The New York City Council Subcommittee on Zoning and Franchises, chaired by Farah N. Louis, met on September 22, 2026, at 11:30 AM in Committee Room at City Hall to consider a single land use item: LU 0141-2026, a revocable consent application for a sidewalk café at 45-18 104th Street in Corona, Queens. The applicant, represented by Christian Zuluaga of Tiro de Esquina NYC Corp (doing business as Cali Tajadas Bakery & Restaurant), seeks to place four tables with attached bench seating outside the restaurant. The item was heard and then laid over by the subcommittee with no vote taken.
Meeting is being held in hybrid format. Members of the public who wish to testify may testify in person or via Zoom. Members of the public wishing to testify remotely may register by visiting the New York City Council website at WWW council.nyc dot G O V backslash land use to sign up or for those of you here in person, please see one of the sergeant at arms to prepare a sub a to prepare and submit a speaker card. Members of the public may also view a live stream broadcast of this meeting at the council website when you are called to testify before the subcommittee. If you are joining us remotely, you will remain muted until recognized by myself to speak. When you are recognized, your microphone will be unmuted. We will limit public testimony to two minutes per witness. If you have additional testimony that you would like to submit to the subcommittee, you would like the subcommittee to consider, or if you have written testimony that you would like to submit instead of appearing in person, please email it to Lanyus Testimony at Council.nyc.gov. Written testimony may be submitted up to three days after the hearing is closed. Please indic indicate the LU number and project name and the subject line of your email. We request that witnesses joining us remotely remain in the meeting until excused by the chair, as council members may have questions. Lastly, for everyone attending today's meeting, this is a government proceeding and decorum must be observed at all times. Members of the public are asked not to speak during the meeting unless you are testifying. The witness table is reserved for people who are called to testify, and no video video recording or photography is allowed from the witness table. Further members of the public may not present audio or video recordings as testimony, but may submit transcripts of such recordings to the sergeant at arms for inclusion in the hearing record. I will now open the public hearing on LU 141 relating to the sidewalk cafe application filed by Tedo de Esquina and YC Corp and Councilmember Thomas Henry's district. Applicant is seeking to place four tables with attached bench seating outside the front of its restaurant, which is located in Corona, Queens. For anyone wishing to testify regarding this proposal remotely, if you have not already done so, you must register online by visiting the council's website at council.nyc.gov backslash land use. For anyone with us in person, please see one of the sergeant at arms to submit a speaker card. If you would prefer to submit written testimony, you can always do so by emailing it to land use testimony at council.nyc.gov. Councilmember Thomas Henry does not have remarks at this time. I will now call the applicant panel for this proposal, which consists of Christian Zuluanga. Sorry if I butchered your name. Council, could you please administer the oath? Hello, can you hear me? Yes. Good morning. Good morning. How are you? Hopefully you're not currently moving because I'm gonna ask you to raise your right hand and state uh your name for the record. Can you state your name for the record? Christian Zuluaga. Okay. Do you swear to tell the truth and nothing but the truth in your testimony this morning and in response to council member questions? Yes, I thank you. Um you may make in your statement. Yes, I I gonna tell the absolute true on uh the statements being uh the absolute truth. No, no, you uh thank you. You can you can lower your hand and you've done uh you uh you've already sworn uh do you have anything to testimony that you would like to share with us today? Well, the basically um yes, so we we had uh submit uh the application to be able to uh accommodate uh some sitting area around our word um location or the cafe is uh um restaurant restaurant bar concept. Uh so family um joinable place with uh we offered and sell the food, uh beverage, uh liquor on um different type of products uh within uh restaurant area. So the the concept of um the coffee tables outside the stereo side of the building. We'll just accommodate our business operation hours on um say the thing. That's pretty much it. Thank you. I don't have any questions for the applicant. I will now recognize council member Thomas Henry for questions. Good afternoon, good morning, how are you doing? Um my first question is in regards to just getting clarity on the entity that will be managing um this outside dining, um, because there is I have Tiro Dick Eskinia and then uh DBA Cali Calier Tajadas and the way that business is set up, it appears that there's almost like two or three different entities, or like what part of the business do you control and operate that will be managing the cafe? Okay, so basically uh I'll tell you a little story about the business.