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Brian Lehrer: It's Brian Lehrer on WNYC. We were just asking if the US and China are heading toward a new Cold War or a new World War. [unintelligible 00:10:00] was really good by the way, wasn't she? She should get more press. This next political tension that we'll talk about doesn't rise nearly to that level, and yet sometimes you wouldn't know it from how passionate New Yorkers can get on either side of this. The issue is how much to make outdoor dining permanent after the temporary pandemic permission for restaurants to use sidewalk and parking spot space is ending.

WNYC and Gothamist Elizabeth Kim is watching the new rules be debated before a decisive vote in City Council. This is not just about the conflict over noise and rats and trash between restaurants and their neighbors that we've talked about a lot. It's about money too. Liz's article on Gothamist is called How much should it cost to use an NYC street? A bill on outdoor dining is set to decide. Hey, Liz, welcome back to the show.

Liz: Hi, Brian.

Brian Lehrer: Could you remind us what exactly the pandemic rules allowed restaurants to do that they couldn't do before?

Liz: Yes. In 2020, what the city did was essentially enact an emergency program that was designed to make it as easy and as inexpensive as possible for restaurants to get up outdoor dining. Basically, if you remember at this time in the beginning, indoor dining was suspended and there was only takeout. There was this whole existential crisis facing the restaurant industry.

What the city did was they waived fees. They basically also waived zoning restrictions. They did have to follow regulations. That was something that they did have to do. Basically, if you didn't have a sidewalk café before because maybe you didn't want to go through the permit process and pay the fees, well, you know what? The city said, "You can have it now. Just follow the rules." They also extended that to something new, which was what they've now referred to as roadway dining, but it was basically setting up some tables and chairs right on the curbside.

Brian Lehrer: You report that all kinds of details are in play right now, what times of the year, outdoor restaurant spaces can operate, what kinds of design standards will be required. Those are two big ones. Before we get to the money question, are there other rules like those being debated in City Council?

Liz: Well, essentially seasonality and design, those are the two major elements of the bill that have drawn the most, I would say, coverage and also the most public interest so far. One other element that I don't know that people are as interested in was, who would run the program. There was questions about, "Would it be run by the Department of Transportation?" which is currently running the program, or, "Would it be run by the Department of Consumer and Worker Protection?" That was formerly known as the Department of Consumer Affairs.

The reason why that agency was brought up was because they were the ones that were previously running what was known as the Sidewalk Café program. What I'll say is I think the elements of design and seasonality have been focused on, because those two things are really what will shape the future of what outdoor dining will look like. There have been a lot of arguments about, "What do the dining sheds look like? Are they eye sores or do they add to the liveliness of a neighborhood and city street?" There's also the question of seasonality, "Should they be allowed to run year-round or should it be curtailed to the warmer months of the year?"

Brian Lehrer: Whenever we raise this topic, any aspect of open restaurants on the sidewalks, on the streets, our lines start to fill up right away. Let me give the phone number to everybody who doesn't keep us on their speed dials. Listeners, help us report this story. Restaurant owners and workers very interested in hearing from you. What's the role of outdoor dining now for your business and your community? 212-433 WNYC to the headline of Liz Kim's article. What should it cost to use a New York City Street? We'll get into the dollars and cents of it next. 212-433-9692.

I'm curious, restaurant folks, to what degree do you have customers who will still refuse to eat indoors? Maybe older customers mostly, or not even, or other people too. You tell us. 212-433 WNYC. Neighbors of outdoor restaurants, also car owners who park on the street, you get your say too about what is and what should be as City Council considers the future. 212-433 WNYC, 212-433-9692, or tweet @BrianLehrer. All right. Your article is called How Much Should It Cost to Use an New York City Street? Is the city considering charging restaurants with outdoor dining, some new kind of fee?

Liz: It is. Like I said, at the top up, until now, using the sidewalks and the curbside area have been free, but now, that the city wants to make this program permanent, it's going to come up with a fee structure. Like I said, there was one that existed for sidewalk dining. Now going forward what's unprecedented is the dining on the roadway. The question is, how much should the city charge for that?

Brian Lehrer: Well, can you do the number-- Does the math work? Is it doable on the radio in conversation, some of the numbers that are in play and whose eyes are popping out as a result or not?

Liz: Well, I'm not great at imagining dimensions, but I'll give you an example. For 150 square feet of sidewalk space, that used to cost about $6,000 annually for business to rent that sidewalk space from the city. I was trying to think about 150,000 square feet. It's not huge, 15 by 10 feet, but the fees can easily run into the tens of thousands of dollars. If the city uses that as a template, that could probably be a starting point. That program is decades old. They could probably use that as a starting point to discuss how much they want to charge for the roadway. I think it's a question, should that be more expensive or less expensive? That's something that the City Council has to decide.

Brian Lehrer: I gather there's an equal and opposite push to charge for the use of curbside space, but not for restaurants to charge more for parking. Who's calling for that? What about that use of public space by private car owners is actually under consideration by City Council?

Liz: That's a point that a lot of public space advocates and transit policy experts want to make, not so much that-- It's not that they want to charge cars more, is they're making a point that this has been space that is traditionally free for a lot of cars. Not in every case. Of course, there are lots of spaces in which you do have to pay metered parking. In general, there are also millions of spaces in the city that are free.

The point that those policy experts are making is, what does that say about how New York City values the public realm? It definitely signifies that if you're saying that "Well, this is space that we're going to give away to drivers," that says something. In the wake of the pandemic, a lot of people think that we should start re-imagining or revaluing our relationship with the public space and maybe start thinking about, "Well, is there a cost? There is an implicit cost to giving that space for free to a car. Could it be given, not necessarily to a restaurant, but to another use?

Brian Lehrer: Samantha in Bedford-Stuyvesant, you on WNYC. Hi, Samantha.

Samantha: Hi. Good morning.

Brian Lehrer: You're a restaurant-

Samantha: Can you hear me?

Brian Lehrer: I can. I see you're a restaurant owner. Is that right?

Samantha: Correct.

Brian Lehrer: Go for it.

Samantha: Well, one of the things that the City Council is putting forward is if they were to approve the roadside seating, was to make it seasonal, but there are no operators at the table in any of these discussions. I am an operator. There is no way to make roadside seating safely seasonal because your typical restaurant owner cannot afford to rebuild the roadside structure every season nor can we afford to store the, literally, three tons of sand that is required to be in the barriers to make them safe. To me, calling it seasonal is really just a way of saying, "It's not going to happen."

Brian Lehrer: Yes, because the cost, you're saying, would be prohibitive of putting it up and take it down twice a year?

Samantha: Absolutely. There's no way you can rebuild that structure every season, twice a year, take it down and put it up.

Brian Lehrer: Can I ask you a question as a restaurant owner that a listener is raising? It's not a question for you per se, but I'm going to ask it of you if it's all right. Listener tweets, "COVID is not over, outdoor dining year-round is crucial for safe socializing and also keeping our favorite restaurants in business." Is your experience with your customers, to any degree, that COVID is not over and that people consider outdoor dining crucial for their safe socializing as the tweeter puts it?

Samantha: I think that there are plenty of people that are still not super comfortable indoors and so it would be great if they had an option, not to mention people with maybe pets that still want to dine, but would like to dine with their pets. Also even if COVID was over, the amount of debt that small businesses are still in as a result is not going away anytime soon.

I'm in a organization and any number of us, between all the loans we took out and just the loss of revenue alone over these three years, that extra seating, it's not gone. The debt is not going away. We still need help, is what I'm saying.

Brian Lehrer: Samantha, thank you very much for your call. Good luck out there. Matt, another restaurant owner. This says, "in Prospect Park." Are you in Prospect Park right now Matt?

Matt: Hey, Brian. Yes, I'm walking my dog in Prospect Park. Thanks for taking my call.

Brian Lehrer: Cool. Tell us your story.

Matt: I am a partner in a restaurant in Cobble Hill, Brooklyn. First of all, I want to echo everything that Samantha just said. Fully agree about the seasonality, is impossible to build something that's both safe and aesthetically nice and just take it down and put it back up. To the question that you posed to her about people, if it's anywhere above 20 degrees, there are people that are more comfortable sitting outside.

It's really, really important, I think, for all of us restaurant owners. We felt saved by being able to have this outdoor dining. The businesses would've shut many of them. Now as we're working off the debt, we've also encountered wages going up, which in the restaurant industry is a really good thing. Having the added revenue of additional seats helped us able to pay the staff in the kitchen, particularly on average about 30% more than pre-pandemic. Just from our one small business, I think it saved 20 plus jobs and they're decent jobs.

Brian Lehrer: Wow, 20 plus jobs by having the outdoor dining?

Matt: By the fact that we were able to stay open. When we didn't have outdoor dining, we went down to about 25% of our staff then we came back. On seasons that would've been slower, July and August in our neighborhood is usually pretty quiet, now with the outdoor dining we're still busy, so we can keep at full capacity in that time, et cetera.

Brian Lehrer: Got it. Matt, thank you very much. Good luck out there. Few more minutes with our Liz Kim, who is following City Council's debate over how much and whether to make outdoor dining permanent in New York City and what to charge restaurateurs, maybe what to charge car owners for using public space in the street.

Liz, the two callers who we just had, the two restaurant owners from Brooklyn, they both brought up the fact that even if business is coming back, they're still in debt from the pandemic and that's one good reason not to curb this revenue stream to that industry.

Liz: That's correct. What's ironic about the way this discussion about outdoor dining has evolved is that, in 2020 when the city enacted this policy, I think, for the most part, it was very popular. People really felt for the restaurant industry. In New York City, people live in small apartments and the way they socialize is by going out to eat. There was this tremendous outpouring of support for the restaurants.

Now, three years later, I think in some neighborhoods the outdoor dining is now being seen as a nuisance. People look at the crowded dining sheds and they're thinking, "Wow, these restaurants, they're making money hand-over-fist on what is essentially they consider it is free and they consider it a giveaway." What the restaurants will say and what Samantha and Matt both said is that they are still in debt. Basically even having the outdoor dining starting in 2020 during the pandemic until now, that did not erase the losses that they experienced. That's a point that's worth making.

Also the other point that Matt made, which is other people have made to me as well, is that, if you look at this space and you give it to a car, a car can park there for several hours. If you even charge the car, how much does the city make off of that parking? $10, $20? For a restaurant, for them to be able to have that space means that they can give jobs, they can hire an extra busboy, an extra person who works in the kitchen. That, I think, is something that lawmakers need to recognize as well, is that the restaurant industry is a really critical source of employment in this city for low wage workers, immigrant workers. That's another thing that the City Council will have to weigh.

Brian Lehrer: A little pushback here, I think, on keeping these structures open 12 months rather than seasonally. Nicole in Pelham, you're on WNYC. Hi, Nicole. Thanks for calling in.

Nicole: Hi. Thank you so much for taking my call. My blood pressure spiked as soon as I heard this topic.

Brian Lehrer: Yours and thousands of other people. Go ahead.

Nicole: Yes, I know. I have a lot of sympathy for the restaurant and the problems that people have incurred, but I cannot walk down another street in Brooklyn with structures that are completely empty, boarded up, filled with furniture. It's obvious no one is using them in the dead of winter and spending a half an hour looking for a parking spot.

If you go to Arthur Avenue in the Bronx, it's just a complete disaster. You can't park anywhere and there are structures lining the street that are totally empty. The same thing, I'm from Bay Ridge, my parents still live there. You go to Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, and 95% of these structures are boarded up and closed for months at a time. I understand you have to have sympathy, but there has to be some cost-benefit analysis done, something more than, "Oh, well, we are in debt." I'm very sorry to hear that. We've all incurred a lot of issues because of COVID, but leaving these-

Brian Lehrer: Some people have, some people haven't.

Nicole: -structures lining the street is too much.

Brian Lehrer: Nicole, thank you very much. Cost-benefit analysis, Liz. We've heard now, in a certain respect, two sides. Who has the City Council's ear?

Liz: Both sides. The City Council did as they do with all legislation, they held hearings about this, and both sides came and spoke. There are real opponents to outdoor dining who, similar to Nicole, they drive around, they're looking for a parking space, they can't find one. They don't see how this is justified, especially in the winter when they're seeing mostly empty dining sheds.

You also have the restaurant industry, which is also very much at the table and making their arguments about jobs, about how their diners prefer this. You also have public space advocates who also see this-- For them, this is almost a gateway to a bigger conversation about how we value public space as I said previously. All the stakeholders are definitely there and they've made their case to the City Council. Now, it's up to the City Council to strike the right balance, as they like to say.

Brian Lehrer: The last caller said her blood pressure spiked when we started this topic. I wonder if we could measure all the listeners to the show, did their blood pressure spike more when we started talking about open restaurants or when we started talking earlier about the possibility of a World War with China? I have a feeling it was this one.

Liz Kim reports on all of this for WNYC and Gothamist, and her most recent article is called How much should it cost to use an NYC street? A bill on outdoor dining is set to decide. Liz, thanks as always.

Liz: Thanks, Brian.

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