Thinking About Installing a Canopy?

If you decide to install a canopy in front of your building, you’d better have a high tolerance for red tape. That’s because all canopies must win approval of the Department of Buildings (DOB) and the much slower Department of Transportation (DOT), which is involved because there’s a miniscule chance that your canopy’s supporting struts might impede foot traffic.

“With DOB, you can file things two different ways,” says Chris Henry, co-owner of Green Light Expediting, one of many companies that buildings hire to deal with the city’s notoriously tangled bureaucracy. One is having your architect or engineer file an application with the DOB office in your borough. A DOB examiner reviews the plans “to make sure the canopy’s properly attached to the building – wind-resistant and stable – and that you test it for asbestos,” Henry says.

The other way is to have your professional use the city’s Professional Certification Program, which allows architects and engineers to certify that the plans being filed comply with all applicable laws. “That saves time by taking the DOB examiner out of the equation,” says Henry. “The problem is, your plans can be audited at any point and if there are any issues – if they say, ‘Oh, you read the code wrong, you can’t it build it there’ – then you have to tear [the canopy] down. That’s why some folks don’t like to professionally certify.”

If you go the examiner route, he says, it takes DOB “four or five weeks to do the initial review and come back with any comments. If they do, then you have to schedule an appointment with the plan examiner and show the revised plans. Jobs can be started only after the plan [has been] approved.”

You’ll also need DOB approval before you can get DOT’s approval, which is known as “revocable consent,” since it can be revoked if, say, a new bus stop is being installed within 15 feet of your canopy. The process starts with your professional submitting a “Permittee Registration Application” with a number of standard documents, and then waiting for that to be approved.

Once you have your permittee number, your professional fills out DOT’s application for roadway and sidewalk permits. Along with the application and architectural plans, you’ll need to show proof of a commercial general liability insurance policy, among other things. The fee for a canopy permit is $50 annually. You can also apply in person at the DOT Permit Office in your borough. Manhattan applicants must submit applications in person at the Highway Inspection Quality Assurance Unit at 55 Water Street.

Then comes the waiting. And the frustration. “We hired a designer and then he worked with an engineer to come up with a design the board thought was acceptable,” says Dan Gulick, the co-op board president at 111 Third Avenue. “As we finished the design process, we submitted for permits and that [process was like entering] a black hole.” DOT approval took more than eight months, as opposed to a few weeks for DOB approval.

Nor is eight months unusual. “Eight sounds about right,” says Henry, the expediter. “The last we heard from DOT they were saying four to six months, but they always undershoot.”

As we said at the top, if you’re thinking about installing a canopy in front of your building, you might want to think again.