Street Sheds Transformed New York City Dining. Many Will Soon Disappear.

More than four years after the coronavirus upended life in New York City, some of the most visible vestiges of the pandemic — outdoor dining structures erected outside thousands of restaurants — are facing a deadline that could see many of them razed.

Restaurants that currently offer outdoor dining in sheds on sidewalks or in roadways and wish to continue doing so must apply to the city’s new outdoor dining program by Saturday night and comply with new guidelines, which some owners say will be costly. Business owners who do not apply must take down their existing setups or face fines.

As of Friday afternoon, more than 1,900 restaurants had applied to take part in the new program, which is known as Dining Out N.Y.C. and overseen by the city’s Department of Transportation.

The volume of applications represented a significant drop from the number of restaurants that applied to take part in the temporary outdoor dining program that sprang up at the height of the pandemic. That program received about 13,000 applications in four years.

Though it was unclear how many of the older dining sheds were still operational — a number of them have been abandoned and some have been taken over by rats — the Transportation Department estimated that several thousand restaurants were still offering outdoor dining, in some fashion.

As the Saturday deadline approached, restaurant owners said they were largely happy outdoor dining would continue in New York. But they felt confused or overwhelmed by the sheer amount of information required by the application.