New York City’s skyline represents opportunity, resilience, and the hard work of generations of skilled tradespeople. Yet, a growing movement led by well-funded, elitist special interest groups, including the Friends of the High Line, threatens to undermine that legacy. These groups are working overtime to halt development, invoking increasingly absurd reasons to justify their opposition—first shadows, now wind. What element will they come up with next?
Let me be clear: our opposition to these arguments has nothing to do with the High Line itself. The High Line is one of New York City’s gems, a cherished public space that our members and their families appreciate. This fight is about the dangerous anti-development sentiment being pushed by the Friends of the High Line, who did not consult with our office before launching their campaign. Instead, they took it upon themselves to prioritize park views over the economic livelihood of thousands of working New Yorkers. They claim developments will harm park goers’ experiences, but what about the experiences of hardworking men and women whose livelihoods are on the line?
This not-in-my-backyard movement not only undermines job creation but also deepens inequality by ensuring that only the wealthy can afford to live and thrive in Manhattan while the working class struggles to make ends meet. Workers should be able to live in the city they build. This anti-development campaign, much like others we’ve seen across the city, is driven by the elite who wish to protect their own lifestyles. They prioritize sunlight and park views over real jobs and career opportunities for union workers—opportunities that provide pathways to the middle class.
The latest chapter in this anti-development saga is the Friends of the High Line’s public campaign against new high-rise construction on Manhattan’s West Side. Their primary concern? That new buildings might cast shadows on the High Line or—if you can believe it—create wind disturbances that could affect visitors. Let’s be honest: this isn’t about wind or shadows. The truth is, these arguments are little more than a ruse to justify their opposition to projects that would bring much-needed housing, jobs, and economic growth to the city. And they have already succeeded in blocking several critical developments.
This is yet another case of the elite class using the thin veil of “community preservation” to hide the fact that they are simply more concerned with maintaining their own sheltered and comfortable lifestyles than with allowing for the creation of career opportunities and affordable housing that would actually benefit the neighborhood they claim to care so much about, along with thousands of other New Yorkers.
We’ve seen this before. It started seven years ago with the Brooklyn Botanical Gardens, where a proposed development at 960 Franklin Avenue was halted over concerns that it would cast shadows over a garden—shadows, they claimed, that would negatively affect the orchids. Never mind that this project would have provided 1,700 units of critically-needed housing, many of them affordable, all union-built, with financing from the AFL-CIO Housing Investment Trust. Since then, other critical projects across the city have faced similar roadblocks, from the New York Blood Bank to Memorial Sloan Kettering, to name a few, all under the guise of protecting views, stopping shadows, or some other abstract environmental impact.
What’s really happening is that the city’s wealthiest residents are prioritizing their own interests over the well-being of working-class families who rely on construction jobs to put food on the table. And for what? A few more minutes of sunlight and a little less wind on a walking path?
New York has always been a vertical city. Our success comes from building up, from creating opportunity out of development, and ensuring that we continue to thrive as a place where everyone—not just the wealthy—can find meaningful work and build a better life.
The men and women of New York’s Building Trades cannot—and will not—sit idly by while this small but powerful group prevents our city from growing. We are ready to fight for the future of New York. We will continue to push back against these efforts to derail projects that provide good-paying union careers, affordable housing, and opportunities for all New Yorkers to achieve a middle-class lifestyle.
Shadows and wind won’t stop us, and neither will the self-interests of a few elites who have chosen to stand in the way of progress.
