New York City has been hit with a class action lawsuit seeking to overturn its newly permanent outdoor dining program, with petitioners claiming the popular al fresco eateries are an unconstitutional nuisance.
The suit, filed against the city in Manhattan Supreme Court on Monday by 30 New York City residents, claims the recently-enacted permanent outdoor dining program — which replaced the temporary, emergency-authorized program that began during the COVID-19 pandemic — is illegal for not having been subject to a full environmental impact review and public comment.
That allowed the city to enact what the petitioners describe as a “massive change to the cityscape that defines New Yor[k] City” that is “highly destructive to city neighborhoods and the petitioners who reside in them.”
Before the pandemic, outdoor dining was only allowed in a few areas of the city, mostly in Manhattan, and was subject to a long, bureaucratic and expensive approval process. Soon after COVID-19 struck the city and forced restaurants to shut their doors, city officials used emergency powers to significantly liberalize permitting for outdoor dining, allowing thousands of eateries the chance to reopen for customers to dine in and greatly expanding the scope of al fresco eating. Many built elaborate shacks on the sidewalk or roadway for dining.
City officials and restaurant industry reps have claimed the outdoor dining program saved 100,000 restaurant industry jobs and kept innumerable eateries from having to close. Pandemic-era polls showed the program to be broadly popular with New Yorkers; a December 2020 poll by Siena College and Transportation Alternatives found 64% of voters, including 78% of Manhattan voters, found outdoor dining a valuable use of curb space.
Still, others were less than enthused from the beginning. Critics of outdoor dining have contended that dining sheds take away parking spots, attract rats and other vermin, are havens for homeless New Yorkers and crime, and bring noisy crowds to their blocks for all-night revelry.
“This saturation of outdoor seating is not serving me, my family, or my business. It has made this neighborhood pretty much unlivable most of the time,” said Ellen Koenigsberg, a Lower East Side resident who owns a vintage clothing shop and is a petitioner in the class-action suit, in an affidavit. “I feel like I always have uninvited guests in my apartment that just will not leave.”
Others are perturbed by what they contend are “ugly” dining sheds.
“They mostly look like large, dirty garages and disrupt and change the nature of the street,” said fellow Lower East Side resident and petitioner Elizabeth Dworkin. “It feels like a fort has been built on the block to keep the local residents away so paying customers and bars, clubs, and restaurants can occupy all of the public space.”
This claim about how these shanties saved 100,000 jobs is highly dubious, until you consider that probably over half of them were waiters on wheels from all those bike deliveries during the pandemic.
9 comments:
Get rid of the outside shacks. While some are fixed up beautifully others are trash. Either way the cause a lot of congestion on the streets as well as the sidewalks, and attract rats.
More regulation and oppression of the Job Creators by this communist administration. Soon they'll force all restaurants out of this city.
The restaurant shanties are a disaster.
The subways are a disaster.
The schools are a disaster.
The bike lanes are a disaster.
The junkies are a disaster.
The street crime is a disaster.
And the Democrats are responsible for all of it.
cpac.org
Restaurants are for communists!
Elections have consequences.
@"Elections have consequences."
Take a hike, commie Troll!
The restaurant shanties are great.
The subways are great.
The schools are great.
The bike lanes are great.
The junkies have freedoms too.
The street crime is better than Florida.
And the Democrats are responsible for all of it.
Anyone that states there is more street crime in Florida than in NYC is either knowingly lying or is an outright imbecile.
@“ Anyone that states there is more street crime in Florida than in NYC is either ”
On a per capita basis.Crime in the great swamp is through the trailer roof.
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