The City Council on Wednesday will approve a package of five bills intended to cut back on the number of scaffolds — known as sidewalk sheds — that have long darkened New York’s streets, and improve the aesthetics of the ones that must remain up.
Several of the bills chip away at Local Law 11, the decades-old policy that requires landlords to inspect their building façades every five years and put up green plywood sheds each time they do. Now, more than 8,500 sheds stand across the city — with an average age of 500 days — and Mayor Eric Adams’ administration has allied with the council on a “Get Sheds Down” campaign.
Perhaps the most consequential bill, by Manhattan Councilman Keith Powers, will shorten the permit length for new sidewalk sheds from 1 year to three months. Landlords can renew the permits if they can point to financial hardships, struggles accessing a neighboring property or other issues that delayed the repairs. But if landlords fail to offer an excuse, the Buildings Department will issue penalties — starting at $10 per linear foot, and escalating to $6,000 for each month that repairs are not being done.
Another bill will delay façade inspections for new buildings from five years to eight years after they are completed. It also authorizes the Buildings Department to relax the current five-year façade inspection cycle and replace it with a window somewhere between six and 12 years. (The DOB will make its official determination this summer when it releases the results of a two-year study by engineering firm Thornton Tomasetti, which the city hired in 2024 to study Local Law 11 and recommend changes.)
“It strikes a really good balance between the continued need for safety and the desire of so many New Yorkers to have a streetscape that is safe, well-lit, and does not obscure their favorite parts of the city,” said Powers, who is sponsoring three of the five bills.
The package has been a long time coming, having slowly winded its way through the council after Mayor Adams first outlined the proposed reforms in July 2023. As the bills appeared to stall in recent months, the Daily News editorial board and the venture capitalist Bradley Tusk publicly called on Council Speaker Adrienne Adams to bring them to a vote.
Sidewalk sheds are an industry unto themselves: Building owners pay some $1.2 billion for the structures each year, Crain’s reported in 2018.
The reform package has support from business improvement districts and hospitality industry leaders, who have long complained that sidewalk sheds deter customers and can foster crime. But landlord groups including the Real Estate Board of New York lobbied lawmakers to soften the legislation by creating ways to escape fines for problems they could not control.
“There are still issues to work out in the rulemaking process, but we are confident all stakeholders can work together to make these bills fair and effective,” said REBNY policy director Daniel Avery, who praised city officials for heeding the industry’s concerns and taking steps to improve the sheds.
Powers’ third bill takes aim at the sheds’ steel-and-plywood design. DOB has tasked the architecture firms PAU and Arup US with proposing better-looking, cheaper shed designs, and their report is due this summer; the new law will require DOB to share the result with the council and decide whether those new designs should be made mandatory. It also allows landlords to deviate from the sheds’ current mandatory “hunter green” shade — instead allowing white or metallic gray, as well as any other color that matches the façade, cornice or roof of the building it surrounds.
Another bill, by Manhattan Councilman Erik Bottcher, beefs up penalties for façade repairs that aren’t completed in time — imposing fines between $5,000 and $20,000 when landlords fail to file permits for façade repairs within five months of getting a sidewalk shed permit. The fifth and final bill, also sponsored by Bottcher, doubles the amount of lighting required under each sidewalk shed
Buildings Commissioner Jimmy Oddo said in a statement that the bills will allow the city to “make serious progress on getting more sheds down faster.”
“This legislative package of new enforcement tools and regulatory reforms, along with new shed designs we plan on announcing this summer, will improve safety in New York City while returning valuable sidewalk space back to the public,” Oddo said.
The package represents the first major change to Local Law 11 since it was passed in its current form in 1998. Whether it will have the desired effect of getting sheds down remains to be seen — numerous other ideas have been floated in the past, including a set of 2023 proposals by Manhattan Borough President Mark Levine that included providing loans to building owners to help cover repair costs.
