![\"PAU\u2019s](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/7b8822e34c1833da665d4d957016e8c7c2-mayor-adams-unveils-new-designs--1.rhorizontal.w700.jpg\")
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\n PAU\u2019s \u201cSpeed Shed,\u201d one of six designs approved by New York City in its sidewalk-shed glow-up program. This one uses netting instead of a hard roof and is intended mostly for temporary fa\u00e7ade work and emergencies.
\n Photo: PAU\/Office of the Mayor\n <\/p>\n
En route to my desk to write this column, I passed the office tower at 3 Park Avenue. It\u2019s a big caramel-colored prism at the corner of 34th Street, built in 1973. The plaza out front has spent about 13 of those years \u2014 a quarter of its entire existence \u2014 wrapped in a plywood construction shed, first put up in 2012 and periodically reshuffled, at one point briefly receding from the sidewalk and then re-expanding. (The city\u2019s permit map<\/a> says it dates only to June 2021, but a decade-plus of Google Street View tells the full tale<\/a>.) The sidewalk tunnel around the building all but obliterated access to a Le Pain Quotidien caf\u00e9 on the lobby level \u2014 truly, you would have had no idea it was there but for a small temporary sign \u2014 and it may not be a coincidence that the LPQ closed around 2019 and its space remains untenanted. The base of the tower also incorporates the former Norman Thomas High School, now home to a couple of smaller DOE<\/a> schools<\/a> and one charter Success Academy<\/a>. The entry to the school, never especially inviting<\/a>, now looks like a particularly grim garage<\/a>. The sidewalk shed is nearly the same age as the ninth-graders walking beneath it.<\/p>\n Judge the Eric Adams mayoralty as you will \u2014 as the voters already have<\/a> \u2014 but on this subject, it\u2019s done some good and popular governing. The administration\u2019s Get Sheds Down program<\/a> intends to be comprehensive, calling in part for new designs that are less oppressive to walk around or under, along with a variety of other procedural and policy reforms. (By the way, \u201cscaffolding\u201d is what most people outside the industry call these structures, but that\u2019s the stuff that climbs the walls, not the stuff over the pavement. \u201cSidewalk shed\u201d or \u201csidewalk bridge\u201d describes the thing we\u2019re talking about.) It shouldn\u2019t have taken decades of nearly universal disdain for the city to address such a festering and wildly unpopular situation, but better late than never.<\/p>\n This week we got a look at the six new designs that have been okayed by the city, which should be potted into the building code early next year and go into production soon, or soonish, thereafter. They are inventive solutions, which is not a surprise; this is a classic design-school-charett<\/a>e assignment, the kind of public-realm conundrum that designers love to think through. The final schemes are principally the work of two firms, Arup (the large British architecture firm whose most visible works in New York are Little Island and the stations of the Second Avenue Subway) and PAU (whose founder, Vishaan Chakrabarti, pops up in virtually every public-space discussion these days, especially when it comes to Penn Station<\/a>). They\u2019re working with an array of partners from the architecture and engineering realm, turning sketches and renderings into specifications and, eventually, a pile of components that can be piled on a flatbed truck and bolted together on a sidewalk.<\/p>\n \n Arup\u2019s \u201cFlex Shed,\u201d\u00a0another light-duty option intended for smaller projects, like fa\u00e7ade work on the brownstones in the rendering. \n Arup\u2019s \u201cAir Shed\u201d is attached to the building, with no supports down at the street level. The long-standing city-approved design, the one we\u2019ve had for years, will likely be around indefinitely because it\u2019s cheap and tough. The system of steel-pipe uprights and cross braces, corrugated roof, plywood panels painted dark green, and little plywood foot shims to keep it all level is certainly sturdy, at least most of the time<\/a>. In many cases, it\u2019s also dank, close, and unpleasant. It\u2019s seen minor improvements over the years \u2014 LEDs have lately replaced the dim incandescents that used to illuminate the covered sidewalk \u2014\u00a0and they\u2019ve helped a little. A bit over a decade ago, in a much bigger step up, an alternative began to appear on our streets, produced by a company called Urban Umbrella. It raised the roof, opened up the space between the uprights, and is far brighter and airier underneath. But it\u2019s hardly a broad replacement. According to the New York Times,<\/a> it\u2019s in use at 105 out of 8,438 sites, and it costs roughly twice as much as the basic version. It\u2019s unstated where these newer offerings will fall on the price scale, but some look to be cheaper to construct than others, and the final costs are likely to mirror that.<\/p>\n The biggest thing the new designs do is minimize the external framing \u2014 that is, they open up the curb side of the shed, much as the Urban Umbrella design did, removing the crosshatched pipes that block pedestrian access. That\u2019s important, whether for vehicles dropping people off, or for restaurateurs trying to make a living, or for you if you simply want to step out into your own damn street. The six options have been fitted to a range of use cases: One style, for example, is of very light gauge, with netting instead of a hard roof, and it\u2019s meant to be used in (among other situations) an emergency \u2014 a fa\u00e7ade loses a brick, say, and the owners need to put something up immediately while it awaits inspection. Others, like the one called the \u201cRigid Shed,\u201d are intended for major projects and sturdy enough to catch a dropped pallet of construction supplies. Still another has no street-level supports at all \u2014 it\u2019s bolted to the building, more like an awning than a separate structure. (My colleague Justin Davidson\u2019s superb story about perfecting the New York street<\/a> included something very similar.) Several of the designs incorporate a roof that slopes up and out, which lets more light through to the sidewalk below and will likely eliminate the curbside waterfall when it\u2019s raining. The aesthetic trade-offs, of protection and durability in exchange for blockiness, are obvious: The lightest-duty structures, intended for briefer use under less demanding conditions than their chunkier counterparts, will clearly be the least visually intrusive. Even the heavy-duty ones, though, are a lot more porous than most of what we see now.<\/p>\n \n Arup\u2019s heavy-duty \u201cRigid Shed\u201d for major construction zones. \n PAU\u2019s \u201cBaseline Shed,\u201d to be available in heavy- and light-duty versions. The roof is transparent. \n PAU\u2019s \u201cWide Baseline Shed,\u201d with fewer columns, intended for projects on major streets with wide and heavily used sidewalks. All to the good. Nonetheless, even ideal sidewalk sheds are still sidewalk sheds, and they will still get dirty, gather windswept trash, wreck the sidewalk-caf\u00e9 business, and grow shabby and promo-stickered over time. The real power in the Get Sheds Down proposal \u2014 the firmly crossbraced steel pipe holding it up, if you like \u2014 is the financial one, and next year we\u2019ll see just how sturdy a set of supports it is. If a building owner keeps a shed up for years, which typically happens when that owner is deferring repairs, the Adams plan begins to impose fines. The longer the shed stays up, the more those fines escalate. Keep the thing in place for well past its limit, and, based on its size and age, the penalty can eventually hit $6,000 a month. New permits will be of shorter duration than they have been, and renewals will be handed out more stingily.<\/p>\n All of those incentives were signed into law this spring, and the rules don\u2019t take effect until January. In the meantime, a Department of Buildings representative tells me, a program that goes after sheds that have long overstayed their welcome has gotten 429 removed so far. That\u2019s a modest dent in a big problem, but the DoB says the total number of sheds citywide is down about 10 percent since 2023. Enforcement will, naturally, be the key to carrying off real change, and we\u2019ll see by next summer just how much of it the agency can handle. It will come too late for that Le Pain Quotidien at 3 Park Avenue, but maybe the Success Academy kids will be able to take their graduation photos on the plaza out front. In the sun.<\/p>\n Sign Up for the Curbed Newsletter<\/p>\n A daily mix of stories about cities, city life, and our always evolving neighborhoods and skylines.<\/p>\n Vox Media, LLC Terms and Privacy Notice<\/p>\n![\"Arup's](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/a7b96a9650964ab255c04e056f6bf1a0ff-mayor-adams-unveils-new-designs--6.rhorizontal.w700.jpg\")
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\n Photo: Arup\/Office of the Mayor\n <\/p>\n![\"Arup's](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/48b0cb57fcc8cd880ee5ec25407a3e0840-mayor-adams-unveils-new-designs--4.rhorizontal.w700.jpg\")
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\n Photo: Arup\/Office of the Mayor\n <\/p>\n![\"Arup's](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/0665a89c3d3f13df2bf6452e61e4f655d4-mayor-adams-unveils-new-designs--2.rhorizontal.w700.jpg\")
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\n Photo: Arup\/Office of the Mayor\n <\/p>\n![\"PAU's](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/4e2185b0463303d638c994c94106e82c2b-mayor-adams-unveils-new-designs--3.rhorizontal.w700.jpg\")
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\n Photo: PAU\/Office of the Mayor\n <\/p>\n![\"PAU's](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/47eb6217f8e6187d84f65282ae0f666e04-mayor-adams-unveils-new-designs--5.rhorizontal.w700.jpg\")
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\n Photo: PAU\/Office of the Mayor\n <\/p>\n