PREPARE FOR THE NEW NEW YORK CITY
Get ready for dance music in restaurants, more rats in parks, big-top-free circuses and drones at Broadway theaters.
As the city’s coronavirus crisis begins to ease off — and after almost two months on lockdown — quarantine-fatigued residents are looking ahead to when the Big Apple can finally start to reopen.
Gov. Cuomo has set seven benchmarks regions must meet before they can start a four-phase reopening plan, and Mayor de Blasio said last week that he expects the city to get there as early as June.
But when will things go back to normal — and what will “normal” even look like?
Health experts, industry insiders and public officials told The Post what to expect.
RESTAURANTS
Under Cuomo’s guidelines, in-house dining isn’t allowed until Phase 3, so if the city meets the benchmarks by June 1, the earliest possible date for eatery reopenings would be around the first week of July.
Whenever it happens, experts say to expect big changes including salad-bar monitors and fast-paced music encouraging you to scram.
Barry Dry, who runs Parched Hospitality Group, said he was preparing to take new safety measures like using disposable cutlery and suggested customers could act as their own food runners to limit contact with waiters.
If capacity is limited, Dry said customers should wave goodbye to three-hour-long, candle-lit dinners — because “higher turnover” will be necessary for restaurateurs to eke out a profit.
He plans to encourage customers to keep moving by blasting fast-tempo music.
“[The] music you play increases or decreases the time people spend,” he explained.
And serving yourself at coffee bars and buffets will be a thing of the past, says Melissa Fleischut, president and CEO of the New York State Restaurant Association.
“The new normal would be the coffee station serving you coffee instead of you serving yourself,” Fleischut said.
At other serve-yourself places like buffets and salad bars, Fleischut said to expect line monitors who will be policing social distancing.
SCHOOLS
All city public schools will be closed for the rest of the school year, and Chancellor Richard Carranza told principals recently there is a “50-50” chance they will reopen in fall 2020.
But one high-ranking DOE official told The Post that it’s “highly unlikely” schools will be able to return by then, given the agency is overhauling its remote-learning system.
And figuring out a way to social distance will be challenging in the city’s schools, where classrooms are already overcrowded.
“Schools are going to be a tough one from all levels, from school buses to classroom size to hallways and cafeterias,” said Dr. Henry Raymond, an epidemiologist from the Rutgers School of Public Health.
Whether in-person classes resume will be heavily influenced by members of the city teachers union, who have vowed not to return without a long list of guarantees — including testing for kids and staff, daily temperature checks for people entering and exiting schools and deep cleaning after any possible infection.
Another demand is social distancing, which would require remote learning to continue in some form to lessen daily attendance, with kids possibly alternating when they come in to class.
Education officials are also considering having students come in on one of two daily shifts.
OUTDOOR RECREATION
For now, swimming is banned on city beaches, although the sand is open and surfing is allowed.
But local leaders expect big crowds to pack the shores this summer and fear that pandemic-related budget cuts will leave them without enough enforcement to keep people apart.
“Whether the city allows it or not, people don’t care. They’re tired of being tied up. They just want to get out,” said Pat Singer, head of the Brighton Beach Neighborhood Association.
At parks, some insiders expect a more orderly experience, but others foresee chaos.
Dan Biederman, executive director of Bryant Park Corp., said the Midtown park plans to bring back musical performances using chairs to keep people apart.
A similar system is in place at Domino Park in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, where circles have been drawn on the lawn to keep visitors apart.
But several advocates expect the parks will be
much dirtier without a budget for the seasonal workers who help keep them clean in the summer months.
“Newspaper, dog waste, beer bottles, diapers. I mean anything you can possibly imagine. It won’t be just overflowing garbage, but people leaving their waste right where it is,” said Geoffrey Croft, who runs the nonprofit NYC Park Advocates, adding that he expects the mess to draw an abundance of rats.
ENTERTAINMENT
Arts, entertainment and recreation come last in Cuomo’s four-phase plan, meaning July is the earliest the entertainment sector could begin reopening.
While that may mean cinemas, museums and concerts return in some form, the Broadway League has said shows on the Great White Way won’t be back until at least after Labor Day.
Even then, a reopening this year is still up in the air, said the league’s president, Charlotte St. Martin, noting that reducing capacity would be financially unviable for Broadway shows.
In the meantime, she said that among other safety measures, an industry task force is looking into drones that could clean theaters after each performance.
For live music, it will be easier to hold performances outdoors at venues like Long Island’s Jones Beach Theater than indoors at Madison Square Garden, said Dr. Isaac Weisfuse, a medical epidemiologist from Cornell University Public Health and a former deputy commissioner of the city Health Department.
Weisfuse said instrument-only concerts will be considered safer than those with singers belting out lyrics — and spit.
Meanwhile, the Big Apple Circus is envisioning a promenade-style circus that functions like an amusement park and will likely come without the big top, said executive producer Jack Marsh.
“So, for instance, over here you’d have the strongman’s trailer . . . Over here you’d try out a certain skill like juggling. Over here you’d dress up in your circus finest and take an Instagramable photo,” Marsh explained.
COMMUTING
Subways, busses and ferries have continued running through the pandemic, but their ridership has dropped dramatically.
Even as the city’s economy reopens, experts say many people will forgo mass transit until there is a vaccine.
“People who might have relied on the subway a lot more in the past will probably rely on it less,” Weisfuse said.
The MTA has admitted that keeping riders six feet apart is impossible, and it expects ridership to be at 50 to 60 percent of pre-pandemic levels at the end of the year.
MTA Chairman Pat Foye has floated the idea of reserved seating on buses and trains using “Ticketmaster technology” to ensure fewer riders, but he admitted it would be logistically challenging.
Meanwhile, the roads will become even more gridlocked as transit-wary commuters turn to cars.
If just one out of every four former transit commuters switched to driving, the average car trip would increase by more than seven minutes, according to an analysis by Vanderbilt University engineering professor Dan Work.
Mohamed Mezghani of the International Association of Public Transport, said, “The city will collapse because of the increased congestion.”
TOURISM
The tourist hordes are likely to stay away at least until international travel restrictions are lifted — and until there is something to draw them to the city, industry insiders said.
“Unfortunately until Broadway reopens, until the Metropolitan Opera reopens, until the museums reopen, it’s going to take a lot of time. You’re not going to have the city with all its many lights on, so to speak, and that’s why you’ll see lower [hotel] occupancy,” said Vijay Dandapani, president and CEO of the Hotel Association of New York.
When lockdowns are lifted, expect fewer people to be allowed at the city’s most popular spots.
The Empire State Building plans to limit occupancy in its observatories and require temperature checks, masks and hand sanitizing, said Anthony E. Malkin, the CEO of Empire State Realty Trust.
But until a vaccine or therapy is developed, Dandapani expects there will be a general aversion to travel to New York.