NYC Leans on Landlords to Take Down Scaffolding, Green Sheds

Every 10 years or so, a piece of the stone façade of a building in Manhattan breaks off and injures a pedestrian below, followed by a proliferation of new scaffolding and enclosed green construction sheds that protect walkways during façade repairs.

Except that the repairs never seen to get done and the scaffolding and green sheds never seem to get removed. There are now 9,000 construction sheds in the five boroughs of NYC, which if laid end-to-end would measure an estimated 340 miles.

The Mayor’s Office is mounting what looks like the most serious effort yet to tear down the ubiquitous maze of green sheds—they’re calling it Get Sheds Down—which will deploy increased penalties, much shorter permit durations and higher permit fees to lean on landlords to repair the building facades and ditch the sheds.

The duration of shed permits is being slashed to 90 days from 12 months. The plan will impose monthly financial penalties on building owners maintaining sheds in the public right of way that are not directly related to new construction or demolition projects.

The penalties will begin 90 days after a shed is permitted and will be as much as $6,000 per month. Penalty waivers for expired shed permit violations will no longer be granted by the Department of Buildings, the Mayor’s Office said.

Property owners in NYC business districts will face a $10,000 penalty if they fail to complete façade repairs within two years or get required permits within six months.

NYC also is offering a carrot in the form of a reduction in the frequency of inspections in exchange for use of standardized netting as an alternative to sheds in some locations. The city is planning to initiate the program by replacing a shed in front of the Queens County Supreme Court building in Jamaica with netting.

“Imagine visiting Rome, Tokyo or Rio and seeing scaffolding everywhere,” Mayor Eric Adams said, in a statement. “New Yorkers wouldn’t be happy with these unsightly constructions in other cities, and we shouldn’t be okay with them here at home.”

According to city officials, the green sheds stay up an average of 500 days in NYC. The densest concentration of sheds is in business districts of Manhattan. In some neighborhoods, more than 25% of the sidewalks and public spaces are covered by scaffolding and construction sheds.

The effort to cull the shed population no doubt will take years, so NYC also is planning to “beautify” sheds by removing the requirement in the building code that all of the sheds use “hunter green” color.

NYC is planning to redesign the standard sidewalk shed construction with added lighting the will permit art to be displayed on shed panels, which now will come in a variety of colors. A City Canvas program aims to convert sheds into mini-art expos that reflect each neighborhood.