Ned Showlansky Testimony: Landscape Architect Perspective
Ned Showlansky, a landscape architect and Lower East Side resident, testifies via Zoom to oppose year-round roadway dining, citing noise, crowds, and the privatization of public space.
Currently, I design public parks for the New York City Parks Department.
Council members, it's a pleasure to design green spaces within your districts.
I'm also a resident of Lower East Side.
My comments today apply to roadway dining, not sidewalk dining.
The vibrance wording I hear so often connected with roadway dining means for residents, constant noise, crowds, and less livable streets.
It is truly vexing to me that I have to defend my neighbors and I from city council greenlighting a beer garden outside my window that operates until midnight.
That the hospitality line should propose this environmental transfer transformation be made year-round, is not only out of touch with every day in New Yorkers' quality of life, it demands a thorough public EIS.
No city agency can oversee a program wherein thousands of independent restaurants are permitted to stage individual roadway setups.
DOT's testimony today, and even those from the restaurants themselves proves this, that restaurants should be allowed to design and erect substantial structures in the public realm without drawings from architects or engineers.
To quote John McEnroe, you cannot be serious.
Roadway dining is a square peg and a round hole, and deep down, I think we all know this.
It is absolutely infuriating to me to hear from paid lobbyists like the Hospitality Alliance to use social justice buzzwords like equity to describe the handover of public space in my neighborhood for the profiteering of private entities.
If DOT and City Council want a successful outdoor dining program, it should follow careful planning, not the enshrining of ad hoc pandemic era rules by industry insiders.
A one size fits all model again is a square peg and a round hole.
If at all, street dining should take place on fully closed streets during special occasions and or weekends, and with removal.
Thank you.
Okay, thank you.
I'm now gonna read through a list of people who had signed up to speak, and we just want to make sure they registered on Zoom.
If any if you're here, please identify yourself and you can speak.
Lauren Antonelli, Sam Getz, Emma Culbert, Glenn Belofsky, Christopher Schuyler, Stuart Zamsky, Dasha Cooper, Andrea Meyer, Jeffrey Granham, Kat B, Leif Arneson, Catherine O'Sullivan, Alex Stein.
If anyone is here whose name I called, please identify yourself if you wish to speak.
Okay, seeing no names, that will conclude our hearing.
I really want to thank everyone for coming out today.