About 50 people marched along 57th Street yesterday morning to protest the unrestricted development of residential towers along that Midtown corridor, which is now home to some of the world's tallest buildings, all of them casting shadows as far as a mile deep into Central Park.
Called Stand Against the Shadows, the demonstration was a reboot of a protest by the same name, about the same issue, back in 1987. That effort was spearheaded by the Municipal Art Society of New York, which has previously received star-power partnership from Jacqueline Onassis, in reaction to the planned Time Warner Center. MAS says they succeeded then in reducing both the height and square footage of what became the TWC towers.
(Scott Lynch / Gothamist)
Yesterday's demonstration may have lacked the glamour of anything Jackie O ever did, but MAS executive vice president Mary Rowe was on hand, as was Layla Law Gisiko of the Central Park Sunshine Task Force, and City Councilman Benjamin Kallos led the march across town. Most of the demonstrators carried black umbrellas, a symbolic tactic also deployed in 1987.
The well-heeled gathering was careful to say at every juncture that the Stand Against the Shadows movement isn't against new development per se—one gentleman suggested to his companion that "they should build these things in Long Island, or Brooklyn, where housing is needed"—but rather that they felt the need for more input into any future construction that might impact the levels of sunshine in Central Park. A "temporary moratorium" on super-tall towers in the neighborhood is proposed, for example, while environmental studies are made.
Only Councilman Kallos was heard to rail against the "billionaires" who are buying the apartments in buildings such as One57, 432 Park Avenue, and 111 West 57th, and then only really as an (largely tax-free) investment, not as a place to live. The developers of these moneymakers also receive huge tax abatements. When asked if he saw any irony in attacking the super-rich to an audience of the just-regular-rich, Kallos called this a "New Yorker issue" supported equally by his constituents in both East Harlem and Sutton Place.
There was no chanting or yelling from the demonstrators during the march, even when they stopped for photo-ops in front of the buildings in question. The signs were all low-key and polite, and many of umbrellas were branded with reassuringly capitalist entities such as Barclays Wealth, the Plaza Hotel, and the Ritz-Carlton.
(Scott Lynch / Gothamist)
(Scott Lynch / Gothamist)
Despite rampant sidewalk-blocking all along the route, the NYPD, so vigilant in protecting the public from this crime during both Occupy Wall Street and Black Lives Matter demonstrations over the years, was nowhere to be seen.
