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A sunlight-deprived Upper West Side stretch remains covered in endless scaffolding despite a city crackdown – as new sheds pop almost as quickly as old ones are dismantled.
West End Avenue has dropped 19 scaffolding sheds since The Post exposed it nine months ago as the city’s worst area for the unsightly structures across — but in that time five more have spring up in a bizarre game of “whack-a-mole” that has left only four unobstructed blocks in a nearly 40-block stretch.
“It’s like having a bridge on your teeth. You don’t want it there, but you get used to it,” said 54-year-old Carmen Anderson, an Upper West Sider who says she’s gone scaffolding-blind over her many years in the neighborhood.
“I did notice over the past year or so that they took down a few scaffolds on West End Avenue, because all of a sudden I was getting sun on certain blocks where I hadn’t in a long time,” Anderson said. “But when I go for my daily walk, the overall effect is the same. They’re ubiquitous, and have been for years.”
When The Post visited West End Avenue in April, there were 57 sheds covering the sidewalks between 107th and 72nd streets, and just one block without scaffolding on either side of the street for a jog of just under 2 miles.
During a recent visit, The Post counted 43 sheds now standing between what has gone up and come down — and that in nine months just three more blocks had been freed from scaffolding altogether.
“It’s a constant game of whack-a-mole,” local resident Mike McDermott said.
“Politicians sometimes get involved, the news gets involved, and you’ll see some scaffolds come down – the ones that really didn’t need to be there – but it’s always a temporary fix because new ones come up. There’s no stopping it,” the 70-year-old said.
West End’s not-so-speedy recovery comes more than a year after Mayor Eric Adams proclaimed the scaffolding problem a priority for his administration, launching his “Get Sheds Down” plan and passing legislation that cut scaffolding permit lifespans from 12 months to 90 days with violation fines up to $10,000.
Adams’ initiative does appear to have made a small dent across the city. In April, city records showed 9,068 active shed permits across the five boroughs, but as of January that number had been reduced to 8,843.
Still those sheds cover more than 390 cumulative miles — a distance that is longer in sum than what city records indicated nine months ago.
Scaffolding laws first arrived in the city in the 1980s after a Barnard College student in Upper Manhattan was killed by a piece of debris falling from a building. Since then, Local Law 11 has mandated exterior inspections for all buildings six-stories or taller — and required protective sheds to go up whenever repairs are deemed necessary, regardless of their scope or risk.
Those requirements have resulted in scaffolding coming down and going straight back up, with some buildings covered for years at a time.
The cost of repairs is often expensive — a factor complicated when a co-op’s are involved and residents foot the bill. That has led some landlords to opt to pay the fines of having sheds up longer than they’re allowed because that’s cheaper than actually paying for the repairs.
West End Avenue does not have the highest number of scaffolding across its length — Broadway, Park Avenue and Fifth Avenue each have more, but they’re also at least three times longer than West End’s 2-mile length. The density is so great along the otherwise leafy stretch that New Yorkers can walk its sidewalks nearly top to bottom without seeing the sun.
“It’s just something we live with,” McDermott said. “Scaffolds are just part of the scenery here.”
The Department of Buildings told The Post 7,289 sheds have been removed since Get Sheds Down was rolled out in July 2023, and brought over 100 properties to court to compel them remove scaffolding.
“We continue to look forward to the City Council’s enactment of a legislative package of new enforcement tools that will help us to get even more sheds down faster,” a DOB spokesperson said.
No matter what the city says, West End residents aren’t convinced they’ll be seeing the sun anytime soon.
“I’d prefer to see them come down, because the buildings are old and very beautiful and it’s a shame no one gets to admire them,” McDermott added.
