Restler speaks on restoring year-round outdoor dining

Thank you so much.

It's great to join.

Should I?

No, we don't have anything for me to roll out today.

Okay, too bad for the vertically challenged among us.

It's great to join such a robust class of council interns and all of you today.

I just firstly want to thank Speaker Menin.

Long before she was speaker, she has been eagerly conspiring with me to fix the outdoor dining program and I think has been the single most enthusiastic supporter at my side to restore year-round outdoor dining in the city council.

So I really just want to thank her for her leadership.

At every step of the way, she has said, I have your back.

We're going to get this done.

This is important, and I really appreciate it.

It was about three years ago that the city council, that the Adams era program for seasonal outdoor dining was approved.

And it nearly broke outdoor dining in New York City.

We saw a 90% decline in the number of restaurants that used to offer outdoor dining and that no longer did.

And the explanation for why restaurants no longer offer outdoor dining is simple.

It became stupidly expensive.

Stupidly expensive to have to build, deconstruct, and store these outdoor dining structures every year.

For small neighborhood restaurants, it was just infeasible.

Today, we are fixing that.

We are going to restore outdoor dining to its previous glory with thousands of additional

outdoor dining establishments, we anticipate opening up across the five boroughs, which is great for our local economy, great for our neighborhood businesses, great for our workforce, great for all of us to enjoy a meal outdoors.

Controller Lander did a study a couple years ago that found for every restaurant that adds outdoor dining, we create a job.

And at a time when the New York City private sector workforce is

shrinking, with the exception of home health aides, we really need good jobs across our communities.

There are some additional changes that I think are really positive in our legislation that will help more businesses participate in the program.

We are making some modifications to the design to allow for some vertical elements to exist around outdoor dining structures and overhead structures as well.

While we're not returning to the era of sheds, we are making it more comfortable for people to enjoy outdoor dining during winter months or during inclement weather year-round.

We're also trying to be better neighbors.

It used to be that outdoor dining, that sidewalk cafes could stay open until 1 o'clock.

Then we modified it so that sidewalk cafes and roadway dining needed to close at midnight.

Today, we're shifting that to 11 p.m.

In neighborhoods like mine, people live above restaurants.

People live next door to restaurants.

And it's important that we ensure that they're good neighbors.

11 o'clock is a very reasonable time to close, and I think we'll ensure that we can improve the quality of life in our communities.

We're also going to insist that there's still meaningful accountability in the outdoor dining program.

If any restaurant...

gets the same three violations in a two-year period, their license is revoked.

So when we have bad actors in our communities, we're going to hold them accountable.

We are also making sure that we continue to maintain the progress that we've made in keeping outdoor dining clean.

We all remember the era where there were rack complaints and garbage and storage.

That's not going to happen again.

Just this past year, with the new seasonal program, there were 11 complaints citywide to 311 about cleanliness of outdoor dining structures.

That number is so small, it's a rounding error.

You can't even see.

We have successfully improved cleanliness in our outdoor dining structures by ensuring all of the furniture is readily removable, that the floors have to be removed every single week, and area below it cleaned.

That all remains in place as we shift to a year-round program.

So we're not returning to the era of sheds.

We are maintaining the cleanliness that New Yorkers should and will continue to expect in our outdoor dining.

I really want to thank Speaker Menon again for her leadership.

Her team, especially Jonathan, was incredibly helpful along the way.

We had a great support from the ledge staff, Rachel Cordero and Sarah Swain in particular.

Many advocates were real tremendous partners in this effort, especially Transportation Alternatives, Open Plans, the Hospitality Alliance, and others.

I really am grateful to all of the small businesses across New York City that have advocated for these changes.

But most of all, I just want to thank my chief of staff, Molly Haley, who is brilliant and is kind of the intellectual firepower that drives our office.

And we're really lucky that she helped to drive this process forward.

So thank you again and looking forward to it.

Passing this bill today.

Thank you.