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Only those with the keenest eye for design and the most prolific penchant for eating alfresco might have noticed, but the City of New York started rolling out four new outdoor dining structures in recent months. On Tuesday, February 27, the Department of Transportation unveiled the sunny seating arrangements hiding in plain sight, starting at Sunday to Sunday, a pretty, bright all-day cafe on the corner of Orchard and Broome on the Lower East Side.
Sunday to Sunday first opened in March of 2020, its trajectory dovetailing with the pandemic. Owner Gurpreet Singh, who says his restaurant’s outdoor area has gone through five iterations, recalls the early days of outdoor dining as “the wild West,” describing rickety seat-to-street barriers, unpleasant pools of standing water collecting on corners due to poor drainage, and, of course, a proliferation of pests.
“We no longer have those issues” with the new unit, Singh says. His restaurant’s design, which the DOT calls a “corner setup,” though it could also fit elsewhere on the block, features water-weighted interior containers in lieu of soil to eliminate burrowing and better keep critters away, and floor panels that flip up to make cleaning underneath easier. It’s also fixed with a storage bench, string lights and a lightweight overhead canopy that he says performs well enough in the rain.
Singh’s local business improvement district linked him with the pilot program. Participation was an obvious choice in light of new regulations that would have required Singh to reconsider Sunday to Sunday’s streetery next winter, the first-season structures must be removed since their inception, in any case. So far, he considers the new build a success.
“The biggest issues we were tackling were drainage and the harboring of pests,” Singh says. “And I think that this has alleviated those issues completely. There’s nowhere for [pests] to be. This is not inviting to them anymore. They’re not swimming in the water, and this floor gets cleaned pretty often.”
Three other restaurants are included in the pilot program: Bodrum, a Mediterranean restaurant on Amsterdam Avenue near 88th Street on the Upper West Side, Warique, a Peruvian spot on 37th Avenue near 90th Street in Jackson Heights and Dawa’s, a Himalayan and new-American destination on Skillman Avenue between 51st and 52nd Streets in Woodside. Their design schemes factor in features like solar panels, hard ceilings, or retractable overhead fabric.
WXY architecture and urban design firm created the quartet to comply with the Department of Transportation’s outdoor dining rules. The plans for each, which WXY began drafting last summer, are now public property, meaning restaurant owners can use them at no cost. Owners can also still use their own blueprints, provided they comply with regulations.
“This is a resource for restaurants to use in the future,” says Jacob Dugopolski, WXY associate principal. “These should be lightweight, easy-to-build structures.”
Dugopolski says that WXY estimates that the structures will have a 10-year lifespan. They’re also intended for custom touches. Wood posts punctuating Sunday to Sunday’s, for example, could have been metal, or it could have had umbrellas instead of a fabric covering.
Business owners using WXYs plans for their own outdoor spaces can choose the fabricator of their choice, and the pilot program used a company called SITU. Those opting into the designs can expect a finished product that starts in the low five figures, according to the DOT. Applications for NYC’s permanent outdoor dining program open on March 5.