Volume 8 | Issue 4: Outdoor Dining Is Here To Stay!

Image by Eden, Janine and Jim @Flickr

On Thursday, August 3, 2023, the New York City City Council approved a bill permanently legalizing the outdoor dining structures that started dotting the city during the Covid-19 pandemic.

Here are some takeaways from this bill:

Restaurants will only be able to serve outdoors between 10 a.m. and Midnight. Permit fees will be based on location and square footage of the restaurant and those fees will be higher for restaurants below 125th Street in Manhattan.

The "shed" type structure will have to eventually be dismantled and replaced with something less obstructive. More decidedly, eating in the city's roadways will only be allowed 8 months out of the year between April 1st and November 30th to exclude the winter months to allow for cleaning, plowing and maintenance of the streets while sidewalk dining will now be allowed year-round.

Restaurants already participating in the emergency program, which started in June 2020, will be permitted to keep their existing dining structures until November 2024, which will create sufficient time for DOT to develop and test new rules for the program and for restaurants to adapt to them.