has a sidewalk permit but concedes he did not apply for a new outdoor shed permit, in part because he questions the value of having open-sided sheds as the new law requires and the seasonality of it.

”It’s going to cost several thousand dollars to put it up, several thousand dollars to take it down, and several thousand dollars to store it,” he said. “It makes no sense.”

He also said the open structures will undoubtedly encourage homeless people to move in. “You know I’m going to get a call from the young woman opening up one morning, telling me there is a homeless person sleeping there and using the corner as a bathroom.”

Also, he said, the open sides mean that restaurant owners need to spend time and money chaining up their tables and chairs or storing them indoors when they close up shop for the night. And if left outdoors and exposed to the elements, it means they will wear out faster and need to be replaced.

A popular Tex-Mex establishment a short distance away on Second Avenue also has an enclosed shed on a sidewalk and is getting hit with fines. Tiffany Collings, a co-owner of Wayne & Sons with Justin Seitzler and Oscar Hernandez, said that the previous establishment could not survive as a takeway place with only five seats inside. Seitzler said the small enclosed shed can handle up to 80 people in an evening as customers quickly turn over. Collings said if the law as it stands is not changed and the taco place is forced to take down the shed, she’s unlikely to be able to survive as a restaurant. “Right now the city has nothing for us,” she said.

”We’d need to find a new location if they make us knock it down,” Seitzler said of the shed, which has been attracting weekly fines since April 1.

That scenario is upsetting to customer Sarah Kate Thomas. ”I would be devastated, to put it mildly,” she said as she sat at the small indoor counter with a friend, Meghan Grabowski. “I’m from Texas so I’m eagle-eyed whenever I see a new Tex-Mex taco place,” she said. “It’s the best I ever had out of Texas.”

Collings noted that the city just hit “pause” on handing out fines on the composting law, and hopes a similar pause can be worked out on the shed fines while a new law is worked out allowing enclosed sheds all year long.

Keith Powers, a City Council member on the East Side who is running for borough president has heard the complaints and agrees something should be done to modify the law. “It was a well-intentioned law, but it has had some negative consequences,” he said. “We have to protect our cherished local businesses.”

The Laurels’ Mulligan said he is circulating a petition calling for change.

The number of outdoor dining options plunged by 80 percent under the new rules, indicating the restaurant industry in the city did not embrace the changes, dropping from 12,000 at its peak to just over 2,600 permitted establishments when the new regulations went into effect on April 1.

But the dining sheds had faced resistance from some community activists who said many were abandoned and became eyesores and havens for homeless people and attracted rats. And they also complained that sheds in the streets took away parking spaces while sheds on sidewalks impeded pedestrians.

The decision to make open-air sheds legal but only for eight months was intended as a compromise.

The Hospitality Alliance, a lobbying group for the restaurant industry, is urging the City Council to go a little further and revise some of the regulations that it says restaurant owners found costly and burdensome.

“One of the key challenges faced by small restaurants across the five boroughs is the seasonal-only roadway dining option,” the big restaurant trade association says. It planned to testify at the City Council hearing. “The construction and storage costs associated make it too expensive and cumbersome for many restaurants.”

“To address this issue, the city should allow roadway cafes that meet specific standards to remain open year-round.”

The alliance is also calling for the City Council to remove the requirement that the outdoor cafes be open-air.

“Restaurants pay annual fees for sidewalk cafes so they should be allowed to enclose them, especially during the winter months using canvas, acrylic and glass vestibule-style coverings to keep their customers and workers warm and protected from the elements of weather.”