One Brooklyn Pizzeria’s Battle in the War Against Outdoor Dining
An example of an outdoor dining shed in NYC.
As COVID-19 spurred new public health measures in 2020, New York City was desperate for space. Maintaining a distance of six feet or more in one of the densest cities in North America would be impossible unless people could get out of businesses, off of sidewalks, and onto the streets.
Luckily, the street space was there.
Over the next few months, dozens of streets closed to motorized traffic and instead opened to every other use imaginable. What followed was a golden age of curbside dining. Across the five boroughs, restaurants populated parking spots with everything from scrappy shacks to bespoke enclosures.
Four years later, however, the city has largely reversed its permissive outdoor dining policies, making it significantly more expensive—and, by many restaurateurs' accounts, technically impossible—to keep the outdoor shacks. According to some calculations, approximately 13,000 restaurants were forced to dismantle their structures. One Brooklyn pizzeria, however, found a workaround.
"I mean we can't have a structure. It's not a structure. It's a legally parked car. Just so happens people eat pizza in it," Nick Baglivo told New York’s ABC7. Baglivo co-owns L’Industrie alongside Massimo Lavegia. When the city forced the two to take down their outdoor seating, they needed to get creative. So, they bought a bus.
"We saw that it was a cool idea, you know, to buy a bus and then park it legally in the street," Lavegia told the news. “When you're a small shop like this you fit 7 to 8 people and you get an extra 20 to 30 seats, it makes all the world of a difference," Baglivo added.
Their classic yellow school bus looks like any other from the outside. On the inside: a checkered floor, wooden countertops, and LED lights kept on by a solar panel on the roof. Pix11 News visited the site and spoke to two diners, Lisa and Dale, who were visiting from Charleston, West Virginia. “This is so cool!” Lisa told reporters. The pair is no stranger to repurposed buses, having eaten at a similar setup in West Virginia. “This one’s way cuter,” Lisa said. “We love New York.”
The pizzeria’s loophole was seemingly a win-win. Patrons had a place to enjoy L’Industrie’s famed slices since space inside their brick-and-mortar location was limited. And the restaurant had a way to manage overflow. Not to mention, since curbside parking is free, they didn’t have to pay a fee for the extra dining space. They even moved it biweekly for street cleaning–a ritual as familiar to NYC car owners as feeding the meter or circling the block for a spot.
Images of L’industrie’s “pizza bus” courtesy of Yelp.
Not so fast
By mid-December, about two months after they parked the school bus, Baglivo and Levagia’s ingenuity came under fire.
The New York City Department of Transportation, or NYCDOT, handed the pizzeria an official warning. If L’Industrie didn’t remove its bus, it could be fined $500 the first time, and $1,000 for subsequent violations. Repeat violations could even threaten the business’ chances of obtaining an outdoor dining permit in the future, a NYCDOT representative told Kevin Duggan of Streetsblog.
“So let's get this straight: You can eat a slice of pizza in a car ... as long as the car doesn't belong to the pizzeria?” Duggan remarked.
Ayza’s trolley in Manhattan.
L’Industrie wasn’t the only eatery in hot water. Across the river, a retro trolley parked on the curb also received a warning. It belonged to Ayza, a chocolate and wine bar. Ayza installed the trolley early in the pandemic, and it quickly became a cherished addition to an otherwise grey, scaffolding-lined street. The owners kept it standing even after the city’s moratorium on outdoor dining, though after the latest warning, they’re looking to relocate and possibly sell the beloved structure. "Unfortunately right now, the trolley, although it makes so much sense, we are not in the guidelines," Ayza’s owner told Streetsblog. "It’s hard to accept all the efforts will go to waste, just by thinking outside of the box to save the business."
Another restaurant, Il Posto Accanto, was ready to throw (metaphorical) hands when hit with the city’s new rules back in 2024. "I will fight that fine. I plan to fight until the very end. If I have to go before a tribunal judge, I will," owner Julio Pena told EV Grieve. "Not just for me but for our staff."
The removal of his outdoor dining structure would mean less business, less revenue, and lay-offs. "There are places like ours that use the outdoors year-round, that are heated and comfortable," he said of his space. "We do not want to cut the hours of our staff or lay off staff.”
Unfortunately, Pena felt he had no choice. He dismantled his outdoor setup, dreading further penalties from the DOT.
Punishment or partnership?
Instead of supporting local entrepreneurs who bring life to city streets, the new rules are making it costlier and more complicated to provide the kind of outdoor spaces that have proven economic and social benefits. Restaurant owners don’t want a fight with local government, after all—they want a partner. Of course, so does NYCDOT.
After ordering restaurants to take down their sheds in November 2024, the agency announced new design guidelines by which restaurants would need to abide. These guidelines aim to balance public safety requirements, ADA compliance, and aesthetics, while ensuring that the new setups can be easily disassembled when necessary, such as outside of the city’s newly designated “outdoor dining season,” which runs April through November.
Some New Yorkers even appreciate the new criteria. With so many “dilapidated, abandoned structures that are eyesores,” as the city’s Fox affiliate put it, aesthetic standards were arguably overdue. “We’ve locked in the best parts of the pandemic program and done away with the worst, and I can’t wait to dine out this summer!" said NYC Mayor Eric Adams. Though, did a call for upgrades warrant a crack down? Why did the city seemingly opt for punishment over partnership?
According to a March 3, 2025 press release, NYCDOT received nearly 3,800 applications from over 3,000 restaurants for its new outdoor dining program. “The program is already more than two and a half times the size of the pre-COVID sidewalk café program,” the release touted—reinforcing the strong demand for streeteries. Yet just days earlier, Pix11 News reported that only 42 applications–roughly 1%–had been approved.
“Time is of the essence,” the Pix11 newscaster emphasized. April 1st–the start of “outdoor dining season”–is just around the corner and restaurant owners are increasingly anxious about the backlog. They can’t even begin to design and construct their sheds until they receive the green light. Some are concerned that the tight turnaround will overwhelm contractors, driving up costs and creating additional delays. Most are simply frustrated that all this hassle is just to restore what they already had before the city rewrote the rules.
The introduction of an “outdoor dining season” raises further uncertainty. Will restaurants need to rebuild from scratch every spring? According to the Dining Out NYC website: “Businesses will need to identify storage space to ensure that materials can be removed during the non-roadway season. NYC DOT will be working with the private sector to support emerging and existing rental businesses to supply restaurants with rentable outdoor dining setups, and the setup and breakdown services associated with them.”
It’s worth noting that the new program, Dining Out NYC, primarily targets roadway dining setups. Sidewalk cafés were not subject to the same level of scrutiny and do not need to be removed during the off-season. But for many restaurants, the roadbed was the only viable option—one that now comes with more red tape, higher costs, and an uncertain future.
Cities should make it easier—not harder—for local businesses to succeed. Outdoor dining turns empty pavement into productive, people-friendly spaces that support entrepreneurs, strengthen downtowns, and generate more local wealth. Want to see how small shifts in land use impact your city’s bottom line? Check out the Strong Towns Finance Decoder and explore the real costs—and opportunities—of the spaces we take for granted.
Asia (pronounced “ah-sha”) Mieleszko serves as a Staff Writer for Strong Towns. A dilettante urbanist since adolescence, she's excited to convert a lifetime of ad-hoc volunteerism into a career. Her unconventional background includes directing a Ukrainian folk choir, pioneering synaesthetic performances, photographing festivals, designing websites, teaching, and ghostwriting. She can be found wherever Wi-Fi is reliable, typically along Amtrak's Northeast Corridor.