Open Restaurants Expansion Comes at a Cost in Jackson Heights
The sidewalk cafes in the lively community of Jackson Heights, Queens may be expanding but existing small businesses approved for the program are suffering. The New York City Department of Transportation (DOT) has decided to make its COVID-19 emergency Open Restaurants program a permanent fixture in the city.
Anna Sanchez has been running the Colombian restaurant, Los Arrieros, on the vibrant and well-known Roosevelt Avenue for five years but only recently started its sidewalk cafe in October 2020. Sanchez’s sidewalk cafe is not eligible to become permanent because it sits in front of a bus stop for two Metropolitan Transit Authority (MTA) buses, the Q32 and Q33. According to DOT rules, sidewalk cafes can not block the waiting areas for buses.
Los Arrieros has until next summer to be in operation — information communicated to her by the DOT through email.
Sanchez’s small indoor restaurant goes back to its 30 person capacity once this happens. With the sidewalk cafe, she was able to serve up to 45 customers at once. “Sales have increased a little bit more and customers have had the opportunity to enjoy dining here and don’t have to wait long periods of time,” Sanchez said. “Obviously, the more people, the better.”
Starting January, she said she will begin to advocate to keep her sidewalk cafe. In the meantime, Sanchez is preparing her business for the upcoming loss by expanding online ordering so her customer base knows more about pickup and delivery options.
Critics of the program cite traffic issues and adverse health effects from eating in these high-traffic areas.
V.M. Gandhi, a resident of Jackson Heights who has sat on community board three for over 30 years, said sidewalk cafes have become an obstacle to the point that residents of the neighborhood are sometimes forced to walk on the streets creating other issues such as falling and slowing down vehicular traffic on the busy thoroughfares in the area.
“Food served on streets of such ‘sidewalk cafes’ get polluted by dust and fumes generated by vehicular traffic,” Gandhi said. “It is unhealthy and affects the health of those who ate.”
Nepalese restaurant Bhanchha Ghar used to host its patrons with two outdoor tables and umbrellas for a brief time but stopped. According to its owner, Yamuna Shrestha, people complained about the noise and overall atmosphere when eating outside her restaurant.
The restaurant sits directly under the MTA’s above-ground bustling seven line. If her restaurant receives funding from the city, Shrestha says she can afford to redo the sidewalk cafe outside her small business as an enclosed space for her customers’ safety.
Data from the NYC Open Restaurants live map shows that the entire city currently has 11,863 open restaurants as part of its program. 258 of those restaurants are in Jackson Heights. With the expansion of the program, restaurants in Jackson Heights will take part in growing that number to serve more customers.
Earlier this week, community board three of Queens, which serves Jackson Heights, in addition to East Elmhurst, North Corona and LaGuardia Airport, voted on the zoning text amendment to remove locational prohibitions.
Kathi Ko, an outreach coordinator from the Department of City Planning (DCP), presented information to the board that stated what the text amendment aims to do. It will “expand [the] universe of allowed geographies for sidewalk cafes, remove other zoning text that
enables sidewalk cafes [and] grandfather existing enclosed cafes.”
“The Open Restaurants proposal is still in the early stages of public review,” Joe Marvilli, the Deputy Press Secretary of the DCP, said.
Though the community board is made aware of the process and casts a vote along with the borough presidents of New York City, their votes are not “binding.” The City Planning Commission and the City Council have the final approval.
If passed, stage two is enacted which will bring about changes to the sidewalk cafe program through the Citywide Administrative Procedure Act and local law. The entire process will take approximately seven months.
