Seating Capacity for Outdoor Dining Leaves Customers with No Place to Go
Applications have been filed by 141 Lower Manhattan restaurants for sidewalk and roadbed dining permits, according to an analysis of City government records. The neighborhood (defined here as falling within the boundaries of Community District 1, roughly Manhattan south of a line formed by Canal, Baxter, and Pearl Streets, and the Brooklyn Bridge) has been the focus of 42 requests for permission to occupy space in streets (usually erstwhile parking space) and 99 for approval to take up sidewalk space.
These filings are in various stages of vetting, with all 42 applications for roadbed space conditionally approved, and 33 of the 99 requests for sidewalk space either now in operation or in the final stages of processing.
While the amount of public space being repurposed to private business is considerable, it is worth noting that even if all 141 requests were approved, this total would amount to a small fraction of the 592 outdoor dining spaces that were permitted to operate within Lower Manhattan during the Covid pandemic.
When authorizing the new program, branded as “Dining Out NYC,” lawmakers and regulators appear to have overlooked a logistical concern related to restaurant capacity. Community Board 1 (CB1) raised concerns in a resolution enacted at its March monthly meeting that Dining Out NYC approvals “do not consider or have any relation to and should consider the Minimum Required Toilet Facilities Based on Occupancy under New York State Building Code and New York Public Health Law, including both indoor and outdoor seating.”
Essentially, this caveat boils down to the fact that a restaurant or bar with fewer than 20 seats is not legally required to have a public restroom, while those with 20 or more must provide such a facility. Hypothetically, a dining establishment with 19 indoor seats could more than double its capacity with a sidewalk cafe and curbside shed, while still evading the legal requirement to provide restrooms.
The Department of Transportation (which oversees Dining Out NYC) “should require applicants [to] provide the total occupancy and capacity of indoor and permanent and temporary outdoor seating as well as the number of bathrooms available for the public,” the CB1 resolution continues, and urges that agency to “align with Department of Buildings rules and requirements for occupancy and bathrooms.”
Until such a policy has been implemented, CB1 is calling upon the administration of Mayor Eric Adams to “limit the maximum number of outdoor seating available based on the combination of indoor capacity and the number of bathrooms available.”