Staten Island could be entering one of the most pivotal years in its history.
There are big changes coming to the borough, changes that could render the Staten Island we know and love unrecognizable in the coming years.
Here are four big factors that are lining up to make things on Staten Island worse in 2026.
City of Yes
Have you noticed all the green construction fences going up around Staten Island? Have you seen the old homes and businesses being demolished behind them?
Get used to it.
An orgy of development could be in the offing for the borough, all made possible by builder-friendly City of Yes laws.
Staten Island could become home to more development – including high-rise apartment buildings – than we’ve ever seen here before. The very character of the borough hangs in the balance.
Yes, this could work out well for those who are looking for affordable housing, particularly just-marrieds and those with young families. After all, increasing the city’s stock of affordable was the whole justification for City of Yes in the first place.
Or it could lead to the building of even more overpriced and undersized “luxury” apartments and million-dollar McMansions that everyday people here, even those in two-income families, simply can’t afford.
Oh, and all this new construction could lead to even more traffic on borough roads and even fewer parking spots on neighborhood streets.
City of Yes could be one of the most consequential pieces of legislation ever passed in New York City history. And as the least developed of all the boroughs, Staten Island is poised to absorb the worst of it.
Arthur Kill Road truck spots
That’s right: traffic here could get even worse.
Included on the list are a mega-warehouse on Nassau Place; a massive industrial warehouse in Rossville; a large vehicle storage space for the city Department of Transportation, and a spacious terminal that will provide short- and long-term truck parking for a variety of businesses.
The development of these sites somehow flew completely under the radar. But they could have a huge impact on life across the borough.
If you drive on the Staten Island Expressway with any regularity, you know that an enormous number of trucks already use our roads. Now we can expect to see many more.
Borough lawmakers last month called for a widening of Arthur Kill Road.
Sadly for us, the horse may already be out of the barn.
BESS sites
Yes, battery energy storage system sites are still coming to a neighborhood near you.
And, yes, they’re still dangerous.
A BESS site in upstate Warwick just went on fire for the second time since 2023. The prior fire at the facility burned for days and led to community evacuations.
BESS fires can’t simply be doused like other conflagrations. They must be left to burn themselves out, spewing toxic fumes all the while.
The safety of BESS sites just hasn’t been tested over time.
That would be bad enough. But what makes the threat even greater is that a provision passed under, yes, City of Yes again, allows these industrial facilities to be built cheek-by-jowl with homes in residential neighborhoods and next to mom-and-pop shops in commercial districts.
BESS sites may indeed be needed to prevent future rolling blackouts as artificial intelligence and overall development continue to burden the electrical grid.
But it’s simply dangerous and patently unfair for BESS sites to be placed next to homes and along Main Street-style shopping corridors.
They are unsafe and could drive down property values. They belong in remote areas or industrial zones.
Mayor Zohran Mamdani
Democratic socialist Mamdani let you know exactly where he stands by choosing lefty U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders and anti-Trump Attorney General Letitia James to swear him in as the new mayor.
Socialism and top-down, centralized government control don’t work on an industrial scale, including in American cities. Just ask the folks in Chicago.
But New Yorkers voted to give it a try anyway.
Mamdani has promised nothing short of a revolution for the five boroughs.
The new mayor has pledged free mass transit, rent freezes and the creation of additional affordable housing.
Who could be against any of that?
But Mamdani as mayor won’t have the power to deliver on his promises all by himself. He’s going to need the state and the feds to help.
So, is he a bold visionary charting a new course for New York? Or just another politician making feel-good promises he knows he can’t keep in order to get elected?
We’re about to find out.