{"id":804963,"date":"2026-05-18T11:35:14","date_gmt":"2026-05-18T11:35:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/804963\/"},"modified":"2026-05-18T11:35:14","modified_gmt":"2026-05-18T11:35:14","slug":"editorial-red-tape-is-killing-nyc-outdoor-dining","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/804963\/","title":{"rendered":"Editorial | Red tape is killing NYC outdoor dining"},"content":{"rendered":"

When New York City first permitted restaurants to set up outdoor dining six springs ago, it was a godsend to businesses devastated by COVID-19 pandemic-related capacity restrictions that had kept patrons away and put these establishments on the brink of total failure.<\/p>\n

The de Blasio Administration moved quickly to cut through the red tape and throw this lifeline to so many struggling restaurants. It was haphazard and messy at times, but it worked. Outdoor dining amid the pandemic allowed many restaurants to make it through the economic storm and thrive on the other side of it.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Fast forward to today, however, and outdoor dining is more regulated than it was back in 2020. That\u2019s not a bad thing; regulations imposed in the latter half of the Adams administration were necessary to ensure businesses maintained proper, sanitary outdoor dining areas, unlike the ramshackle curbside sheds of the COVID era.\u00a0<\/p>\n

But increased layers of government red tape are strangling outdoor dining<\/a>, according to a report released last week by City Comptroller Mark Levine.<\/p>\n

Under the revised outdoor dining regulations, applications must go through review from several different agencies. Levine\u2019s report says the approval process is turning into a quagmire.\u00a0<\/p>\n

One such agency is the city\u2019s Department of Transportation, which the Comptroller\u2019s office said submitted 1,255 permit applications to them in 2026. Yet the DOT said in January that it had nearly 2,400 applications in the pipeline for submission. The disparity suggests that hundreds of applications are stuck in bureaucratic limbo in the bowels of city government.<\/p>\n

Even so, the 2,400 applications for outdoor dining are a microcosm of the actual number of restaurants in New York City. Levine\u2019s office indicated that there are currently 25,161 businesses in the Big Apple tagged as restaurants as of May 6.<\/p>\n

That fewer than 10% of the city\u2019s restaurants have bothered to apply for an outdoor dining permit is another symptom of the program\u2019s red tape problem. These small businesses have enough to do and enough bureaucracy to deal with \u2014 from health inspections to updated operational codes. We can see how easy it would be for a struggling restaurant owner to throw up their hands and say, \u201cNo, thanks; we\u2019ll stay inside.\u201d<\/p>\n

Outdoor dining must be regulated, without question. Setups must be properly built and up to all codes. They must be easy to disassemble and not left abandoned and rotting on the city streets. But the city can and must do better to make the process for reviewing all outdoor dining applications faster and more efficient.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The Mamdani administration and City Council must re-examine the outdoor dining application process and develop ways to streamline application review and approval. There should be set deadlines for which business owners can expect to receive a final decision, and regular updates to keep them informed of where their application is in the review process.<\/p>\n

New York must not let excessive red tape kill outdoor dining.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"When New York City first permitted restaurants to set up outdoor dining six springs ago, it was a…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":291892,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[5122],"tags":[134318,5229,327700,322459,327701,179356,74975,327702,405,403,131998,5226,5225,5228,5227,35574,149606,327703,162474,57574,327704,67,586,132,5230,327705,68,2969],"class_list":["post-804963","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-york","tag-adams-administration","tag-america","tag-bureaucratic-delays","tag-city-regulations","tag-covid-19-recovery","tag-de-blasio-administration","tag-economic-recovery","tag-mark-levine-report","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-new-york-city-restaurants","tag-newyork","tag-newyorkcity","tag-ny","tag-nyc","tag-nyc-department-of-transportation","tag-outdoor-dining","tag-permit-process","tag-red-tape","tag-restaurant-industry","tag-small-business-challenges","tag-united-states","tag-united-states-of-america","tag-unitedstates","tag-unitedstatesofamerica","tag-urban-policy","tag-us","tag-usa"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":"Validation failed: Text character limit of 500 exceeded"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/804963","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=804963"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/804963\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/291892"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=804963"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=804963"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=804963"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}