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Luxury Skyscraper Shadows Are Devouring Central Park
By
Lauren Evans
Published Oct 29, 2013
Modified Oct 29, 2013
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By
Lauren Evans
Published Oct 29, 2013
Modified Oct 29, 2013
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The city's parks are among the few empty spaces protected from New York developers. No parking garages will ever trample Central Park's Sheep Meadow and no high-rise Walmart's will ever raze Prospect Park's Nethermead. But there is one threat to the park's sanctity that perhaps few people had considered: The Shadows.
It's not a weird hypothetical sprung from the world of sci-fi. Developers are eying the south side of the park as the new home to seven enormous towers which will serve as second and third homes for as-yet-unborn children of gallingly wealthy oil moguls around the world. The towers, nicknamed Billionaire's Row, will stand as tall as 1,424 feet, and the shadows they will cast over the park will act as chilling reminders that their owners are probably on a plane destined for Saint-Tropez anyway, and you're on the ground shivering under their icy umbra. It's an allegory for your life.
Looming skyscrapers can make a particular difference in the winter months, Michael Kwartler, the president of the Environmental Simulation Center, told Warren St. John, who penned an op-ed in today's Times on this very issue. At noon on the winter solstice, Kwartler calculates that the building's shadows will fall half a mile into the park by noon, and up to a mile as the day wears on. “The cumulative effect of these shadows will be to make the park less usable and less pleasant to be in,” Kwartler said.
Mayor Bloomberg, refusing to ride out his remaining time in office in silence, is working frantically to rezone East Midtown to make way for taller-than-ever buildings. This Is Progress. But at what cost? St. John points out that the very groups designed to defend the city's aesthetics have demurred in the face of the sun-stealing highrises, a far cry from 1987 when Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis led the charge to defend the park from the threat of 68-story towers. Can you imagine?
Maybe there are simply too many other battles to wage—we're really busy getting naked and protesting Citi Bike, you know—to bother with something as mercurial as obtrusive shadows. But we've fought dumber wars before. Doesn't this deserve some rage, too?
Tagged
central park
development
skyscrapers
Lauren Evans
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