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Brian Lehrer: Brian Lehrer on WNYC. New York City restaurants have used outdoor dining, as you know, as a means to weather the effects of the pandemic for over a year now. It attracts customers, adds revenue, and has made it easier for the city's restaurants to simply stay afloat. A lot of them haven't, but some have with the help of outdoor dining. However, a new report from WNYC's Beth Fertig takes a look at communities that have not been able to take advantage of outdoor dining so much, versus those that are swamped with outdoor dining sheds to the point of making neighbors complain. With me to discuss that whole range and her report is Beth Fertig, senior reporter for WNYC and Gothamist. Hey, Beth. Thanks for coming on the show today.

Beth Fertig: Hi, Brian.

Brian Lehrer: Let me start right out with a clip. One person you follow in your story is Kelly, the owner of a restaurant called The Nourish Spot in Jamaica, Queens. Let me play a clip of her from your story, telling one of the reasons, or stating one of the reasons why she doesn't have an outdoor dining shed.

Kelly: Most people here have one or two cars. I don't want my neighbors to hate me because I'm taking precious parking spaces. I really mean that.

Brian Lehrer: Tell me about Kelly and the context of her restaurant, The Nourish Spot.

Beth Fertig: Her name is Dawn Kelly, and she opened this little restaurant a few years ago on Guy R Brewer, Boulevard in Queens. It's not the most attractive part of Queens, let's just say, Brian. It's heavily residential, there's not a lot of commercial businesses there, there's a lot of bus traffic. It's not in your park or anything, it's very urban looking, very busy with traffic. This little cafe that she's got serves smoothies and sandwiches. It doesn't have a lot of sit-down space. She was able to survive the pandemic because she was always mostly takeout and delivery, which is the only way that restaurants really lived during the shutdown last year, as you remember.

Delivery was a huge thing for them, even if they had to pay big commission to the delivery services like Uber Eats and Seamless. Dawn Kelly survived the pandemic last year, and she wanted to try to do a little bit better this year by having the open restaurant program that the city has, which allows you to take over a parking spot right outside, or put up a sidewalk cafe with a table and chairs. She bought an umbrella this summer and she was about to go do it. Then the day that she was going to put the umbrella out, she said she saw a couple of people smoking crack right outside her door and she just thought, "I can't do this. My customers are not going to appreciate it, so I give up right now."

There were many reasons why she didn't feel like it was going to work. It was, there is some drug dealing in her neighborhood, there's also a lot of street homeless, mentally ill people that you see in that neighborhood. She really wanted the city to get more services. She didn't like that they would be sitting out there in bus traffic. I said, "You could build a shed like a lot of restaurants have done." That's when she said, "No, I would have to take over parking and this is a residential neighborhood." That's why she said, "My neighbors would hate me for that."

She couldn't really see a way to do it. Although last week she did tell me that after talking to the Queens borough president about the problems in the neighborhood, he said that he would try to get more help for the homeless and mentally ill. She said, "Okay, then I want to do it." She even put up umbrella on Friday. She shared some pictures of it for me and she got three people who were sitting down outside. That was cute that she was willing to give it a second go, but it's just not the greatest neighborhood to make it happen because it doesn't have as much foot traffic and restaurants and other things that are going to attract people to that neighborhood as places in Manhattan.

I said to her, "You said there's homeless people, whatever." Look at East 14th Street in Manhattan that hasn't stopped restaurants there from opening up. Another interesting point she said to me was, "In Manhattan, there's going to be more police around to enforce it. I don't see police here enforcing quality of life issues." I just think it's a totally different experience when you're in the outer boroughs. She felt like nobody came and talked to us about how to make this work in the outer boroughs where we have broader boulevards, less trees maybe, more truck traffic, more noise than we have in the smaller side streets in other residential neighborhoods.

Brian Lehrer: As your piece points out, Kelly's community board district in Jamaica has only 61 of the new outdoor cafes allowed under the city's open restaurants program. You write, by contrast, 5 districts in Manhattan, 2 in Brooklyn, and 1 in Astoria have more than 400 each. A few districts have more than 800. Why is there such a large disparity?

Beth Fertig: Part of it has to do with where you're going to have the most restaurants. Right, Brian? Of course, when you think of lower Manhattan, there's restaurants everywhere. The upper west side and the upper east side, there's tons of restaurants there. That's going to reflect some of what's going on. I didn't get the exact numbers to prove that that's the core of what's happening, but of course, we know there is a correlation. When you go to neighborhoods like I called the community board in Morrisania in the Bronx, it's Community District 3, and they only have seven cafes, which includes people who have taken over a roadway, where they could take a parking spot or do it on the sidewalk.

When I spoke to their chair of their community board, he said, "Look, part of the problem here is most of the eateries are fast food. We're a food desert," is what he told me. There's not a lot of restaurants with sit-down dining. It is a very poor congressional district in the South Bronx. It's part of the poorest congressional district in the country. The neighborhoods that have the fewest number of these eateries do tend to have the highest poverty rates in the city, Brian, which goes along with disposable income. They're not going to have a lot of people eating at restaurants.

What he also said to me is, "We do have some restaurants who might want to take advantage of it and we do have people who could afford to eat out, but it's very onerous because even if it's freed to take over the space now under the city's program, you still have to put in the money to build a shed or to buy the tables and chairs." He said, "These are small businesses. They don't have the means that restaurants in Manhattan, wealthier neighborhoods, they could afford to put up these little sheds. It's easier for them to spend tens of thousands of dollars than it is for a little restaurant in the South Bronx."

Brian Lehrer: By contrast, here's another person you interviewed for your story, David Crane, a member of Community Board 3. Is that the village?

Beth Fertig: It's the east village in lower east side where they have over 800 cafes now.

Brian Lehrer: He speaks to your [crosstalk]--

Beth Fertig: At a community board meeting. Yes.

Brian Lehrer: He speaks here against maintaining the open restaurants as robustly as they are now. Here we go.

David Crane: This whole program, and it starts with the zoning amendment, is going to turn this area into an open-air alcohol zone. [crosstalk]

[applause]

Brian Lehrer: That apparently was at a community board meeting and he was getting a lot of applause. They don't like the out-- The neighbors, the people who live there are what, divided or generally against having so many sheds and outdoor dining umbrellas and all that stuff. What did you see?

Beth Fertig: I would say it's biased toward the people who come to these community board meetings. The vast majority of the people, and it was like an 85 maximum capacity room given the pandemic, although people were still pretty packed together, they were there to oppose it. They had signs saying stop the sheds. What we heard from the opponents was this is too much. We have sheds everywhere. They're supposed to leave at least 8 feet of space on the sidewalk under the city rules, but when there's so many of them in a row, you really can't walk. People were saying, "We cannot walk on our sidewalks."

Then there's a lot of noise at night. They're supposed to not play loud music, but they can't control what all their customers are doing. People say, "We're hearing more noise than ever outside our windows. We feel like this has just taken over the neighborhoods." There's the scooters, there's the bicycles, the delivery people. It just adds to more and more traffic, foot traffic and bike traffic in a way that it just makes them feel overwhelmed. They don't want to make the program permanent. When I say permanent, this is an emergency program that the city allowed during the pandemic, giving restaurants basically, as of right, they could put something on their sidewalk or in the roadway.

They didn't have to go through the normal process, which could take months and it would be very expensive to hire an architect and it's very difficult. That's why there were only about 1,200 outdoor cafes in New York City before these restaurant programs started. They were also prohibited in certain residential neighborhoods. By taking the lid off of all of those restrictions, there are now 11,000 of them in the city, Brian. When the city says, "We want to make this permanent because it's been so well accepted overall by residents who do really love it."

People who enjoy the look of it and say, "it's like Europe now. We can dine outside. That's a lot of fun, it did save the restaurant industry during the pandemic." Some people are feeling like, "Hold on. Slow the brakes here. We want more restrictions." The city is saying there will be more restrictions when it goes permanent, which would be starting in the fall of next year because this emergency program that we have now would expire as soon as there's no more pandemic, although we don't see that going away any soon.

The permanent program would start taking applications in the fall of 2022 and then begin in the winter of 2023. This is really looking far ahead. The city has budgeted more money for enforcement. They say that they're going to try to be more strict with this because, right now, there's been really no tickets. It's run by DOT, Department of Transportation. People are really just getting warnings if their sheds are taking over too much space, although the Department of Health can still close you down for other violations. Making it permanent, would really, really alter the landscape of New York City. That's what's being hashed out right now.

Brian Lehrer: Listeners, help WNYC and Gothamist reporter, Beth Fertig, report this story. We've been hearing from her just now and maybe heard her report on some of the other programs over the last day or read the Gothamist version. What an incredible range there is of relationships in different communities with the outdoor dining sheds and outdoor dining in general? Some neighborhoods don't have them, wish they had the conditions to have them. Some neighborhoods feel overrun with them. How about you wherever you live, listeners?

646-435-7280. Call up with your reviews of your local outdoor dining sheds, or how the restaurants are dealing with them, and what you would like to see in terms of should they stay? Should they go? Should they stay but with different criteria? 646-435-7280. 646-435-7280, or tweet @BrianLehrer. Beth, why is the Department of Transportation, the agency that oversees outdoor dining--? I see from your report that they say their permanent version of it would include more specific criteria and enforcement of open restaurant rules. Why is it the DOT as opposed to the Department of Buildings or small business services or something like that?

Beth Fertig: I don't really know. [laughs] It seems to be because it's in the streets and they started it this year. You see every shed that's in the street says DOT on it, they have to meet those criteria. It seems like it's just fallen to them now to manage it going forward. They will, under the plan, be given an enforcement budget that they don't really have right now. I asked them, "Have you fined anyone so far?" They said, "No, we're really more aimed at compliance and urging them to do the right thing." That would be very interesting to see how that plays out.

Brian Lehrer: This is WNYC FM HD and AM New York, WNJT-FM 88.1 Trenton, WNJP 88.5 Sussex, WNJY 89.3 Netcong, and WNJO 90.3 Toms River. We are in New York and New Jersey Public Radio and with WNYC's Beth Fertig. Marie in Brooklyn, you're on WNYC. Thank you for calling in.

Marie: You're welcome. Hi, Beth. Hi, Brian. I'm a longtime listener. My question, Beth, is about the infestation of rodents that we are now experiencing in Brooklyn and how it relates to all these outdoor dining structures. I also wanted to just remind you that you mentioned there are people smoking crack and that's why that poor restaurant owner didn't want to put out her outdoor dining. Who wants to sit outside and watch people destroy themselves like that? I think that's the larger issue, is that most of these outdoor dining structures are not very appealing to the diners. Plus, Brooklyn has a rat problem like I've never seen in 17 years. What impact did you find in your reporting?

Beth Fertig: What community district are you in? I'm just curious.

Marie: It's Carroll Gardens. What district is that? 37? I don't know.

Beth Fertig: District 7, you think? Because Carroll Gardens has almost 400 of the open restaurants.

Marie: Yes, we have a lot.

Brian Lehrer: Somebody must like them.

Beth Fertig: Yes. [chuckles] I definitely heard complaints about the rats. That was in the East district. There are people saying that it's gotten out of control with the rats. That is a sanitation issue, though. Is the Department of Sanitation fining people for not disposing of their garbage properly? I think that's a little bit more complicated. I don't know if we're having more dining as a result of this because many of the restaurants said to me that they're still having less business than usual in some cases because the open dining is just allowing people to sit where they would normally sit inside, they're now outside.

Maybe there's more stuff that gets on the floor in a restaurant would be swept up, but on the street, it's not swept up as quickly. Maybe that's where the enforcement needs to come in. Then there's people who are saying, "You're actually giving the restaurants more space by doing this." When I asked some of the restaurant owners about that, "Don't you feel like this is a gimme? People say it's a gimme to the real estate lobby or to the restaurants, why are we giving you more space than other types of businesses." What they said to me is, "It's really not more because people still aren't coming inside to the degree that they used to."

There are some places where if they're getting people inside on a hot day now, or maybe not as much now with the Delta variant, and they're getting people outside, it definitely is a boon for them. They're getting much more dining than they would have before. They're also telling me that they have trouble hiring staff. They're not able to serve everybody like they might have if they had expanded under normal situations, let's say, when there wasn't a pandemic. I think it's very complicated. There's some restaurants where they'll say, "Nobody is inside. Outside is the only way that I'm getting business and it's still less than it used to be." Others are saying, "Yes, on some days, I'm getting more than I used to because I have both possibilities." It's just so tricky, and it varies place to place.

Brian Lehrer: We played that clip from that community board meeting in the East Village where people were complaining about so many sheds. Bridget is calling from the East Village and wants to disagree. Bridget, you're on WNYC. Hello.

Bridget: I totally disagree. First of all, I own a car and I park on the street. At first, I was a little pissed off. I said, "No." I live in a low-income co-op, just to give you a little sample, a low-income co-op and we have 21 buildings. Some of those buildings are storefronts and some of the storefronts have restaurants. Very small, but it's still there. Sushi place, an Italian restaurant. We have had a very hard time to maintain our low-income co-op because of the pandemic. The storefronts' revenues are very important to keep our rent low, our maintenance charges low. We are all shareholders.

Opening the outside, the sheds, have been a real lifesaver. I agree with the lady. Yes, they may not have as much business as before, but at least they have some business. Otherwise, inside, I don't go inside even though I'm vaccinated. I don't go [crosstalk]--

Brian Lehrer: How about the noise, Bridget, for you? The noise and the last caller brought up rats, from the storefronts that you're referring to. Even if they're helping provide revenue for the low-income co-op, as you describe it, are there also other effects like too much noise and maybe too much garbage attracting rodents?

Bridget: No. We have very good maintenance. We don't have rodents. We make sure we clean around their storefronts in our block, at least. Then there is only one restaurant in the corner, which is very famous Fibbies, that was making too much noise sometimes having parties on Saturday night. You know what? It's no different for what happens everybody, what we call the bridge and tunnel-- Sorry, I know I'm going to offend a lot of people. They come to New York, they make a lot of noise, they scream in the middle of the night.

If you look at the window, they are all students, NYU students or something, screaming in the middle of the night on the top of their lungs, at four or five in the morning, waking us all up. The little bit of noise that was on that restaurant now stopped because we complained. We are very organized when we complain. That stuff and the kids are so clean and all they have to do, I agree with the lady, you have to ever good sanitation system. The city is lacking a good sanitation system. It's a nightmare with the city. They don't even [crosstalk]--

Brian Lehrer: Interesting. Bridget, I'm going to leave it there and get some other folks on. Thank you so much for your call. Then Beth, of course, how do you insult somebody from Queens and somebody from New Jersey at the same time? We call them the bridge and tunnel crowd. Liz in Brooklyn, you're on WNYC. Hi, Liz.

Liz: Hi. Morning, Brian. I just want to say that this is a totally personal selfish complaint. This is because near where I live, there's a restaurant that never with the [unintelligible 00:19:32]. He put up this little outdoor enclosure at the time when restaurants were allowed to. I'm sure he did it, he thought he was doing a good thing. He hasn't had one customer until today. Not one. His crowd, they're not the people who will go outside. He doesn't have a lot of customers, it's a smaller space. People come, I guess most of it is take out, but whatever. He has never had a customer. The enclosure is there. Nobody uses it. It's in disrepair. He tried to fix it the other day. I don't know what he tried to do, by putting up some barricade-- Not a barricade, but bracing, pieces of board to brace it to keep it up.

Brian Lehrer: Is your bottom line point here that it's ugly, nobody's even using it, and it's taking up parking spots?

Liz: Yes. Why is it still there? Why doesn't the city have inspectors going around, seeing the ones that are in disrepair and not being used, and have them taken down?

Brian Lehrer: Liz, thank you very much. Beth, does that reflect anything you heard in the course of your reporting?

Beth Fertig: Yes. There's definitely places where they've tried it and they're probably not getting as much business as they'd like for various reasons, may be because the neighborhood isn't as conducive with whatever the state of the traffic or the foot traffic may be and how friendly it is, what the setup looks like. I'm sure it varies tremendously. I think under the city's plan, what they say anyway, and eat people claim that that it's rarely enforced. We know that because there aren't fines, they just try to encourage them to clean up their act, is the Department of Transportation says that they will help a restaurant to comply.

They would help them with free sandbags if they need because you have to keep those structures secure in the street and they have to be of a certain width. They'll go and they'll encourage them by saying, "This is what you need to do to make it better." I don't know how many have been taken down. It doesn't seem like they've closed any as a result of this, but they're saying that in the future, the permanent version of this program will do a lot more enforcement. I think that was the complaint that I heard in the East Village community meeting was, if you want to make this permanent and you say you're going to do enforcement, why not start now? Then you're going to get a lot more goodwill if we see you out there giving tickets and doing more to help the restaurants comply with your roles.

Brian Lehrer: Regarding the rats, somebody tweets, "It's not the food waste, it's that they nest under the sheds if they're built on wooden platforms." Listener writes, "I've been having a drink and they'll run under the floors and you can hear them squeaking and partying under there." I don't know if that's accurate, but that's a structural reason for the rats according to one listener.

Beth Fertig: [laughs]

Brian Lehrer: Karen in Bayside, you're on WNYC. Hi, Karen?

Karen: Hi. How are you, Brian? I love your show. Thank you for being on the air.

Brian Lehrer: Thank you.

Karen: Can you hear me?

Brian Lehrer: Yes. We got you. Go ahead.

Karen: I've been taking advantage of restaurant week, but I don't go indoors. I like to be outside, went into a restaurant in Manhattan, but last week, I went to one of the only restaurants participating in Queens and it was a tavern, a bar and a tavern called Neir's. I don't know if you've heard it. It's one of the oldest taverns. Apparently, it's where Goodfellas was filmed. They had a great deal and they had a couple of tables outside and they did have a structure. I'll tell you the truth, it was the best hamburger I ever had in my life.

I would go back, and parking was abhorrent. I think it's the Ridgewood or Jamaica Avenue. We parked right off Jamaica Avenue, I found a parking space. I think it's wonderful. I think anything that we could do to help the restaurants to have outdoor seating is wonderful because they are really hurting. They're hurting because they don't have enough help and people like myself are hesitant to go indoors.

Brian Lehrer: Karen, thank you so much for your call. I'm glad you found such a great burger. One more call. It looks like we're getting a call from a former deputy commissioner of consumer affairs for the city. Emmett in Queens, you're on WNYC. Thank you so much for calling in, and sorry to say, we've got about a minute only for you.

Emit: Okay. Thanks so much, Brian. Thank you, Beth. Just wanted to say, as someone who's a huge proponent of this program in general, my partner company is in the restaurant industry, they've really been hurting. Like your previous caller, I've also only eaten outdoors. I'm not comfortable going indoors, fully vaccinated. We do need, when the program becomes permanent, to really look at some of the considerations and issues that were raised, for example, at that local Community Board 3 meeting down in Manhattan because our streetscapes all over the city are extremely different.

Sidewalk widths different, accessibility for people with disability, for parents with children in strollers is different, where bike lanes are it's different. The space between fire hydrants and bus stations and where these sheds are is all very different. While I think the immediate application of this program for the purposes of the pandemic was made perfect sense and was brilliant and was lifesaving for restaurants, I do think it is really important, as the program becomes permanent, that a lot of these issues are taken into account.

I just want to point out that the primary reason that you didn't have sidewalk cafes be nearly as ubiquitous in the past as you do now was not really because of the cost and the architects, but really because of the zoning. That's important to understand because different parts of the city are zoned, even block by block in Manhattan and Brooklyn especially, are zoned very differently. I do think that there is a balance that needs to be struck between all of these different needs. Again, huge proponent of this program, think that it should be permanent, want to see it permanent, but there are a lot of considerations that need to be taken into account. I just think that that's something that we need to think about.

Brian Lehrer: Thank you so much for your call. We really appreciate it. Beth, to tie it up, because of the Delta variant starting a new phase of concern just as we thought the city might really be coming out of it just a few weeks ago, does this delay the whole reckoning with outdoor dining on a more permanent basis because it's still so needed temporarily?

Beth Fertig: The plan, as the city has it to make it permanent, involves getting feedback from all the community boards that's only advisory and then the city council would vote on it later this fall. As I said, it would take effect in the beginning of 2023, people would apply at the end of 2022. As the caller, the former consumer affairs commissioner just stated, there's a lot of rules that have to be hammered out here. They're going to have to really explain what the procedure is going to be for restaurants to apply. I do think that restaurants are going to want to keep this program.

They're benefiting from it now, of course, but in the short term, they are definitely worried about the Delta variant and they need that outside space because diners may be afraid to go inside. Again, there was one restaurant I went to in the East Village and he said to me, "Nobody is going inside. The only way I can serve people is still outside, they will not go inside."

Brian Lehrer: WNYC and Gothamist reporter, Beth Fertig, hear the full version of her story at wnyc.org, or read it on Gothamist. Beth, thanks a lot.

Beth Fertig: Thank you, Brian. Have a good day.

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