NYC neighborhood plagued by never-ending scaffolding sees sheds removed but more keep springing up in bizzare urban whack-a-mole

A sunlight-deprived Upper West Side stretch remains covered in endless scaffolding despite a city crackdown – as new sheds pop almost as quickly as old ones are dismantled.West End Avenue has dropped 19 scaffolding sheds since The Post exposed it nine months ago as the city’s worst area for the unsightly structures across — but in that time five more have spring up in a bizarre game of “whack-a-mole” that has left only four unobstructed blocks in a nearly 40-block stretch.“It’s like having a bridge on your teeth.You don’t want it there, but you get used to it,” said 54-year-old Carmen Anderson, an Upper West Sider who says she’s gone scaffolding-blind over her many years in the neighborhood.“I did notice over the past year or so that they took down a few scaffolds on West End Avenue, because all of a sudden I was getting sun on certain blocks where I hadn’t in a long time,” Anderson said.

“But when I go for my daily walk, the overall effect is the same.They’re ubiquitous, and have been for years.”When The Post visited West End Avenue in April, there were 57 sheds covering the sidewalks between 107th and 72nd streets, and just one block without scaffolding on either side of the street for a jog of just under 2 miles.During a recent visit, The Post counted 43 sheds now standing between what has gone up and come down — and that in nine months just three more blocks had been freed from scaffolding altogether.“It’s a constant game of whack-a-mole,” local resident Mike McDermott said.“Politicians sometimes get involved, the news gets involved, and you’ll see some scaffolds come down – the ones that really didn’t need to be there – but it’s always a temporary fix because new ones come up.

There’s no stopping it,” the 70-year-old said.West End’s not-so-speedy recovery comes more than a year after Mayor Eric Adams proclaimed the scaffolding problem a priority for his administration, launching his “Get Sheds Down�...