The dining tables can stay on the streets of New York even during the winter.
The New Yorker had anticipated the novelty on 18 August, after the favourable vote of the City Council on 13 August. The mayor’s signature was still missing, and it arrived yesterday: the Introduction 655-A, promoted by councilman Lincoln Restler, is now officially law. The signing by Mayor Zohran Mamdani arrived yesterday, Monday, August 31.
Until now the roadway cafés, i.e. the dehors made on the roadway instead of the parking lot, could work from 1 April to 29 November. At the end of the season, the restaurants were obliged to disassemble the structures, preserve them for four months and reinstall them in spring. The tables on the sidewalks could remain open all year round.
The new law cancels this seasonal distinction and also allows roadway cafés to work for twelve months. The Department of Transportation will now have to define the technical rules for the winter, establishing in particular how the structures can be protected and adapted in the coldest months.
The measure had been approved by the City Council within a larger package dedicated to small businesses and the quality of life. Among other outdoor dining measures are the possibility to use winter covers also for dehors on sidewalks, new rules on cleaning of outdoor spaces and payment in four installments of annual rates for public land employment.
The aim is to reduce costs for refreshers. The obligation to disassemble and reconstruct each year the structures on the track had been indicated as one of the obstacles to participation in the program. At the time of the law’s approval, 1.649 restaurants had a definitive license for outdoor dining.
The outdoor tables spread to New York in June 2020 with Open Restaurants, the emergency program introduced during the pandemic to allow the premises to work despite the restrictions in closed spaces. In 2023 the city transformed that experience into the permanent program Dining Out NYC, introducing more rigid rules and less invasive structures than the large sheds appeared during the health emergency.
The winter limitation on the carriages had remained. With the vote of the City Council of 13 August and the signing of Mamdani of 31 August, the last season was also dropped.
The DOT will have to publish the new rules in the coming months to make dehors suitable for winter. For authorized restaurants, however, the novelty is now definitive: at the end of November it will no longer be necessary to free the car seats occupied by the tables.
L’articolo Now is the law: in New York the tables of the restaurants will remain on the road even in winter proviene da IlNewyorkese.
