New York, NY – City Transportation Commissioner Janette Sadik-Khan is rolling out another pet project: “pop-up cafés” erected in gutters, traffic lanes and parking spots.
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The Department of Transportation has green-lighted 12 applications by Manhattan and Brooklyn eateries to build 6-foot-wide wooden platforms alongside the curbs of city streets.
Café tables and chairs, like those in Times Square, would be set up inches from moving traffic, with planters serving as buffers. Open to anyone, people could order food from sponsoring eateries, or just sit and not buy anything. Booze and smoking would be forbidden.
“No one’s here to force this on anybody,” DOT planner Ed Janoff told a crowd at a meeting of Community Board 2’s transportation committee last week.
But many SoHo residents fear just that. They blasted the “harebrained idea”.
“The DOT is trying to do an end-run around zoning rules” that ban sidewalk cafes in SoHo, said SoHo Alliance executive director Sean Sweeney. “We don’t want outdoor dining or public plazas in our neighborhood!”
Besides extra noise, crowds and rats scurrying for dropped food, residents said the curbside cafes might be dangerous.
“If a driver happens to be texting, he could slam into a cafe at 35 to 40 mph,” said Maury Schott, chairman of the sidewalks committee, who noted that some cafes would protrude into the street where no parking is allowed.
Restaurants and other shops would have to buy insurance, as well as pay to design, construct, furnish and maintain the pop-ups.
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This is part of Mr. Blomberg’s war on cars!
This is a great idea and will make NYC more like many European cities where such cafes are the norm. Hopefully, we will eventually get some of these streeside cafes in the heimese neighborhoods, although the need for hashgacha could make that economically prohibitive. It would be great to have somewhere to stop for a quick “cappucino and chultent.”
the way she going she’ll be as infamous as robert moses was. The only problem is there no to turn back from her idiotic plans. While on the subject, what happened with ft hamilton pky ped walkways and no one ever answered why the ped walkways on church ave. are half the size.
How many pedestrians are going to be hurt by waiters rushing back & forth?