NYCs ugly green scaffolding will soon get a glow-up under new legislation signed by Mayor Adams

The ugly scaffolding sheds that have painted the city green for decades will get a glow-up after Mayor Eric Adams approved legislation cracking down on the eyesores Tuesday.The new laws, passed near unanimously by the City Council, will allow more design options for the structures, add more lighting and shorten the length of time they are allowed to stay up.The welcomed legislation comes after a recent Post analysis found that at least one troublesome city-owned building has had scaffolding up for over a decade.“Those sheds have been up for quite some time.They were created to protect New Yorkers from unsafe buildings and construction sites but we have allowed too many to languish for years or even decades crowding our sidewalks and darkening our streets,” Adams said Tuesday.

The Big Apple currently has 8,531 scaffolding sheds blighting the city, and 327 of the sheds have been up for five years or more, according to the Department of Buildings (DOB).The average age of a New York City sidewalk shed is 511 days.But the rotting green sheds will soon look quite different after a redesign that will be overseen by the DOB.The characteristic hunter green will still be allowed under the new legislation — but so will white, metallic gray and any color that matches the building.“So a red building could have a red shed, and so on,” a DOB spokesperson explained to The Post.Councilman Keith Powers (D-Manhattan) sponsored three of the five bills.He said “dingy” scaffolding currently covers more than 400 miles of the city’s sidewalks.

Under the reforms, sidewalk shed permits for façade repairs would be cut from one year to three months — unless the structure is needed because of building renovations or new construction.The inspection cycle would also be pushed back from five years to nine years for new buildings, while different inspection standards will be set based on the age of the building.Another bill — sponsored by Erik Bottcher (D-Manhattan) — wo...