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FED-UP NEW YORKERS KEPT IN DARK BY 35-BLOCK STRETCH OF SCAFFOLDING LAMENT CITY’S
NEVER-ENDING RENOVATIONS: ‘IT’S UGLY AS HELL’

By Alex Oliveira, Reuven Fenton and Craig McCarthy

Published April 12, 2024, 12:37 p.m. ET

An Upper West Side avenue has one of the most densely scaffolded stretches in
the entire city — with a more than 30-block-long area having just a single block
entirely free of the reviled structures on either side.

West End Avenue between 107th and 72nd streets in Manhattan has 57 scaffolding
sheds across the 35-block stretch, according to a recent count by The Post —
with only the block between 73rd and 74th streets free of any scaffolding.

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7
West End Avenue between 107th and 72nd streets is one of the worst stretches for
scaffolding in all of New York City.

That leaves pedestrians on every other block along the otherwise leafy route
navigating a shed on at least one side of it.

Up and down the entire 48 blocks of West End Avenue, which starts at 107th
Street and ends at 59th Street, there are a staggering 85 scaffolding sheds,
making it the fourth most scaffolded avenue across the city, according to city
data.

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The other three avenues with more sheds in the city are also in Manhattan:
Broadway with 196 sheds; Fifth Avenue with 164 and Park Avenue with 11 — but
each of those avenues is more than three times as long as the mere 2-mile
stretch of West End Avenue.

Residents of West End Avenue, which caters to many longtime New Yorkers who can
measure the passing years by the rise and fall of scaffolding blocking their
view, are both outraged and vexed by the structures’ resilient presence in their
neighborhood.

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“What goes up must come down — except with scaffolding,” said Meredith Friedman,
59, whose home on West End near 98th Street is currently mired in scaffolding.

“I see it every day, and I hate it,” she said, explaining she is “proud” of her
building’s beautiful façade but that she doesn’t know when she’ll see it again —
or the blue sky at all from her obstructed apartment view.

“Everyone in New York knows how much we cherish a window where you can actually
see something, and how much we cherish every moment we’re outside and the sun
isn’t blocked by something,” she said.

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“Can a repair not take four months and be finished? Must the scaffolding stay up
for years and years?” she said, expressing the agony of many a New Yorker.

7
West 92nd Street at West End Avenue is buttressed by two consecutive scaffolding
sheds covering half the block. LP Media

Scaffold sheds — tall and green, vaulted with cold steel, dark and damp and
often stinking of sidewalk piss — have become as associated with the Big Apple
as the Empire State Building and the Statue of Liberty — and infamous as its
rats, roaches and the mangled city pigeons prone to roosting in their reaches
and pooping white on passers-by below.

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Scaffolding sheds are primarily intended to provide protection to New Yorkers
from debris that might fall during construction, and they also serve as a perch
for workers to conduct building maintenance from.

Their presence dates back to a 1980 law passed after a student at Barnard
College in Upper Manhattan was killed by falling debris. The legislation, known
today as Local Law 11, mandated five-year exterior inspections on buildings
taller than six stories. If maintenance is deemed necessary, the sheds go up.

But repair work is expensive, so some landlords opt instead to erect the
scaffolding and keep paying for the permits — sometimes leaving sheds up for
extended periods with barely a hammer being swung.

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In other situations, as with a Harlem co-op which until December had a
scaffolding up for 21 years, cash-strapped residents are the ones simply unable
to foot the bill for maintenance, so the sheds stay up.

The safety requirements have resulted in 9,400 scaffolding sheds currently
permitted across Manhattan, according to city records, with the borough leading
the pack with nearly 4,300.

7
A common scene on West End Avenue is blocks and blocks and blocks of
scaffold-covered streets. LP Media

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7
Scaffolding stretches to the horizon at 88th Street and West End Avenue in
Manhattan. LP Media

No matter the civic intention of Local Law 11, any New Yorker awoken by the
clang of scaffolding going up outside their window knows their sentence could
well be months or years of maddening inconvenience — and even danger lurking in
the secluded confines of a scaffolding cavern.

“They block the sun. People’s dogs like to pee on the scaffolding poles, so the
smell builds up, and I’m sitting here all summer long with the door open,” said
53-year-old West End doorman Pedro Rodriguez, who works around 99th Street.

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Neighborhood dog-walker Stephanie Pryor, 64, said, “How often do you see work
actually being done? Rarely.”

A West End resident who only gave her first name, Barbara, 82, added, “It’s ugly
as hell, and the city’s getting uglier.

“Once the scaffolds are up, it’s forever until they come down — if they do. I
don’t understand it,” she said.

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7
Scaffolding on 103rd Street and West End Avenue is a common scene that leaves
many residents without sunlight in their apartments. LP Media

Manhattan borough President Mark Levine, an outspoken critic of the sheds, says
throughout his 10 years in city politics he’s never seen a situation galvanize
more New Yorkers.

“I don’t think I’ve ever worked on an issue that has inspired more popular
passion than this. I’ve been told by people that they are single-issue voters on
scaffolding. And I am not engaging in hyperbole,” he recently told The Post.

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“I think people see it as a sense that the city just can’t function. Like, if we
can’t solve this, then how are we going to solve the bigger problems?” the pol
said.

Levine called West End Avenue “the perfect storm” for sidewalk sheds, explaining
the stretch is filled with buildings over the six-story threshold, many of those
buildings are over a century old and more prone to maintenance needs, and the
landmark status of many buildings in the neighborhood might extend the time it
takes to process work permits.

The Landmarks Preservation Commission disputed Levine’s idea that historic
status slows down the scaffolding process and instead blamed building owners for
the time they take making repairs.

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““LPC does not regulate sidewalk sheds or scaffolding, but does routinely
process permits for restoration work in a timely fashion across all of the
city’s historic districts, with the vast majority of LPC permits issued within
10 business days of receipt of a complete application,” an LPC representative
told The Post in an emailed statement Friday.

Levine said he wants to see Local Law 11 rules tweaked for a more pragmatic
approach that could provide exemptions to the five-year cycle if major exterior
work has just been completed on a building — a cycle which has been known to
send sheds up almost as soon as they come down.

7
The sidewalk sheds are intended to keep pedestrians safe from falling debris,
but critics say the law need to be more pragmatic. LP Media

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Under an effort branded “Shed the Shed,” Levine also has called for a
zero-interest loan fund so cash-strapped buildings can more easily pay for
repairs and the enacting of proposed legislation that would allow inspectors to
use drones when examining buildings, instead of having to spend more time and
cost setting up scaffolding to do that work.

He said he believes the suggestions could become law sooner than later, given
the current climate.

“This is the first time since I’ve been in office where I really felt this
political momentum behind it,” he said, adding that New Yorkers should be vocal
to their city council members if they want to see things happen.

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7
The view down West End Avenue features some of its nearly two miles of
scaffolding sheds. LP Media

During an impassioned press conference last year, Mayor Eric Adams decried
scaffolding sheds as “ugly green boxes” that have become normalized and darkened
our streets,” something he said was “unacceptable.”

Hizzoner proposed requiring landlords to apply for work permits every 90 days
instead of every 12 months to try to push them into taking care of the problem
sooner, imposing $10,000 for violations and changing building inspection
protocols to catch extensive work before it becomes major work.

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What do you think? Post a comment.

The city Department of Buildings said it is “using every tool at our disposal”
to make owners maintain their buildings properly and thus avoid the need for
lengthy repairs altogether but that it is “still legally responsible for making
repairs at their buildings in a timely manner.”

The DOB noted that under Mayor Adams, “dozens” of criminal cases have been filed
against landlords who fail to make repairs.

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For residents of West End Avenue, a little transparency on what they can expect
from local scaffolding projects would make them happier, at least for now.

“If there’s a reason for the scaffolding, that’s fine. But I would like to know
the reason for it,” Barbara said.

“Otherwise, we have no way to judge it.”


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Filed under department of buildings ,  eric adams ,  landmarks preservation
commission ,  scaffolding ,  upper west side ,  4/12/24
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