Montague Street in Brooklyn Heights is dotted with diners, coffee shops, bakeries and restaurants, many of which offer outdoor seating for customers who frequent the street, pushing strollers or walking dogs.
The Grand Canyon Restaurant is no different. Gonzalo Carreto, the diner’s owner, said he had erected an outdoor dining shed during the height of the pandemic, when eating outside was sometimes required and often preferred, but that recently he had opted for just a few tables and chairs on the sidewalk.
Early this month, an inspector with the Department of Transportation stopped by and told Mr. Carreto to remove the outdoor tables, which he did. He asked if the seating next to the restaurant’s front door, under its awning, could stay. The inspector told him that was fine, Mr. Carreto said.
But a few weeks later, another inspector arrived and fined Grand Canyon $500 for its four remaining tables.
While Mr. Carreto was shocked, his experience is not uncommon as New York City transitions into a new era of limited outdoor dining, four years after tents, huts and sheds sprang up across the city to meet customers’ growing demand for fresh air.
Now, even the bistro tables and impromptu outdoor seating that were neighborhood favorites long before the pandemic are in jeopardy.
“I think restaurants are confused, even though the rules and regulations are pretty clear,” said John Tymkiw, a photographer who chronicled dining sheds in his series “How We Ate.”
The city imposed an Aug. 3 deadline for establishments to apply to a new outdoor dining program. The new rules allow dining sheds only from April 1 to Nov. 29. Those who did not apply were instructed to take down their setups or face fines.
Nearly 2,000 restaurants applied for the program, called Dining NYC and run by the Department of Transportation. Over the four previous years, 13,000 had applied for outdoor dining.
Sidewalk cafes are allowed year-round under the new guidelines, but the rules include stipulations for how close seating can be to establishments’ front doors, subway grates, curbs, fire escapes and other structures.
That presented a problem for Cafe Regular in Park Slope, which had long placed metal chairs and small tables outside its front door. When the pandemic hit, the cafe added six more chairs. Now, they are all gone.
Eric Bedell, 36, who visited the cafe on Thursday with his 10-week-old daughter, Marlee, said he wished that the city had let the chairs remain. Mr. Bedell, a therapist, said that the conversations friends had while sitting outside, often with dogs at their feet or children dozing beside them in strollers, added character to the side street.
“It livens up the neighborhood,” he said.
Linda Gist, 83, who lives around the corner, said the city had been too heavy-handed in penalizing a small cafe over a few seats. “It’s not blocking the sidewalk,” she said.
Kimberly Orozco, a barista at Cafe Regular, said that the loss of the outdoor seating had dealt a financial blow, since the inside of the cafe is cramped. The loss in seating meant fewer customers — and fewer tips.
“We have been losing business,” said Ms. Orozco, 24, who has worked at Cafe Regular for two years. “People in this area, they love sitting outside, even when it’s winter, even when it’s raining.”
She said the cafe was applying for a permit, which she said was an expensive and cumbersome process. The city charges a $1,050 license fee, a $1,500 security deposit and a $1,000 hearing fee for a sidewalk cafe.
Mr. Carreto said that the most frustrating part of being fined was that punishments did not seem to be doled out equally on his block. While a neighboring business was also fined for outdoor seating, others on the street were not.
A spokesman for the Department of Transportation would not comment but referred questions to the new guidelines.
Mr. Carreto said he had decided against enrolling in the city’s new program because the costs were too high, but that he still wanted to offer some outdoor options.
“We really, really need the spots,” he said. “Everybody loves it.”
Anna James, a teacher who lunches often at Grand Canyon, said she felt sorry for the restaurant. When Covid required it to modify its business to accommodate outdoor dining, it did, she said.
“These people already paid a lot of money,” Ms. James said. “Now they have to pay more?”
Restaurant owners who have applied for Dining NYC have until Nov. 1 to bring their outdoor dining in line with the new rules, according to the Department of Transportation. Others who have already been fined can face up to $1,000 for repeated offenses. Mr. Carreto said he received a court summons for November, when he plans to plead his case.
Despite the penalties, Mr. Tymkiw said the program has benefits. The old dining huts were often built out of plywood, he said, and aged poorly. But with better-regulated setups, restaurants might provide better experiences.
“We can look forward to a more vibrant pedestrian street life,” he said.
The post Sidewalk Cafes Are the Latest Target of New York’s Outdoor Dining Crackdown appeared first on New York Times.
