BY THE VILLAGE SUN | Holy shed! What the heck happened?
An outdoor dining hut at Grand Street and West Broadway looked like a tornado hit it on Nov. 1. Neighbors wondered if, in fact, a truck or car had totaled it.
The Village Sun went by to check it out and got the story from a restaurant worker.
As it turns out, the place, A Pasta Bar (a.k.a. Sola Pasta Bar), was simply changing to a new style of outdoor dining shed, and the workers were dismantling the old one, though clearly not in a very dainty fashion.
Told the update, Micki McGee, the leader of South Village Neighbors, scoffed that the new greenhouse-style structure would probably be even more flimsy and dangerous than the old one if it got hit by a truck.
As for the enclosed sheds along the restaurant’s West Broadway frontage, they are not only on the sidewalk instead of in the roadway but also reportedly cover a Con Ed manhole. That could lead to some really “hot” dinner parties!
Bike lanes Downtown are adjacent to the sidewalk, so the only thing “adjacent” to the pedestrian space would be the sidewalk itself. All roadside dining sheds are located on the outside of the bike lanes. A bad idea? Yes. But that’s how it’s being done.
I have a two-year-old toy poodle. I have lived in Soho since 1980. Between sidewalk dining, restaurant sheds and tourists, walking my dog is treacherous. It is a joke that the Department of Transportation is “regulating” this profusion of sidewalk and street dining.
Sola Pasta Bar has a full on-premises liquor license. Per State Liquor Authority rules, a roadbed dining structure must be immediately adjacent to the pedestrian space (the sidewalk), not on the far side of a bike lane as shown; that is an extremely dangerous situation for bikers, servers and customers.
Regarding the “shed in progress” picture, isn’t there supposed to be three feet between a bike lane and a shed? That placement looks dangerously close, among other problems.