Policymakers across government need to recommit to innovating to ensure small businesses can safely and successfully reopen and recover from the dual COVID-19 economic and public health crises. Using every tool in our toolbox presents a particularly vexing challenge in the face of multi-billion dollar city and state budget shortfalls. Even understanding the hurdle that budget gap presents, there remains room for us to use the policy levers available to us.
Legislation proposed this week, Int 1957-2020, calls for new more proactive action on part of the Department of Transportation (DOT) in identifying open spaces for restaurants – streamlining the permitting process to allow restaurants to reopen while adhering to social distancing requirements. Permits granted under this proposed law would expire October 31, or when social distancing requirements are lifted, whichever comes later.
This legislation represents an important step in assisting restaurants’ reopening. In addition, we should mobilize zoning and land use tools to help restaurants and storefronts find greater stability in the medium and long term. When pursuing lines of credit or loan applications, when making planning decisions on how many employees to take on, and when trying to calculate cash flow projections – the medium and long term very much enter into a small businesses’ short-term prospects.
Right now, it can cost tens of thousands of dollars, sometimes as high as $100,000 in attorney and consultant costs, for a small business to pursue the highly technical process of gaining the authorizations that allow for a sidewalk café or secure city recognition of a commercial use into the future; that is, securing a commercial overlay in city zoning. Proactive action on part of the NYC Department of Small Business Services (SBS) and the Department of City Planning (DCP) would take that significant cost off the shoulders of small businesses. In place of individual businesses privately applying to the city, SBS would be empowered to proactively pursue land use applications assisted by DCP expertise.
Both the Department of Housing Preservation and Development (HPD) and the New York City Economic Development Corporation (EDC) already possess this authority with respect to affordable housing and large development projects.
A minority of restaurants face this particular zoning and commercial overlays hurdle, but mobilizing the city’s land-use expertise in consideration of small businesses would have the added beneficial impact of increasing the sustained attention to the challenges small businesses face in land use policymaking. Community Boards, other city agencies and neighborhood stakeholders would remain important in ensuring a comprehensive vision is included in land use.
Acting proactively alongside DOT, SBS and DCP can contribute to setting us on a path to a more robust recovery for our small businesses and all our shared communities.
