Collapsing Scaffolding Injures Three at Court and Joralemon

It looked like it buckled under its own weight, or wasn’t properly secured. Should be a warning to those buildings who keep these things up for years at a time, causing a blight on the sidewalk (looking at you St. George Hotel, and Clinton & Joralemon).

Report them to 3-1-1 as hazards on a regular basis.

The Clark St. side of the St. George has been up even longer, it appears, for 965 days.

Another ignorant statement. How do you assume the work is complete and all inspections have passed? Scaffolding is expensive to rent on a large project like that, thousands of dollars a month. No one is keeping it up any longer than necessary.

I like to believe in rational actors, but I think many people in NYC have first hand experience of scaffolding (or, to use the correct phrase in most cases, “sidewalk sheds”) staying in place for years when there is no ongoing activity.

I think in many cases, the sheds are left up because the building owners want to defer repairs – they’d rather pay the rental fees and limit their liability than spend more in one time costs to complete the work and remove the scaffolding.

In other cases, building owners may be evaluating, or trying to get approval for different activities. So they’d rather pay the monthly cost of sidewalk sheds than deal with one time costs of removing / reinstalling, and whatever related city approvals are needed.

An imperfect analogy is offsite document storage companies. There are billions of records being stored that noone is ever going to use, and are far past legal retention policies. But it is easier to pay the monthly fees than to sort through them and dispose of them.

That is a gross assumption.I live across the street from 68 Montague and the scaffolding has been up there for months with no sign of any work. if it is so expensive then why put it up before the work is ready to commence.

I know what Local Law 11 is. And it is not the only reason sidewalk sheds are installed.

But beyond that, you are speculating as much as I am.

You speculate that once the sidewalk shed is up, an owner is incented to complete the work as fast as possible given the monthly cost of the shed.

I speculate there are situations where the cost of doing the inspection / repairs in a timely manner outweighs the monthly cost of the shed, and therefore they get left up longer than necessary.

I apologize, it was low hanging fruit.
Because the process can take years. First an engineer has to attempt to determine the extent of the problem(s), plans for remediation need to be drawn up and filed with and approved by the DOB & landmarks. Then Contractor bids need to be vetted. Money/loans need to be secured. That process alone usually takes at least year or more. Then the work starts when weather allows and further problems maybe (usually are) revealed which cause further delays, filings and cost increases, additional loans. Finally when all work is completed it has to be re inspected and signed off. Then the shed can come down. It can take years.

I heard that many players in the scaffolding biz are tied up with money laundering. (Usually one of the first possibilities I go to whenever I perceive wasteful or inefficient contracting.) In your experience, Arch, could there be any substance to that?

Actually, according to a articles in the NY Times, they are.

Building owners sometimes keep them up for years because the scaffolding rentals are cheaper than making repairs.

And scaffolding companies themselves often ignore repeated requests from building owners to remove scaffolding, even after the repairs are completed, as they’d rather wait until they have another location in which to install them, rather than return them to storage.