Sherry-Netherland Sidewalk Shed Permits Start in 2018, City Shows

A 24th-floor unit owner has sued The Sherry-Netherland, saying construction scaffolding has “commandeered” her Central Park terrace for about six years, Crain’s New York Business reported Oct. 12. City permit records show the building’s facade job is older than that: a sidewalk shed was first permitted at 781 Fifth Avenue on Oct. 3, 2018, and the permits are still renewing.

Why it matters

Co-op boards across Manhattan are in long facade repair cycles, and this suit tests what a shareholder can do when a repair outlasts its schedule. Crain’s, in a Bloomberg report, says the owner alleges the co-op took over her terrace. Hoodline’s summary of the complaint, which leans on other outlets and which we have not verified, puts the start in 2020 and says the work was first expected to take 12 to 18 months. We could not reach the filing itself, so the claims are the owner’s allegations, and the co-op’s side was not available to us. See our New York coverage for related building and permit stories.

The numbers

The DOB NOW permit file for the building shows 15 sidewalk shed records. The first was issued Oct. 3, 2018 for a heavy-duty shed about 225 feet long, tied to a general construction job. That job has been reissued in 2019, 2021, 2022, 2023, 2024, 2025 and 2026, with the latest permit issued July 17, 2026 and set to expire Oct. 15, 2026. There are gaps of a few months between some permits, so the record does not prove an unbroken shed, only a shed kept on file for eight years.

The scaffolding the suit describes shows up later. The first supported scaffold for tower access was permitted Aug. 5, 2021, and a suspended scaffold for facade inspection and repair was permitted July 10, 2025. The permit text does not say which terraces they cover, so the record neither confirms nor rules out the owner’s six-year figure for her space. The facade safety filings explain why protection stayed up: the building was classified UNSAFE in February 2022, again in February 2024 and again in December 2025, after SWARMP filings in 2007 and 2017. An unsafe facade requires public protection under Local Law 11.

The work has also drawn enforcement. The ECB file lists 33 violations on the building, five issued in 2026. They include hot work on the 24th-floor setback without a fire watch in February, and, on May 6, a suspended scaffold with no DOB notification on file and a supported scaffold that did not match approved plans. Two of the May violations remain active, with penalties of $5,000 and $1,250.

What’s next

Watch the next sidewalk shed renewal, due after the Oct. 15 expiration, and the facade filing that follows the December 2025 UNSAFE classification. If the co-op answers in court, its response will show whether the repair has a finish date. NYSCEF dockets for the New York County Supreme Court case were not available to us.