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Nearly one pandemic after New York City’s Open Restaurants program enabled a proliferation of so-called “streeteries,” led to an even higher number of excruciatingly incremental headlines about how the arrangement was inching toward some version of permanence, and raised questions both about the meaning of forever and whether vermin were the real beneficiaries of all those structures, City Council on Thursday, August 3, passed a bill allowing the dining sheds to remain. Sometimes.
The landscape as we know it will continue to appear in its present form from April to November, according to The New York Times, year after year, ‘til the poets run out of rhyme, until the 12th of never, and that’s a long, long time. Restaurants will be required to dismantle and store, demolish and rebuild, or otherwise disappear their street sheds during those four theoretically colder months, the paper reported. Licensing requirements, location-based fees and set operating hours will also all be formalized under the newly eternal plan.
Sidewalk dining will still be allowed year-round, per a City Council press release about its vote to encase the program in amber like a cinematic mosquito.
“As legal authorization of the emergency open restaurants program was determined to be expired, the Council’s approval of the permanent program assures restaurants will be able to continue with outdoor dining uninterrupted,” the release reads.
The bill still needs to be signed into law by the mayor, then answer me these wishes three before we can all stop talking about this once and for all.
“As we move from an emergency program to one under local law, this legislation strikes the right balance for restaurants, neighborhoods, and all New Yorkers,” Speaker Adrienne Adams is quoted as saying in the statement. "It allows a greater number of restaurants to continue participating, while easing the bureaucratic barriers, making the licensing costs affordable, and providing orderly and uniform regulations that were missing from the temporary program. This permanent program will serve and support our neighborhoods, restaurants, residents and city for years to come.”