Open Restaurants

Outdoor dining as New Yorkers have come to know it might be over. New York City restaurants with roadway and sidewalk dining setups that did not apply for the city's new program by the August 3 deadline must now remove their structures, many of which have been in place since 2020. According to the Daily News, about 2,500 restaurants, or about 15 percent, of the roughly 13,000 restaurants that had utilized outdoor dining have applied to keep their al fresco seating. The huge decline in participants in the program, which helped keep restaurants in business during the pandemic, comes after the city approved new guidelines to make the program seasonal, requiring restaurants to disassemble and store the structure during the winter, in addition to new fees and design requirements.
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