Council makes proposal for outdoor dining

As the de Blasio administration drags its heels on reopening restaurants, the City Council unveiled a plan to allow eateries to serve customers on sidewalks and other outdoor spaces.

Food vendors would be able to apply for permits to operate on sidewalks, streets, pedestrian plazas, parking lots and elsewhere, under the legislation introduced Thursday.

“The shutdown has been extraordinarily hard for restaurants across the city, but … the reopening is going to be hard as well because social distancing will still be paramount,” Council Speaker Corey Johnson said at a news conference.

The proposal comes as the city’s celebrated restaurant business has been devastated by coronavirus, which prompted Gov. Cuomo to bar establishments from serving customers on-premises since mid-March. Restaurant revenue plummeted nearly 90% during the first four months of the year, according to the mayor’s office, compared to the same time frame in 2019.

As the city gears up to begin reopening as soon as next week, Mayor de Blasio has come under growing criticism for failing to detail plans on how restaurants can resume serving customers.

“I personally don’t have confidence that the mayor has been an outside-the-box thinker about rethinking street space,” said Councilman Antonio Reynoso (DBrooklyn), who’s sponsoring the new bill along with Johnson.

Earlier this week, de Blasio said at a news conference that his administration was still working on guidelines for reopening restaurants. An “interagency group” is examining the possibility of outdoor dining, according to Transportation Commissioner Polly Trottenberg.

The policy would last until Oct. 31 of this year or whenever social-distancing rules are lifted, Johnson said.