THE EMPEROR’S NEW SHED
On February 8, the New York City Council’s Land Use Committee held a marathon 9 hour, virtual hearing to consider a major change to the city’s zoning code that would allow the Open Restaurants Program, a Covid emergency measure, to become permanent. The Zoning Text Amendment would permit outdoor dining on every street in the city, including those in residential districts. Hundreds of New Yorkers logged on to the hearing, some waiting all day to testify. They told of the effect the Open Restaurant Program has had on their streets and their lives — eighteen months of intolerable noise, lost sleep, streets unable to be swept, mounds of trash, rats’ nests, impassible sidewalks, insane traffic, and fire hazards.
Ydanis Rodriguez, the new head of the Department of Transportation — the agency in charge of Open Restaurants — assured council members that things would be different on his watch. A DOT official screen-shared the agency’s vision of what a permanent Outdoor Dining program would look like. It was a sketch of a new kind of dining shed, a structure that had the same rectangular shape as the old dining shed, but with lower walls and no roof. The DOT official said she envisioned these structures eventually replacing the thousands of sheds now littering our streets.
Envisioned and eventually aren’t words that inspire confidence when coming from an agency that can take three years to put in a speed bump. But even if the new style sheds were put up tomorrow, it wouldn’t change what Permanent Open Restaurants will do to our streets. Low walls and no roof will have no effect on uncollected trash. Streets still won’t be swept. Rats still will be attracted to the food and still have nooks and crannies in which to hide. Traffic on narrow streets still will slow to a crawl. Firefighters still will have to work around structures that block their hoses and impede their equipment. And midnight in a roofless shed will sound exactly like midnight in a roofed shed: packed with diners— drinking, talking, shouting, laughing, having a fine old time while making sleep impossible for those whose windows overlook the party.
The problem with Open Restaurants isn’t one of shed design. It’s the sheds being on streets where they don’t belong. New York isn’t a suburb. Commercial and residential exist side by side on city streets, often in the same building. The Zoning Code acknowledged the delicate balance that must be maintained on mixed-use residential streets by prohibiting disruptive commercial activities like outdoor dining. The proposed Zoning Text Amendment is a radical change that guts time-tested protections for neighborhoods. It not only permits a loud, disruptive commercial activity to operate in a residential area. It allows it to operate right out in the street, right beneath residents’ windows and allows it to go on late into the night.
From the beginning restaurant industry lobbyists have been the driving force behind permanent Open Restaurants. Their self-interested mantra has been outdoor dining, now and forever, anywhere, and everywhere. City officials, stunned by the economic hardship to retail businesses from the lockdown, have gone along. If the zoning is amended, a temporary program meant to help restaurants survive an emergency will morph into one that will permanently cede public land to private businesses. In post-recovery New York, restaurants will operate with increased capacity and increased profits all on the public’s dime. As Robert Bookman, the Chief Council for the New York City Hospitality Alliance, observed: “We didn’t let a pandemic go to waste.”
We have to get beyond this hastily conceived, lobbyist-led program and begin an actual planning process. This starts with an Environmental Impact Study. An EIS is the baseline for any project that has potential for negative impacts to its surrounding environment. Open Restaurants hasn’t just shown potential; it’s shown eighteen months of actual negative impacts. An independent study can quantify those impacts. It can also reveal where they’re heaviest and where there are little or no impacts. Even Council Members who support permanent Open Restaurants have acknowledged that one size does not fit all. An EIS can tell us where outdoor dining fits and where it doesn’t. Who could be against that?
Unfortunately, right now it’s the Adams administration. At this moment, the Mayor is pushing the City Council to vote on the Zoning Text Amendment by the end of the month. Two thirds of Council Members have been in office only since January. Nevertheless, they’re being asked to make a decision that will affect people’s lives and forever change our streets, to make that decision in just a few weeks, after a one hearing and without any independent information or analysis.
Let’s scrap the sketches and the press releases. Let’s halt the lobbying and the sales pitches. Let’s stop the vote and begin a real planning process, starting with an independent, thorough Environmental Impact Study. The temporary program isn’t scheduled to end until 2023. We have the time. Let’s get this right.
