Diners outside of Le Dive. A change in Open Streets permits would severely limit the number of days the restaurant can place seats on Canal.
Photo: Robert K. Chin/Alamy
Two weeks into a deep freeze making New Yorkers stir-crazy, Nialls Fallon was already picturing the configuration of tables and umbrellas he would set up on Canal Street once warmer weather returned. The restaurateur, who co-owns an empire of Mediterranean-influenced eateries including Cervo’s, Eel Bar, and Hart’s, has managed a city-designated Open Street on the two-block stretch of Canal between Essex and Orchard Streets each year since 2020.
The makeshift pedestrian plaza transformed the Chinatown borderland into Dimes Square. From April to November, thousands of Zoomers and influencers congregate in the open-air dining destination. As customers spill out of spots like Le Dive, Dimes, Clandestino, and Fallon’s Cervo’s, the scene feels more like Marseille than Manhattan.
Critics can debate the area’s ongoing cultural cachet, but walking through the plaza on a warm summer evening is undeniably pleasant, the crowds are a reminder that the appeal has not diminished one bit, and the Canal Street Merchants Association has been planning for another bountiful summer where restaurants can serve as many as 1,500 customers a night. Now, though, an issue with the Department of Transportation will mean the end of this alfresco oasis unless changes are made very soon.
Last week, Fallon — who had submitted his renewal forms in December — hopped on a video conference call with two city Transportation officials to finalize any remaining outstanding details. The DOT liaisons explained they would not grant the long-term concession permit necessary for Canal Street’s restaurants to set up tables in the roadway for 183 days of the year. Instead, they offered a short-term agreement — good for only 29 days, covering a single day each weekend through the summer — less than two months before the season was set to begin.
Fallon was shocked. His restaurant and other establishments he partnered with had already paid for additional street furniture and winter storage, as well as retained staff members through the winter so they didn’t have to train new people in the spring. “It was a complete shock,” Fallon says. “Those 29 days won’t generate enough revenue to recoup costs for training, hiring, and equipment. A lot of places have already published schedules for April for hiring,” he adds. “What do they do, fire those people?”
The Open Streets program, of course, sprang out of the pandemic. Mayor Bill de Blasio announced 40 miles of street closures and rolled out an outdoor-dining program allowing restaurants to serve diners in roadways in front of their establishments. A year later, the city made Open Streets permanent, and 326 car-free corridors operated at the program’s peak. (According to a January 2026 state comptroller report, more than 67,200 retail and restaurant jobs were created at the city’s 200 Open Street locations.)
Anyone who’s followed the back-and-forth knows that there have been problems. When, in 2023, the Eric Adams administration adopted new rules curbing outside dining for four months of the year, the number of participating restaurants fell from a peak of 8,000 to as few as 400. After revising the city code last summer, the DOT was set to manage Open Streets like other special events on its properties by awarding two types of concession agreements. Restaurants were supportive of the rule change since the long-term concession would allow most Open Streets operators to continue blocking off their roads on weekends for nearly half the year. When the city was codifying Open Streets, Fallon explains, they tried to find an existing framework to manage the program. “We’ve been operating in a gray zone for the last six seasons, and many of us don’t like that uncertainty.”
But this year, DOT officials told Fallon they did not have enough time to process any long-term agreements, and the short-term ones they planned to offer would start on May 1 instead of April 1. They advised Fallon to begin planning now for a long-term concession, if he wanted one, for 2027. “When I asked why they didn’t have establishments start this process last summer, they said they were understaffed and underfunded,” Fallon says. “There shouldn’t have been any surprises here with what we were doing. Someone dropped the ball.”
Meanwhile, operators of other Open Street corridors were not even aware their season could be reduced. Fallon called the head of a nearby Open Street program who said they wouldn’t be able to operate at all if they were only granted 29 days. Brooklyn Councilman Lincoln Restler, whose district includes several seasonal open streets, had similarly not heard of any changes before Grub Street contacted him. “DOT has made the wrong decision by dramatically limiting opportunities for restaurants to benefit from Open Streets,” Restler says. “This is inconsistent with our push to make outdoor dining year-round, and I hope the agency will swiftly reconsider this policy.”
City officials acknowledge the 29-day window will not work for every neighborhood, and a DOT official says the agency is currently seeking an alternative way to ensure they will be able to operate for as many days as last year. Crucially, nothing is set yet. “We know the framework of these agreements, which was established long before the Open Streets program existed, does not always meet our partners’ needs, so we are working to cut red tape and deliver a solution to allow for Open Streets, like on Canal Street, to continue uninterrupted this coming season,” DOT spokesman Vincent Barone tells me. (“Fixing the city’s outdoor-dining program is one of the Council’s top policy priorities to help small businesses thrive and maintain New York City as the economic capital of the world,” Council spokesperson Benjamin Fang-Estrada says.)
Fallon is hopeful the DOT can find a temporary solution, such as a mayoral executive order or multiple short-term concessions, so Canal Street can run again this year. In the future, Fallon wants the city to create a third type of concession exclusively for Open Streets participants to make it easier for restaurants to apply for seasonal permits: “These aren’t large corporations bidding on vending at city concessions with multiple contracts with the city. Some are coffee shops with 12 tables,” he says. “They shouldn’t have to review a 50-page legal document and hire a lawyer to go through an arduous long-term concession agreement just to put a couple tables and chairs in the street.”
