(Credit: Steve Thurston 2022)
The temporary, outdoor dining area has been removed from BurgerFi, on the 400 block of Broadway in Saratoga Springs. Regulations require that the owners remove the temporary structures by midnight Nov. 1 of each year. Wheatfields bar and restaurant in the distance, at the end of the block, has a permanent, Sidewalk Cafe, which need not be removed.
The Saratoga Springs City Council voted to amend the outdoor dining laws to require Design Review Commission approval of summertime, temporary outdoor dining sites. The law already required the DRC to approve the city’s many “sidewalk cafes,” the permanent structures and fences that coral café tables and chairs on Broadway.
“The intent would be that the sidewalk café program and the outdoor dining program begin to merge under the same auspices,” Commissioner of Accounts Dillon Moran said just before the vote, Tuesday Nov. 1. The Accounts Department issues the permits for outdoor dining.
[Read our earlier coverage of outdoor dining here.]
New York State changed outdoor dining and alcoholic beverage rules during the pandemic. After their long closure, restaurants could re-open, but only at 50% capacity. The state allowed municipalities to create rules around outdoor dining, allowing some restaurants and bars to place tables on sidewalks, grass buffers and even street parking spaces to regain some of the lost indoor space.
A state law allowed localities to run the temporary outdoor dining programs, including how to permit and regulate it.
Moran has pushed since he took office in January to extend outdoor dining into future years to allow restaurants and bars to budget for the cost of outdoor tables, chairs and umbrellas. To that end, the city had already approved the extension of the temporary outdoor dining rules through 2024 after the state extended its law this summer. The city has also made the use of private parking lots directly outside restaurants legal places to create outdoor dining space, with a city-issued Special Use Permit.
All this freeing up of regulations on restaurants drew some pushback in city council meetings as people said the rules for the temporary areas were too loose compared to those of the outdoor cafes, which already had to go before the DRC for permits and approval.
When the law was brought forward in September, Mayor Ron Kim pointed out a number of errors in the draft law that required correction, though he said general he was in favor of it.
"We now have outdoor dining, and we now have sidewalk cafes, and how do we deal with the difference?" he asked.
"One's on Broadway and the rest aren't," Moran replied.
Still, Moran's office revised the law to draw the process for temporary outdoor dining closer to that of permanent sidewalk cafés.
As with the cafés, the new law requires the outdoor dining application to gain approval of the departments of Public Works and Public Safety and the Building Department before it can move to the DRC. It also requires the Accounts Department to refer all applications to the DRC if they are inside the city’s Architectural Review Districts, Historic Review Districts, or City Landmark Districts, as outlined in the city’s newly-enacted Unified Development Ordinance, the new law says.
“The [DRC] shall use the review criteria for such plans relating to an outdoor dining establishment’s specific location, size and structure for its compatibility of scale, design and material as described in §240-13.9 of the Unified Development Ordinance. The DRB shall only have advisory review over colors used for the temporary outdoor seating locations,” the law says.
It takes affect Jan. 1, 2023. Unless changed by the city council at a future meeting, the law will sunset Nov. 1, 2024.