The shed is finally hitting the fan.
The city is dismantling the oldest sidewalk shed on public property – a rotting relic from 15-years ago when smartphones were cutting edge and Aaron Judge was in high school.
But as the Adams administration continues a crack down on unsightly scaffolding across the five boroughs not everyone’s convinced the city should be taking a victory lap.
“It’s been three mayors and three presidents since the scaffolding went up and finally came down. Only in New York City,” a City Council source told The Post Wednesday.
“To put it into perspective, Kamala Harris was a District Attorney and Donald Trump was a reality star when this scaffolding first went up. A long, long time.”
This infamous sidewalk shed has stifled 329 feet of sidewalk along First Avenue in front of the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner, where the city’s autopsies and forensic pathology is done.
“The people who walk through the doors at OCME are frequently in profound need — or serve people who are,” Deputy Mayor for Operations Meera Joshi said at the site on Wednesday.
“By maintaining this building we show respect to the work done inside, as we continue to fire on all cylinders to get sheds down.”
The warped green, plywood and rusted metal poles darkening the Kips Bay neighborhood was removed by Department of Buildings workers this week, officials said.
The soggy plywood was meant to protect pedestrians from unsafe building facade conditions contractors have now resolved, according to a DOB spokesperson.
A dispute with the owner of a neighboring building delayed the needed repairs for years, a source told the Post.
The effort is part of a city-wide initiative announced by Mayor Eric Adams last year called Get Sheds Down. It aims to make a dent in New York City’s 9,000 scaffolding sheds that have been up five years or longer.
Councilwoman Gale Brewer, whose Upper West Side district is filled with sidewalk sheds, said it’s a “good sign” the city is removing the longest offenders on its own properties.
“The city has to practice what it preaches by taking the sheds down,” Brewer told The Post.
She said there’s a sidewalk at the Regent homeless shelter on the east side of 104th and Broadway “that’s been up forever.”
“I get calls all the time. We send letters. Nothing happens.”
Since the initiative started the city has removed 268 of the old plywood sheds across the five boroughs, 14 of them at city-owned properties, officials said. There are still 270 longstanding scaffolding sheds left in the city, according to DOB.
The city is still assessing 43 other long standing scaffolding sheds on municipal properties that could be taken down once building repairs are complete while the DOB is working with building owners to remove sheds on private properties, according to DOB.
The ubiquitous sheds linger because it’s often cheaper for a building owner to keep the scaffolding up than make repairs. Delays also come when there are disputes between owners and neighboring building tenants that delay facade repairs, the DOB said.
A DOB spokesperson said the agency is working with building owners to provide technical assistance or to assess if a building owner can use façade containment netting instead, as was done at the Queens Supreme courthouse last summer.
The mayor also directed the DOB to solicit six new scaffolding designs to make the necessary structures less of an eyesore. Those designs are expected to be completed and codified into law next year.
Building owners who don’t take the example set by the city could find themselves in legal trouble. DOB is currently pursuing litigation against the owner of a building on Surf Avenue in Coney Island that had a scaffolding shed up for the last 18 years, according to a DOB official.
Last December the city celebrated the teardown of a 21-year-old scaffolding shed in Inwood that came down only after the city filed criminal charges against the building’s owner for repeated failures to make repairs, according to a DOB source.
