West Village Dining Sheds Will Look Different After Pandemic

WEST VILLAGE, NY — A few days after Village residents rallied, protested and participated in the Chuck the Sheds march in Lower Manhattan against making the Open Restaurants program permanent, those locals against outdoor dining sheds got some positive news during Tuesday's City Council committee hearing.

Julie Schipper, the head of the Department of Transportation's Open Restaurants program, told the Council that the makeshift dining structures won't be allowed to remain standing once the pandemic ends.

“We don’t envision sheds in the permanent program. We are not planning for that,” Schipper testified.

Schipper clarified, though, that while the "full house" structures won't be allowed to stand once the pandemic begins to ease, roadway barriers, tents or umbrellas would still be part of the city's permanent Outdoor Restaurant program that it is planning to unveil in 2023.

The Open Restaurants program was widely considered one of the few positive things to come out of the pandemic, but there has also been a consistently critical group of the sidewalk dining initiative.

In October 2021, half a dozen West Village residents — along with residents from Greenwich Village, Hell's Kitchen and the Lower East Side — signed onto a lawsuit trying to block the city's outdoor dining program from becoming permanent.

“It is really being planned for a post-COVID scenario, where you can dine outside when that feels nice and comfortable, but you won’t need to be in a house on the street," Schipper testified on Tuesday.

She also added that the existing sheds would not be grandfathered into the new program in their current form.

The current sheds are allowed to stand through early July under former Gov. Andrew Cuomo's emergency order signed in 2021.

Read More:

• 'Rats Forever:' West Village To March Against Outdoor Dining
• West Villagers Sue To Stop Permanent Outdoor Dining Program