Hundreds of restaurants will be unable to serve alcohol in their outdoor dining areas this summer due to a delay in permitting.
New York City restaurants hoping to serve alcohol in their outdoor dining areas will likely have to wait months, writes Kevin Duggan in Streetsblog NYC, “due to a gap in the city’s effort to fast-track a backlog in permitting as the opening of season kicks off in mere days, legal experts warned.”
Restaurants won’t be able to serve alcohol if the State Liquor Authority doesn’t accept the city’s “conditional approvals” for outdoor dining. So far, only 42 out of 3,500 applications have received a full DOT license.
According to one attorney who specializes in hospitality, outdoor dining without the option to serve alcohol is “not worthless, but pretty close” as far as revenue goes. The delay could last as long as four months, Duggan adds, impacting restaurants the most during the busy summer season.
Many NYC restaurants have already removed their outdoor dining setups after new city rules were put in place last year that drove up costs for businesses. Outdoor — or al fresco — dining boomed in popularity during the Covid-19 pandemic, when social distancing precautions prompted restaurants around the country to expand outdoor seating options. Yet as early as 2023, some cities began clawing back outdoor and curbside space or enacted prohibitively expensive or onerous regulations.
FULL STORY: ‘Disaster’: Outdoor Dining Snafu Could Ban Alfresco Booze For Months
NYC Outdoor Dining Could Get a Re-Do
The city council is considering making the al fresco dining program year-round to address cost concerns from small businesses.
NYC Approves Only 40 of Over 1,300 of Outdoor Dining Applications
Restaurant owners say they’ve been in limbo for months as city departments point fingers at each other for delays in permit approvals.
Restaurant Patios Were a Pandemic Win — Why Were They so Hard to Keep?
Social distancing requirements and changes in travel patterns prompted cities to pilot new uses for street and sidewalk space. Then it got complicated.
Planetizen Federal Action Tracker
A weekly monitor of how Trump’s orders and actions are impacting planners and planning in America.
The state-sanctioned urbicide of Austin
People don’t kill cities. Freeways do.
US to reduce Colorado River water deliveries to Mexico
A new Colorado Treaty amendment reduces Mexico’s Colorado River water allocation by 250,000 acre feet.
Mamdani overhauls NYC's Vision Zero plan with 100 new policy goals
The overhaul aims to reduce traffic deaths and make streets safer for pedestrians, cyclists and drivers through lower speed limits, new safety infrastructure and more.
Amtrak not solely to blame for New Jersey commuter rail's unreliability, report finds
A new study from the Garden State Initiative found that NJ Transit’s budget grew 20% across a 4 year period, but reliability declined significantly over the same period.
EPA erases limits on planet-warming pollution from power plants
Under Monday’s plan, power plants would still have some limits on how much mercury, arsenic and other contaminants they can emit.
FREE Course: Walkable City 1: Why Walkability?
After describing his path towards focusing on walkability as the essence of good planning, Jeff Speck marches through his five principal reasons for making more walkable places.
Reinventing Malls: Planning Alchemy—Turning Gray Fields Into Gold
The course focuses on the opportunities and imperatives that shape reinvention of mall sites.
Eagle County Government
Harvard University Graduate School of Design
Nashville Planning Department
The Architects Foundation
University of Cincinnati Online
The Pocatello Development Authority
The Urban Renewal Agency of the City of Pocatello
Journal of the American Planning Association