Construction Boom’s Side Effect Is the Shadow of Scaffolding

The wooden tunnels seem to crop up every day, darkening storefronts and shrouding sidewalks for months or even years.Scaffold sheds and bridges — those fixtures of New York life — are signposts of a city that is building at a record clip while repairing the old and fraying edifices that line its streets.If scaffolding and sidewalk sheds appear more prevalent than in the past, it’s because there are indeed more of them than ever before. Permits for the structures reached an all-time high across the five boroughs in 2005, and the first few months of 2006 suggest they will likely match or even exceed last year’s record, according to Department of Buildings statistics.Scaffold sheds are meant to protect the public from a dangerous façade, but a thicket of the structures seems to plague a block or intersection of every neighborhood. The situation pits building owners and city officials against pedestrians and business owners who just want to know: When — if ever — will that scaffolding go away?Officials point to two separate phenomena as the principal sources for the increase in scaffolding. First is the construction boom that has seen an unprecedented number of new developments begin in the city, particularly in Manhattan and Brooklyn. Second, building owners are in the midst of a two-year window in the city’s five-year inspection cycle in which they must file detailed reports on the physical condition of their buildings’ façades.The window ends in February 2007, and many owners have sought to address restorations now in order to avoid having to report conditions of disrepair and face possible fines.Pedestrians have taken notice of the rise, complaining that the sheds have turned stretches of city blocks into eyesores. For the businesses operating under the cover of scaffolding, however, the impact can be more consequential: The sheds literally cast a shadow over establishments, obscuring storefronts and slowing sales.“If you can’t see the name of the business, you can’t know it’s open, or there,” the chairman of the 47th Street Business Improvement District, Jeffrey Levin, said.For business owners, the chief grievance with scaffolding is not that the sidewalk sheds are there, but that they seem to stay up indefinitely. Often, proprietors say, building owners vastly underestimate the time repairs will take.The owner of Maker’s bar at 405 Third Ave. in Murray Hill, Joseph Torres, said that when he opened the bar in 2001, he was told that the sidewalk shed that covered his storefront would soon be gone. “They could care less,” he said of the building management, which has since changed hands. “They said it would be down shortly,and three and a half years later, it was still there.”The scaffolding finally came down in December 2004, and Mr. Torres said that while business has improved, the effect of the shed’s presence had not fully dissipated. “People still come by and ask, ‘How long have you been here?’ I say five years, and they don’t believe it,” he said.While Mr. Torres blames building owners for his scaffolding woes, Mr. Levin directs his ire at city officials. “They give the landlords too much time, and then they don’t enforce the law,” he said.Buildings Department officials acknowledge the difficulty of monitoring thousands of scaffolds, bridges, and sheds across the city, but the steady increase in recent years has not escaped their attention. The number of permits varies widely by borough, with Manhattan accounting for more than half the city’s total while Staten Island has only a few dozen.Manhattan reported 3,033 scaffold and shed permits for 2005, an increase of nearly 13% from 2004. Through April of this year, the borough had 998, putting it on pace to match or exceed last year’s total. In second place with 1,097 permits issued in 2005, Brooklyn has a long way to go to catch Manhattan, but its scaffolds and sidewalk sheds jumped by nearly 25% in 2005 versus 2004, although its pace has dropped slightly early in 2006.The buildings department relies on a combination of registered complaints and periodic sweeps to enforce the myriad regulations that relate to scaffolding and sidewalk sheds. Its most recent sweep, which took place between May 20 and June 7, covered Midtown Manhattan. Inspectors issued violations to nearly half of the 341 buildings they surveyed between 14th and 59th streets, river to river. Most of the infractions were for missing or defective contractor signs, or for expired permits.Despite the rising number of complaints from businesses and residents, city officials say sidewalk sheds are entirely a safety issue. They are erected to protect pedestrians from loose debris that may fall from a building’s façade, and they must remain until the danger is gone, regardless of when the repairs take place. “If there’s a possibility that a brick could fall down, the shed has to remain in place,” a spokeswoman for the Buildings Department, Ilyse Fink, said.Building owners and construction industry leaders say they are simply following the rules when it comes to scaffolding and sidewalk sheds. They point to Local Law 11, the measure enacted in 1998 that mandates the five-year inspection cycle for building facades. “Sometimes you have to suffer a little to ensure public safety,” the president of the Building Trades Employers’ Association, Louis Coletti, said. He added that the increase in sidewalk sheds was a sign of the city “being vigilant.”The issues that arise from the surge in scaffolding across the city are tied to shortcomings at the Department of Buildings, a City Council member of the Bronx, James Vacca, said. Mr. Vacca is working on a council taskforce that is looking to overhaul the department and bolster its resources. “The core of the problem is the buildings department is a complaint-driven agency,” Mr. Vacca said, adding that if no one complained about a building code violation, little is likely to be done.”There has to be a regular inspection of sidewalk sheds,” he said. In the city budget adopted last week, the council secured $1.83 million in additional funding for an initiative to hire more construction inspectors.Griping aside, some city businesses concede that sidewalk sheds do have benefits. The director of operations for Jean-Georges Management, Lois Freedman, said the shed covering the front of Mercer Kitchen in SoHo had helped with one pesky problem. “It’s keeping the street vendors away,” she said, complaining that the rise of street vendors had turned the neighborhood “into a flea market.”At Kate’s Paperie at 72 Spring St., a sidewalk shed has covered the store since it opened last month. “It interferes with the overall ambiance and view into the store,” the store manager, Sandra Cohen, said. “On the other hand, it allows people a little relief when it’s raining.”

Construction Boom’s Side Effect Is the Shadow of Scaffolding

Construction Boom’s Side Effect Is the Shadow of Scaffolding

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