SPEAK UP! OPPORTUNITIES FOR YOUR VOICE TO BE HEARD

  • TESTIFY AT THE APRIL 16, 2024 LANDMARKS PRESERVATION COMMISSION PUBLIC HEARING

    The NYC Landmarks Preservation Commission (LPC) has proposed additional rules for outdoor dining in historic districts. These rules focus primarily on attachment methods for structures touching landmarked buildings. They will not significantly change the broad (and vague) design requirements described in the current citywide regulations that took effect on March 3, 2024.

    LPC’s preemptive “Certificate of No Effect”:

    “LPC has reviewed the DOT rules for sidewalk and roadway cafes and finds that the requirements ensure that these installations will have a modest and ephemeral presence and will not detract from significant historic features of the buildings and streetscapes under LPC’s jurisdiction. As a result, the proposed LPC rules would not require owners to submit applications for sidewalk or roadway cafes provided the installations comply with all relevant DOT rules and regulations.”

    Submit your written comments regarding this rule before April 10, 2024 here.
    You may also email your comments to nycrules@lpc.nyc.gov

    Please consider attending the April 16, 2024 public hearing to submit in-person testimony!

    The hearing will be held at

    Landmarks Preservation Commission
    1 Centre Street, 9th Floor
    New York, NY 10007

    Please check the hearing page on LPC’s website for updated hearing information, signup sheet links, the public meeting agenda and Zoom instructions.

  • WRITE TO THE CITY COUNCIL SPEAKER & YOUR COUNCIL MEMBER

    CLICK HERE

    …     to let the the City Council Speaker and your Council Member know that you support the Community Blueprint for Outdoor Dining.

    Share HOW Open Restaurants has damaged the quality of life in your neighborhood and explain WHY it’s so important to restore the peace and quiet of our neighborhoods, protect retail diversity, and preserve our sidewalks and streetscape for non-commercial public uses.

SPEAK UP ABOUT OUTDOOR DINING IN YOUR NEIGHBORHOOD

From the beginning of the Open Restaurants program, the City’s political leaders have not been straightforward about their long-term plans for outdoor dining – nor have they listened to residents and their experiences with a program that was supposed to be temporary.

Changing the zoning text was the first step in a cleverly-orchestrated and well-planned process the city decided to make unregulated outdoor dining permanent. In Fall 2021, at Community Board meetings across NYC, the Department of City Planning (DCP) presented a change to the city’s zoning code. That presentation was filled with evasions, misrepresentations, and outright lies. This was no surprise coming from former Mayor Bill De Blasio, who called restaurant lobbyists his “industry partners,” and a DCP that worked directly with these same lobbyists on the zoning changes.

The Permanent Open Restaurants Citywide Zoning Text Amendment removed all geographic restrictions related to sidewalk cafés, thus imposing a one-size-fits-all rezoning on all NYC boroughs and neighborhoods.

DCP Open Restaurants Text Amendment

Despite opposition from Community Boards throughout the five boroughs, the Text Amendment was approved by the City Planning Commission and by the full City Council in February 2022. Legislation to make Open Restaurants permanent was passed by the City Council on August 3, 2023 and signed into law by Mayor Adams on August 16, 2023. Throughout the entire bill-drafting process, the new mayor and the new City Council listened only to industry and special-interest lobbyists while crafting that legislation. The wholesale rezoning of New York City in favor of one industry will fully take effect once initial rules for the permanent program, DiningOut NYC, are adopted.

In the Permanent Open Restaurants law, Local Law 121, the responsibility for the administration of the sidewalk and roadway cafés will continue with NYC Department of Transportation (NYC DOT), which assumed this role during the pandemic. NYC DOT has had nearly three years to regulate the Temporary Open Restaurants program and has thoroughly failed at this task, creating a citywide quality of life disaster.

What is more, Local Law 121 allows sidewalk cafés anywhere and everywhere in our neighborhoods, on residential side streets as well as commercial corridors. There is no limit to the number of outdoor set-ups on any block. And, under this legislation, outdoor dining must be allowed from 10 am to midnight, or a full 14 hours each and every day. There is no prohibition on amplified music being blasted from an establishment’s open windows and doors to the outdoors. Roadway dining will be allowed eight months out of the year. Public sidewalks and roads will be licensed for as little as $5 a square foot per year – less than a latte! And the notorious street sheds that represent all that was wrong with the temporary program will remain on our streets until the end of November 2024.

Local Law 121 is a neighborhood wrecking ball, an affront to the communities that supported their local restaurants during the worst months of the COVID-19 pandemic. It has been written by industry lobbyists with their own profits in mind.

WE URGE YOU TO SPEAK UP AND TELL YOUR STORY ABOUT WHAT OPEN RESTAURANTS HAS DONE TO YOUR STREET, YOUR HOME AND YOUR FAMILY.