Restaurants must pay to play
Outdoor seating fees range from $199 to $399 per month
Boston restaurateurs will have to pay a monthly fee if they want to move forward with outdoor dining this year.
Restaurants approved for outdoor dining are being told to pay $399 per month if they have a liquor license and $199 per month if they do not, Mayor Michelle Wu announced.
This is a change from the pandemic-fueled outdoor dining seasons outside of the North End, the city’s only neighborhood that doesn’t have the city’s permission to go forth with on-street dining this year due to neighborhood concerns and ongoing infrastructure projects.
Wu placed a North Endonly
$7,500 fee on restaurants who provided outdoor dining last year, while the other neighborhoods weren’t charged.
This year’s fees are citywide, meaning they will apply to North End restaurants approved for private or sidewalk patios, the mayor’s chief spokesman Ricardo Patron told the Herald on Friday.
Fees will go toward technical assistance for hiring architects to draft site plans so all restaurants will have the opportunity to provide outdoor dining in the future, according to the mayor’s office.
Andy Fadous, co-owner of American Provisions and Gray’s Hall on East Broadway in South Boston, said in a release that the return of outdoor dining will allow his restaurants to be open longer hours, employ more staff while providing community space in the morning and at night.
Boston launched its outdoor dining program out of necessity to keep restaurants afloat during the pandemic, and it did. The benefits led to the city shifting to this permanent program.
“For us, as a small restaurant the pandemic forced us to get creative, and the outdoor dining program has been a critical component to our sustainability and recovery,” Fadous said. “We saw changes in consumer behavior when we were forced to rethink the way we use public spaces,”
Applications will be available online starting Thursday, and restaurateurs will be able to track their application’s progress. Professionally-engineered site plans for outdoor dining setups must be submitted to ensure they meet the state building code, according to the mayor’s office.
City officials say the goal is to open restaurant patios as early as May 1.
“We’ve taken what we learned over the last couple years to inform the permanent program,” Wu said in a release, “and we’re committed to working with our neighborhoods to make this program a success.”
Since the North End won’t be open to on-street dining, the city will be buying back jersey barriers from neighborhood restaurateurs and provide relief for costs related to storing the equipment, according to officials.
Restaurateurs in the city’s Little Italy voiced their disappointment during a meeting Thursday, expressing they feel the city is discriminating against them.
“The North End is the greatest Italian community in the country. For us to be discriminated against in a situation like this, I think it’s a flaw to Italians, I think it’s a flaw to the North End,” said Frank DePasquale, owner of several North End restaurants.