NYC-owned buildings have 500 scaffolding sheds — even as officials claim to be cracking down on problem: ‘Kind of pathetic’
The Big Apple claims it’s cracking down on the scourge of sidewalk sheds but there’s scaffolding at roughly 500 city-owned buildings — with about 130 that are more than three years old, according to public data.
One troublesome building has had scaffolding up for over a decade.
All-told, the sheds on city-owned properties account for 5% of the 8,600 sheds standing across all five boroughs — which if combined would stretch for nearly 400 miles, about long enough to reach from Manhattan to Cleveland.
Despite that staggering count, members of the City Council are proposing a bill — Int. 0393 — which proposes to have the city take over renovations from private landlords who fail to address work in a timely manner.
It’s just one of several changes that have been proposed since Mayor Eric Adams announced his “Get Sheds Down” initiative in the summer of 2023, which City Hall says has helped remove hundreds of scaffoldings, including 18 at city-owned buildings.
But in light of the 500 still out there, many New Yorkers are skeptical that the city has any business sticking its nose in private work until it proves it can take care of its own sheds.
“I think that they should clean their own house first,” said 70-year-old Sandy Rocks. “This is really kind of pathetic.”
“They have to organize themselves first. It doesn’t make any sense at all,” added 54-year-old Michelle, an entrepreneur who lives on the Upper West Side.
“I don’t think the city is gonna help that situation. If they can’t get their own buildings together, I don’t know why taking on additional landlord owned buildings would help,” she said.
The pair were each passing by 2720 Broadway, an Upper West Side building which has been surrounded by scaffolding since around 2012 — and the building has been owned by the Department of Homeless Services that entire time.
Now housing a homeless shelter — which has been vacated the last few months over a fire alarm issue — the building has been undergoing façade repair for more than a decade. In that time the sidewalk beneath its shed has become a neighborhood blight, covered in trash and junk with people often sleeping on dirty blankets.
“I’ve been a resident of Manhattan Village for 25 years and this [scaffolding] is as bad as I’ve seen it,” said Anthony Kurutz, whose shop Plowshares Coffee is just one door up from the shed.
“People intoxicated, anything you can possibly imagine. It’s a shelter for people. We’ve seen unhoused people living under there, people hanging out with drugs and drinking,” he added.
Located on the corner of 104th Street, the building is just a block east of West End Avenue, which The Post previously exposed as being one of the most densely and relentlessly scaffolded stretches in all of the five boroughs.
Kurutz recalled how the shed went up around 2012 and finally came down one day about 2017 — only to be put right back up again a day later, a permitting detail which has kept the shed’s true age from appearing on the city’s official scaffolding tracker.
“It hasn’t been good. It’s an eyesore on the block. It attracts negativity. It’s a blight in the block, and it’s not very helpful for business,” Kurutz added.
Other nearby business owners agree.
“They are using drugs outside the business and the customers see that,” said 23-year-old Willie Gomez, who cuts hair at Haircut Factory Barbershop under the scaffolding. “There are children who pass by and they see all that. They should remove it because it has been in one place for too long.”
The mayor’s office has even supported those business owners’ complaints — his Get Sheds Down initiative released a study in August that found scaffolding sheds can cost businesses covered by them upwards of $9,500 per month that they’re up.
In the case of businesses near 2720 Broadway, that’s more than $1 million in lost business over the ongoing life of the city’s scaffolding there.
City Hall said its 2720 Broadway shed is currently on track to be down by June 2025, but did not respond to questions about why it had been up for over 10 years.
“Mayor Adams has been clear that the days of bureaucratic rules standing in the way of getting unsightly sheds down are behind us, and our ‘Get Sheds Down’ initiative has already contributed to the removal of more than 320 sheds,” a spokesperson for City Hall said.
“We remain focused on continuing that momentum to tackle ubiquitous sidewalk sheds that have vexed New Yorkers for decades and return valuable sidewalk space back to the public.”
Councilman Keith Powers, one of the sponsors of Int. 0393, said the city needs to start leading by example.
“I’m proud to lead the effort in the City Council to get rid of the scaffolding that’s overtaking our neighborhoods, but our own city buildings need to set the example,” Powers said. “It’s time that New Yorkers have their streets and skylines back.”
But people affected by the city’s sheds said they’ll believe those words when they see the sun again.
“If the scaffolding were to go, it would completely change the complexion of this block,” said one employee at BeFit NYC, a second floor gym rendered invisible by the city’s 2720 Broadway scaffolding.
“Somebody’s dropping the ball.”
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