New York City is the most conspicuous violator of its professed campaign to rid the Big Apple of hundreds of miles of mostly needless sidewalk sheds.
The so-called Civic Center near the Municipal Building is a civic disgrace. Notwithstanding City Hall’s “Get sheds down” slogan, there are a jungle of city-owned sidewalk eyesores along Duane, Chambers, Reade and Elk Streets that seem to stand forever.
They include landmarked Surrogate Court at 31 Chambers St. and hulking 22 Reade St., which ironically is home to the Department of City Planning.
An especially monstrous shed has darkened all four sides of century-old 2 Lafayette St. since 2014.
The tunnel-like enclosure draws defecating vagrants and drug dealers. It shadows the entrances of a subway station and of next-door 52 Duane St., a 125,000 square-foot, family-owned office building that’s appeared dozens of times in scenes in “Law & Order” and “Blue Bloods.”
Mayor Zohran Mamdani proudly launched a “Jobs NYC Center” at 2 Lafayette this month. But as was true of predecessors Eric Adams and Bill de Blasio, Mamdani’s administration has shown zero urgency in repairing dangerous Department of Buildings violations on the building’s facade — and even on the shed itself.
The latest DOB files show four violations for the shed and six for the “unsafe” facade. Unpaid fines total $194,000.
DOB filings dating back twelve years appeared to show that agency inspectors repeatedly posted violations that were later removed — only to be replaced by new violations.
The appalling situation has frustrated Michael Salzhauer, whose family has owned 52 Duane since the 1970s.
“If a private owner threatened public health and safety this way for so long, we think there’d be crushing civil penalties and maybe criminal prosecutions,” said Blair Axel, a lawyer who’s a member of the family that owns 52 Duane and is representing them.
Axel said that after months of trying to get the Buildings Department’s attention, 52 Duane’s owners finally got a call from the city last week “saying they want to start planning façade repairs.
But we doubt any work will start for a while, maybe a long while,” Axel said.
Councilmember Christopher Marte might have helped spur the DOB to at least a semblance of action. His office has been “attentive” to the situation, Salzhauer said.
Asked to explain why the shed had stood for so long, a Buildings Dept. spokesman referred us to two other agencies.
A rep for the Department of Citywide Administrative Services, which manages 2 Lafayette, said only that the sheds were up “due to the condition of the facade.”
A rep for the Department of Design and Construction, which is “managing a facade restoration project on behalf of DCAS,” said, “We are concluding the design phase soon and look forward to beginning repair work.”
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