Rats, Noise And Garbage: NYC Outdoor Dining Challenged In New Lawsuit

NEW YORK CITY — Outdoor dining in New York City has turned the city into a rat-, noise- and garbage-filled cesspool and should be stopped, a new lawsuit contends.

A group of 35 New Yorkers filed a civil petition last week in a Manhattan court that argues the coronavirus pandemic's Temporary Open Restaurant Program has outlived its shelf life.

"I think it’s egregious,” said petitioner Tanya Bonner, co-founder of the WaHi-Inwood Task Force on Noise. “There’s no overall planning in terms of how many of these restaurants are being allowed to have dining and how is it impacting the community as a whole. There’s no planning and then there’s no enforcement."

Mayor Eric Adams, when asked about the lawsuit Monday, repeated his support for the program overall and called it a "lifeline" for the city's restaurant industry. But he also said some outdoor dining locations have need to change.

"I think we need to modify it because some of the outdoor dining locations have become a hazard," he said. "They have become places that's not suitable. And I think there's a way to modify to standardize what the structure should look like, and they have to be used."

The city's outdoor dining program began in 2020 as a way to provide New Yorkers a safe way to eat at — and support — restaurants that were under by COVID-19 restrictions.

More than 12,500 restaurants have since joined the program, with roughly half of those eateries using both sidewalk and street space, according to city data.

The program quickly proved popular, with a city survey conducted in October 2020 finding that 64 percent of New Yorkers polled supported giving up outdoor space for restaurants. And another poll by the NYC Hospitality Alliance found nine out of 10 restaurant owners and operators said their establishments' futures hinge on outdoor dining.

The widespread apparent popularity prompted city officials and lawmakers to take steps to set up a permanent outdoor dining program by 2023.

But a vocal subset of New Yorkers have increasingly grown frustrated by what they view as fundamental changes to their neighborhoods. Many have sued to stop the permanent program — and scored a small victory when a judge agreed more study should be done on its environmental impacts.

The lawsuit filed last week aims to shut down the temporary Open Restuarants program because it claimed "there is no public health emergency" that requires it to continue. City officials have ended nearly every other COVID-19 health order or restriction, it argued.

The complaint asks a judge to stop the outdoor dining program and revoke any permits for restaurants' structures on sidewalks and streets.

"The open restaurant program has transformed what used to be a pleasant city block with a healthy balance of commercial and residential use into a gritty, shanty streetscape fueled by alcohol sales and marked by sanitation and noise violations," one New Yorker who brought the lawsuit forward wrote in an affidavit.

"Through the open restaurants program, the city has ceded public property to restaurants for private commercial use and the consequences fall on the residents and the public at large, whose quality of life is inevitably negatively impacted."