What's Stopping NYC Restaurants From Offering Outdoor Dining Year Round?

Over 10,000 restaurants have opted into the city's Open Restaurants outdoor dining program over the last two months, which the city has repeatedly touted as a great success and huge lifeline to an industry that is struggling to stay afloat without serious federal funding. The program is set to end on October 31st, but Mayor Bill de Blasio suggested this week that he wants to make it permanent, calling it "a stunning success."

"We're definitely bringing it back next year, and I think we should make this a permanent feature in New York City," de Blasio said during a press conference on Monday, noting that "90,000 or more people have gotten jobs back" through the program. But it's unclear whether de Blasio sees the the Open Restaurants program as a strictly seasonal phenomenon.

A group of politicians are now pushing to make outdoor dining permanent year-round. Councilman Mark Levine and Rep. Adriano Espaillat wrote a letter to the mayor asking for the program to continue indefinitely, supported by fellow pols including Manhattan Borough President Gale Brewer, Assembly members Carmen De La Rosa and Al Taylor and state Sens. Brian Benjamin and Robert Jackson.

"Allowing restaurants to safely continue exterior dining with the use of heat lamps and other equipment to provide a warm, ventilated environment, will provide restaurants the ability to earn vital additional revenue,” the letter reads. “This will also prevent restaurants who have paid tens of thousands of dollars for barriers, platforms, and safety-related equipment, from having to demolish and find storage for these items until the following year."

"We’re grateful for their advocacy," mayoral spokesperson Mitch Schwartz told Gothamist today in response to the letter. "As the mayor said yesterday, he thinks we should look at making Open Restaurants a permanent fixture in NYC. The City is reviewing ways to continue supporting the industry as the weather gets cooler, and that certainly might include extending the current outdoor dining season."

Andrew Rigie of the NYC Hospitality Alliance told Gothamist his group is pushing the city to extend the program into this winter as well to provide another lifeline to struggling restaurants.

"We need to continue it past October, and we should make the program permanent," Rigie said. For that to happen, the city would have to allow propane heaters to be used for outdoor spaces, which would be more accessible and affordable for businesses. "Currently, you can only use hard line natural gas," Rigie said. "And you have to go through a long permitting process, with expenses involved, so it's just not practical for the vast majority of restaurants to do."

According to the latest city data, as of Tuesday, there are 10,253 restaurants utilizing outdoor spaces around the five boroughs for dining; 937 of them are in active roadways, 3,561 are on the sidewalk only, 5,412 are both in the roadway and on the sidewalk, and 343 of them are on Open Streets where through traffic is prohibited.

On Friday, the city announced that seven more streets in Manhattan, Brooklyn and Staten Island will be closed to traffic on weekends for outdoor dining, bringing the total number of streets in the program to 87. NYC has opened up over 67 miles of open streets this summer, the most in the country. Some local communities have begun lobbying to have those open streets made permanent, including Council Member Danny Dromm who is trying to do so with the very popular open street between 69th Street and Junction Boulevard.

Indoor dining is set to return on September 30th at 25% capacity and with other health and safety guidelines in place. Many restaurateurs have told Gothamist that while this is a positive step forward, it's not a life saver for the industry and more needs to be done to prevent thousands of restaurants from permanently closing in the coming months.

De Blasio said he hopes that the city can increase the capacity of indoor restaurants to 50% by November 1st, but it all depends on whether there are any more upticks. "I think it's smart to do it carefully, slowly, step by step, make sure it's working," the mayor said. "My hope is we can keep expanding indoor dining because we keep driving down this disease. But in this immediate moment we have to be very smart about each move we make and make sure it's based on the data and the science."