Standard Hotel to erect sidewalk shed on High Line after debris falls

Chunk of façade fell off hotel’s facade in January

The Standard hotel at the High Line (Getty)
The Standard hotel at the High Line (Getty)

A shadow has fallen over a portion of the High Line after a chunk of paneling on an adjacent hotel came off the building.

The Standard Hotel, which straddles the southern end of the elevated park, will erect a 450-foot stretch of scaffolding over the High Line to safeguard pedestrians from falling debris, the New York Post reported.

On January 2, an 8-foot portion of cement-and-fiberglass paneling tumbled off of the hotel, according to the publication. Four days after the incident, a 311 call from an onlooker summoned the city’s Department of Buildings to the site, where the agency found a gap in the hotel’s siding. The DOB issued a $2,500 violation on Feb. 10 and ordered The Standard to hire engineers to carry out a stability assessment of the facade, which it has complied with.

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The Standard was developed by hotelier André Balazs and designed by Ennead Architects, and opened in 2009. It is unclear when the sidewalk sheds will come down from the High Line — which, before the pandemic, was a bustling tourist attraction.

New York City has beefed up its enforcement of facade problems in the wake of the 2019 death architect Erica Tishman, who was struck by debris that fell off of a Midtown building. A 2019 analysis by The Real Deal found that many landlords defy requirements that they regularly inspect and repair facades and report those actions.

[NYP] — Georgia Kromrei