Council Bill Would Allow Scaffold Ads

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The New York Sun

The city could soon end a ban on advertising displays on scaffolding and, according to the proposal’s sponsor, turn the ubiquitous eyesores into municipal moneymakers.

A new City Council bill, introduced yesterday by Council Member Melinda Katz of Queens, would create a new permit building owners could purchase that would allow them to lease wall space on “sidewalk sheds,” the wraparound paneling that clads scaffolding on its lowest walkway, to advertisers.

Ms. Katz said the new permits could be “a very good revenue source” for the city but said she could not estimate how much the permit system would pull in. The commissioner of the Department of Buildings, Patricia Lancaster, will determine the permit’s price tag, the bill states.

In January, the buildings department announced a pilot program to crack down on building owners and outdoor advertising companies that post illegal ads on sidewalk sheds, and last year, the president of Manhattan, Scott Stringer, launched a campaign to end the practice, saying “we’ve had enough of illegal black market advertising in our city.”

Last winter there were 5,160 sidewalk sheds in the city, up from 3,471 in the winter of 2003.

Vanessa Gruen, the director of special projects at the Municipal Art Society of New York, a nonprofit organization that works to ensure the city is “livable,” said she fought against the illegal ads and will fight Ms. Katz’s bill, too. “This is a terrible idea,” she said. “I think you could eventually end up with a city that is totally covered in advertising from head to toe. It’s a slippery slope.”

In the past few years, she said, scaffolding companies have begun extending the heights of their sheds so they can hold larger advertisements.

“It was a huge market,” she said. “People left up their construction sheds longer than they needed to. They were getting so much revenue.”

The council bill would confine the advertisements to commercial and manufacturing zones. Ms. Katz, who is running for comptroller and is chairwoman of the land use committee, said she is trying to make sure the ads only end up in “appropriate” areas.

“We understand the reality — that people are going to advertise” on the sheds, she said. “We should be able to regulate it. We should have strict standards for it and the city should get a fee for folks to be able to do that.”

The senior vice president of the Real Estate Board of New York, Marolyn Davenport, said she would support the bill, but she added that she didn’t think the new rules would “change the landscape of the city enormously.” “Sidewalk shed advertising would still be very limited under this bill. In other words, it’s not giving you very much,” she said. “You’re not talking about big spaces.”

When asked if Ms. Lancaster had taken a position on the bill, a spokeswoman for the Buildings Department, Kate Lindquist, wrote in an e-mail: “We look forward to reviewing the legislation once it is received.”


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