Roadway Dining Sheds Down for Winter; Most Won’t be Back in April ‘25

As the NYC DOT’s deadline for taking down roadway dining sheds for the winter expired on Nov. 29, the majority appear unlikely to return next April unless there is a sudden surge in new applications before then. The date marks the end of this year’s now-seasonal roadway season, which will start up again on April 1. Restaurants that have successfully applied for sidewalk sheds can keep them up year-round.

This follows an October survey of 477 dining establishments, published by The Hospitality Alliance, a restaurant trade group, which found that 244 respondents chose not to apply to the new program. The holdouts gave three broadly defined reasons for doing so: 40 percent found new clearance rules too onerous, 38 percent believed that taking sheds down for the winter was too expensive, and 31 percent believed that the DOT’s application process was too byzantine.

Roughly 13,000 temporary dining sheds permits existed in New York City over the pandemic, 8,000 of which pertained to roadway sheds, according to a study conducted by NYU. The DOT has contested those figures, and believes the true total number of sheds being used at any given time over the pandemic sat between 6,000 and 8,000.

Either way, Gothamist reports that after the DOT opened the application portal for the formal “Dining Out NYC” program earlier this year, only 3,000 such applications have been submitted as of Nov. 27, with a mere 1,400 pertaining to roadway sheds.

In other words, the total number of shed permits–both sidewalk and roadway–has dropped precipitously since the COVID-19 dining-out boom. Applications are still being accepted on a rolling basis year-round, however. This means that there’s an opportunity for businesses to register their roadway sheds by next April, or their year round sidewalk sheds as soon as they want. Accepted licenses will be valid for four years.

Keeping up unregistered sheds of all types, or registered roadway sheds that were supposed to come down for the winter, comes with steep costs. First-time violations will come with a fine of $500, with repeat offenders receiving $1,000 fines.

The application process is quite complicated in its own right, as sheds transition to new and different standards for construction. Outside of a slew of forms that owners must submit–tax, insurance, and pest control–sheds must not fall outside certain measurements. Applications also come with a bevy of fees, depending on what restaurants are seeking: $1,050 for a separate roadway or sidewalk shed license, $2,100 for a dual-shed license, $1,000 for a public hearing, $1,500 for a sidewalk shed security deposit, and $2,500 for a roadway shed deposit.

Other regulations, which can add further costs, have been instituted in response to complaints from parts of the local community that disliked parts of the pandemic program. For example, roadway cafés must not block travel lanes and provide a clear pathway for commuting New Yorkers. Sidewalk sheds must provide a clear path for those using the sidewalk. Sand barriers, which have fallen from popularity due to their attractiveness to rodents, must be replaced by water barriers.