Kevin Mulligan Testimony: The Laurels

Hey everyone, my name is Kevin Mulligan, and I own a bar restaurant called the Laurels in the East Village.

We are almost two years old, and I hope to see three.

The one egregious major flaw with the new rules is it forbids the use of enclosed sidewalk cafes.

This is nonsensical and unfair for a number of reasons.

The city is granting licenses for year-round dining.

This is a very disingenuous offer as it completely ignores the fact that for at least six to seven months of the year over fall, winter, and spring, no one can or wants to sit outside due to the elements.

Businesses are being asked to pay for a 12-month license when any reasonable person can see it is not usable for a significant portion of that time.

We are well into April now, and for much of the first few weeks, a lot of days barely made it into the 50s, and that's during daytime hours.

By peak dinner hours, it was too cold to sit outside.

So from October to April, outdoor dining under the new guidelines is essentially redundant.

Secondly, storage.

Inherently, outdoor dining means there is obviously an amount of tables and chairs placed outside.

There are also barriers placed around them to demarcate the area.

Where are businesses expected to store all this at night?

In my own case, given the extreme breadth of the sidewalk on my corner of 2nd Avenue, there could be 45 to 55 tables outside and 90 to 110 chairs.

I cannot move the furniture inside after the 10 or 11 p.m.

curfew on using the outdoor area.

There will be customers inside.

Like most places, I don't have enough basement storage.

And even if I did, it is not feasible nor safe to ask the one member of staff who opens every day to lug all that furniture up the steps from the basement.

The only solution left to me is to stack mountains of furniture outside on the pavement every night.

This leads to numerous other issues.

It is unsightly, it gives a very strong impression my business is closed.

It is difficult to tie all this down to prevent it from being stolen.

The area will likely be used as a toilet by some.

This furniture is going to fall into disrepair very quickly from having to sit outside the elements every night.

Just to close, um, if the issue is not the space the business is taking up on the pavement, and it is not, as the city has conceded this by permitting outdoor dining at all, then what significant reason can there be to disallow the business from keeping its customers warm and dry during colder months or just rainy days in general?

Thank you.

Thank you for the panel.

Next we'll hear from Mary Inbancho, Bonasio Crespi, Augustine Holt, and Leslie Clark.

It's on.

You can begin.

Hello, my name is Mary Avancho, resident of New York City for 46 years.