Rolldown gate law may shutter small businesses - the Council must act immediately
Council Members Althea Stevens, Kayla Santosuosso, and Elsie Encarnación
After years of keeping their doors open through rising rents, higher utility bills, and the lingering effects of the pandemic, many businesses were recently told they may need to replace their rolldown security gates by July 1 - an expense that can cost on average around $10,000.
Their question to us was simple: How are we supposed to afford this?
As Council Members with decades of a vast array of experiences from running and working in partnership with small business owners, we know how difficult it can be to navigate the sea of red tape and regulations put forth by the city. With the cost of goods soaring and commercial rents becoming harder and harder to afford, now is not the time to be burdening small businesses with fines and burdensome regulations. And it is certainly not the time for expensive costs that are the result of our own legislation. But if we don’t act quickly, small businesses may shutter due to an old regulation passed by our very own body.
In 2009, now 16 years ago, the New York City Council passed Local Law 75, requiring that security gates for storefront businesses be 70% see-through, an effort intended to deter graffiti, increase safety, and beautify the streetscape. This bill required that gates be replaced before July 1, 2026 - a deadline that once seemed far removed but is now drawing near. While perhaps well-intentioned, the enforcement deadline for this bill is poorly timed: in a moment when small businesses are already struggling, it would saddle them with an extremely expensive expenditure - many gates can cost even a small local storefront nearly $10,000, and larger storefronts even more. This can be the equivalent of keeping a worker on payroll, or several months of rent. Furthermore, the authors of this law in 2009 could not have foreseen that a global pandemic in 2020 would yield a reality where businesses are still struggling to recover nearly a decade later.
We must change the law to ensure that small businesses get relief, and we must do it quickly.
Our offices have received numerous calls and outreach from small business owners and Business Improvement Districts informing us that many businesses cannot afford new gates, let alone any penalties associated with out-of-compliance gates. What’s more, despite 16 years elapsing since the original legislation was passed, the number of businesses without see-through gates suggests that gate manufacturers continued to install out-of-compliance gates well after Local Law 75 was passed, and it is unclear if they were ever penalized. We believe small businesses should not have to answer for gates that were installed by manufacturers who ought to have known the law.
Additionally, little to no outreach was conducted to small businesses prior to the past few months. So while businesses, in theory, had 16 years to replace their gates, the reality is that many very well may never have been aware of this requirement.
But relief is on the way. We are currently drafting legislation that will grandfather in all existing small businesses, and only require compliance with new businesses. It will also require the Department of Buildings and the Department of Small Business Services to conduct more thorough outreach with new businesses to make them aware of their obligation. This legislation will ensure that small businesses are not subject to onerous fines or required to pay thousands of dollars to install new gates that they can’t afford. Our goal is to finalize and pass this legislation immediately, before the July 1 enforcement deadline.
Our message to small business owners and to our fellow Council Members is simple: now is not the time to saddle our beloved small businesses with onerous and expensive requirements, particularly if they are mostly aesthetic ones. Small businesses deserve a fair shake, and while we in the Council can’t control things like the cost of goods or inflation rates, we can certainly relieve business owners of the burden of our own legislation. If we fail to act immediately, we risk being the direct cause of small businesses closing in our communities.