North End Restaurant Owners Sue Mayor Wu Over Outdoor Dining Fees

BOSTON — As some restaurant owners adjust to the first week of outdoor dining in Boston's North End, others have filed a lawsuit against the city's Mayor Michelle Wu, claiming the $7,500 fee only restaurants in the North End had to pay was unconstitutional.

Four restaurant owners filed the lawsuit Monday in the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts, eight days after North End restaurants were allowed to start outdoor dining and more than a month after the rest of the city could offer it.

This later start time is coupled with an earlier end date, giving North End restaurants a much shorter "al fresco" season, which they say could be a huge disruption for businesses.

The four owners listed in the lawsuit are Carla Gomes, owner of Terramia Ristorante and Antico Forno; Jorge Mendoza, owner of Vinoteca di Monico; Patrick Mendoza, owner of Monica's Trattoria; and Christian Silvestri, owner of Rabia's Dolce Fumo.

Also mentioned in the lawsuit is the monthly fee for every restaurant that takes up a parking space for seating - an additional $480 per month. According to the lawsuit, the plaintiffs say no other neighborhoods in Boston require a fee to take up a parking space as part of the outdoor dining program.

This fee was met with backlash, as North End restaurant owners threatened to sue the city and Wu instead of complying. A group called the North End Restaurant Community wrote a letter explaining their frustrations back in March.

"Our community is also being singled out with difficult time restrictions i.e. later program start date and earlier program end date, giving other restaurant communities an outdoor dining length of seven months, while ours is only four months," the letter reads. "Again, this feels like discrimination and we are not sure of the 'why'?"

Outdoor dining, a concept introduced during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, was once a vital workaround for the Boston restaurants that were struggling to stay afloat as curfews, social distancing, and capacity limits plagued the dwindling industry. Now it faces its final and maybe most controversial year of the three-year trial first launched by then-mayor Marty Walsh in 2020

Back in March, the city decided that North End restaurant owners would have to pay a $7,500 fee just to keep it up. During a press conference shortly after the decision, Wu explained that all the money collected from the fees will go toward rodent and traffic control, cleanup, and additional street cleaning.

"There are many ways in which our city services are delivered differently across different neighborhoods," Wu said adding that some areas of the city need more days for trash pickup than others, and the city tries to adhere to that. "Equity doesn't mean equality all across the board."

"That's 625 plates of pasta I need to sell to break even. That's a lot of pasta," Silvestri told WCVB in reference to the $7,500 fee. "We wash our sidewalks ourselves. We have an outside independent contractor take our garbage. I mean, there are rats everywhere in Boston."

"The large chains and partnership groups with say, 100 tables, are able to pay $20,000 for outdoor seating. We're not," Bessie King of Villa Mexico Cafe told the Boston Globe. "Independent places are bleeding money."

Wu offered North End restaurants an opportunity to apply for a hardship waiver that could drop the $7,500 fee to $5,000 or $3,000 and offered the option to pay the fee in monthly installments.

On the first day of outdoor dining in the North End, May 1, the city says they received 67 outdoor dining applications this year, compared to the 77 that were approved last year. There were also 28 hardship waiver applications, 23 of which were granted.

On April 27, Jorge Mendoza publically said he was planning to sue the city for damaged after saying he spent $20,000 to offer outdoor dining this year, WCVB reported.

According to the lawsuit, the plaintiffs believe Wu violated their rights to due process of law and equal protection and equal treatment, which are guaranteed. The lawsuit claims Wu's actions violated the Commerce Clause of the U.S. Constitution and set up "unfair methods of competition" and/or are "unfair deceptive practices" in "commerce."

Patch reached out to Wu's office for comment on the lawsuit but has not heard back.

Last summer, the two neighborhoods with the most sidewalk dining spots were operated in the North End with 77 makeshift outdoor patios and 51 in the Back Bay.