Nosy Neighbor: Are restaurants allowed to advertise on their dining sheds?

J. wrote: “I thought restaurants could only build sheds within their property lines lines and are they now allowed to make money by putting advertising on them?”

In answer to the first question, while I could not find the answer in the Department of Transportation’s regulations online, I am confident that restaurants are allowed to extend to neighboring properties with the building owner’s permission.

As to advertising, this from the DOT: “Yes advertising signs are currently permitted on dining sheds in New York City, however owners need to acquire permits from DOB like any other business sign and owners are subject to enforcement actions for not obtaining them.”

Why this is ok is a mystery to me — the dining sheds were intended to be bonuses for restaurants to help them through covid, not opportunities to advertise on public property. In the case of Modern Martial Arts, I am a little more understanding since a view of their storefront and their signage is blocked by the extra-long 1803 dining shed. But the other two are just visual garbage — billboards in the middle of the streetscape.

 

5 Comments

  1. If advertising is allowed on dining sheds, that is the final nail in their coffin, or rather, nail removal in their destruction. Most sheds are already eyesores, sloppily built and/or vandalized with graffiti. This will only make them even more of an eyesore. We are already assaulted with advertising everywhere. We should be putting laws in place to remove outdoor advertising, not add more of it. We should start with banning billboards in the city, as other cities in the world have done.

  2. The City has done everything for restaurants!
    Allowing free shantytown street shed space and continuing this even though the Covid Emergency is over, allowing “take out” drinks (a huge money maker) and more.

    In the meantime, the City has done nothing for local shops and businesses facing high rent, ecommerce competition, shoplifting, trash & rats from nearby restaurants….

    So a great place like Kings is closing – and restaurants get to make even more money.

  3. In 8-10 years downtown NYC will look and feel like Bangkok. Good or bad?

  4. Disney has what is essentially an electric billboard on west broadway between houston and prince in the window of a vacant storefront. It glows like a comet all night long. So, not just restaurants.

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