New outdoor seating requirements cost NYC restaurateurs money they don’t have
When New York City authorized outdoor dining in Phase 2, many restaurateurs were quick to build street and sidewalk seating areas. But mixed guidelines from the Department of Transportation have left many businesses confused and losing revenue, The New York Times reports. The department’s first set of guidelines permitted outdoor seating where there were one or two lanes of traffic, as long as the barricades were spaced five feet apart. Last week, however, new requirements to have costly 18-inch thick barriers appeared. On Sunday, inspectors handed out orders to a number of restaurants, forcing them to shut down until they brought their seating areas into compliance with the new standards.
