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| G.N.Miller/NYPost |
A group of Big Apple residents have slapped the city with a lawsuit opposing an outdoor street dining program started during the pandemic – claiming it has increased trash, vermin, drug use, graffiti, noise and awful stenches throughout the boroughs.
The lawsuit was filed by 35 people who live in Manhattan, Brooklyn, Queens and the Bronx who are challenging the Temporary Open Restaurant program meant to help eateries and bars stay afloat during the COVID-19 outbreak by allowing them to expand seating outdoors.
But the residents note that other pandemic-era rules, like those involving masks, vaccines and social distancing, have ended as the outbreak has eased, and argued there is no longer justification to continue the TOR program on an emergency basis — especially since the dining sheds have led to the decline of their neighborhoods, according to the Manhattan Supreme Court lawsuit filed late Friday.
“The open restaurant program has transformed what used to be a pleasant city block with a healthy balance of commercial and residential use into a gritty, shanty streetscape fueled by alcohol sales and marked by sanitation and noise violations,” wrote one of the plaintiffs, Douglas Armer, in a court filing.
Armer says the program has harmed his family’s quality of life in their neighborhood around East 20th Street between Broadway and Park Avenue South. --->READ MORE HERE
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| Helayne Seidman |
It’s time for City Hall to pull the plug on outdoor dining sheds, which sprang up as an “emergency” measure in 2020 to save the locked-down restaurant industry.
You don’t have to be a lawsuit-filing NIMBY zealot to recognize what the so-called “Open Restaurants” program served up: a plague of ugly, ramshackle sheds that are magnets for vermin and crime.
While providing refuge for the dwindling numbers of New Yorkers who still think that indoor dining is dangerous, the pop-up abominations offer overnight cover to muggers, drug dealers and other sleazy elements.
Now, Post reporter Melissa Klein finds that lowlifes are using the sheds as rent-free refuges to conduct al fresco trysts in full public view. The bombshell expose should mark “final call” for the monstrosities.
Neighbors cringe over the rampant depravity at their front doors. But the NYPD and a merry band of useless city agencies do nothing except to harass owners with fines for minor technical violations. (e.g., a wall that encroaches an inch into a bike lane or a bus stop). --->READ MORE HEREFollow links below to relevant/related stories and resources:
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