I spend time on the Upper West Side in Manhattan.

Tree-lined streets. Distinguished landmarked buildings. A neighborhood that still believes in proportion, history, and the radical idea that charm should not be bulldozed.

Enter progress.

A developer recently purchased the old American Broadcasting Company campus nearby for approximately $900 million.

The plan is to erect a luxury building matching the height  of the Empire State Building…I kid you not.

An 86-story residential tower. It is slated for 430 units and includes 25,000 square feet of retail space and a 187-space parking garage.

I’am not against progress.

I like progress. I enjoy progress. I am typing this, after all, on a device that didn’t exist when I was in college.

I do have questions.

For example…when did progress become synonymous with bigger, louder, and entirely out of context because this monument to ego will definitely not blend in.

This is like showing up to an intimate, elegant dinner party with a foghorn, a lighting rig, numerous buckets of extra crispy Popeyes chicken and a chilled bottle of strawberry flavored Boone’s Farm to wash done the greasy treat.

And then there’s the construction.

The noise.

The dust.

The heavy handed, persistent hum of machinery that suggests something enormous is happening whether you consent or not.

It begins early. It ends late. It exists always.

A kind of ambient soundtrack titled, If I Had A Hammer.

My windows are now less a source of natural light and more front-row seats to an industrial documentary I did not subscribe to.

There is dust. Everywhere.

Walking on tbe sidewalk is taboo and driving on the street is like traversing an obstacle course.

And yet, the language around all of this is so…optimistic.

Revitalization.

Transformation.

Reimagining the urban experience.

I would like to reimagine an environment that does not mimick Dubai and protects Central Park.

What fascinates me most is scale.

Not just physical scale, though 86-stories feels less like a building and more like a declaration, but emotional scale because neighborhoods have a rhythm. A texture. A personality.

And when something arrives that dwarfs all of it, the question is not just what’s being built. It is what is being erased.

I walk past the site and try to picture it finished.

Glass. Steel. Height. A vertical ambition that seems less about living and more about being seen from space.

Will it be beautiful? Beauty is in the eye of the developer.

Will it belong?

Progress is supposed to move us forward.

But forward to what?

Higher property values?

Or just…more?

No answers here.

Just observations. And a growing familiarity with construction schedules.

So for now, I’ll adapt.

Close the windows. Wipe down the surfaces. Practice deep breathing between jackhammer intervals and watch as progress rises, floor by floor, asking me, persistently, is this really progress?!