Decision tool · cross-board comparison
Where to Open — NYC Approval Map
Real approval rates, stipulation patterns, and dominant corridors for every NYC community board with extractable data. Built from 4,357 dispositions across 36 boards over 24+ months. Use it to pick the district that fits your concept before you sign a lease.
How to read this
Effective approval rate (approve + approve_modified + "deny unless stipulations" — which is BK10's conditional-approve template). Excludes procedural no_action items.
Share of decided dispositions that came with stipulations. High % = expect to negotiate hours, sound, façade. Low % = expect clean approve or outright deny.
Total dispositions in our 24-month scrape. Larger = higher statistical confidence. Boards under 5 venues are excluded from rankings.
Permissive playbook
- Manhattan CB1, CB4, CB5, CB6, CB7, CB9, CB10 — 97-100% effective approval rate. Commercial-district norm.
- Queens CB6 (Forest Hills/Rego Park) — 100% in dataset; clean Consumer Affairs Committee track.
- Bronx CB4 (Concourse/Highbridge) — 100% in dataset on renewals; License & Permits Committee.
Stipulation-heavy playbook
- Manhattan CB2 (Greenwich Village) — 67% conditional. Standard "deny unless stipulations" template; sign first, schedule second.
- Manhattan CB3 (East Village/LES) — Strictest in NYC; 0% outright approves; almost everything is conditional.
- Brooklyn CB10 (Bay Ridge) — 53% deny-unless-stipulations (functions as conditional approve).
High-friction zones
- Brooklyn CB4 (Bushwick) — 50/50 approve/deny. Saturation flag on Wyckoff/Knickerbocker/Troutman.
- Brooklyn CB9 (Crown Heights) — Heavy cannabis-opposition; SLA more permissive.
- Brooklyn CB1 (Williamsburg/Greenpoint) — 67% approve / 24% deny; highest deny rate in Brooklyn.
No-vote / opaque zones
- Queens CB1 (Astoria/LIC) — En bloc voting on attached spreadsheets; venue list not in body text.
- Queens CB3 (Jackson Heights) — High-volume agendas; disposition outcomes not consistently published.
- Queens CB5 (Ridgewood) — Read-into-record / no-objection track; effectively approve-by-default.
Methodology
Source: 24+ months of public meeting minutes from every NYC community board that publishes them. PDFs scraped via Firecrawl, parsed via per-board extractors, geocoded via NYC Planning Geosearch, deduped on (board, venue, address).
Effective approval includes the "deny unless stipulations agreed" bucket because it functions as a conditional approve in practice (the SLA almost always ratifies the recommendation when stipulations are signed). Outright deny + withdrawn count as friction.
Sample size matters. M05 has 1,614 venues — extremely high statistical confidence. Boards with under 20 venues should be read directionally; the underlying minutes pattern matters more than the headline number.
Refreshed monthly via launchd cron on the 5th of each month. See the coverage tracker for board-by-board ingestion status.