NY POST

NEW PARK IS RIGHT ON TRACK

By TOM TOPOUSIS

May 31, 2004 -- One of New York's hidden treasures - a rusting elevated railroad that stretches down Manhattan's West Side - is about to take its first step toward a public debut.

Four design teams were picked last week to compete for the job of turning the long-dormant freight railroad into the city's newest public park.

Running more than a mile, from the West Side railroad yards at 30th Street to the Meatpacking District, the High Line is an oasis in the sky now covered with wildflowers and trees and inhabited by birds and butterflies.

"The High Line is just so magical," said city Planning Commissioner Amanda Burden. "I always said that if I were in a position of power or influence, saving it would be one of the first things that I would do."

The future wasn't always so bright for the High Line, last used to carry freight in 1982. Just four years ago, the city was ready to begin demolition on the structure.

But two West Siders who were fascinated with the structure began a drive to save the railroad, recognizing its potential as a public project that would lift New Yorkers 35 feet above the street and what seems a world away from the congestion below.

Robert Hammond and Joshua David in 1999 formed a group called Friends of the High Line, which began to turn the tide from demolition to preservation. Their efforts won over officials in the Bloomberg administration.

"It's so easy to live close to it and never really understand what it is," said David. "But just the idea that this hidden structure existed and ran 22 blocks was fascinating to me."

In a rare walk along the High Line - shut off from the public by its operator, CSX Railroad - The Post caught a glimpse of Manhattan from the elevated tracks, which have become a nature preserve.

Between two tall warehouses, a small forest has sprouted. Near 14th Street, a wild cherry tree is taking root beside a rusting railroad switch. Hyacinth, Queen Anne's lace and purple aster flourish in the sun-drenched sections of the old viaduct.

A final design for the railroad's conversion will be picked in July, after the three teams put their proposals up for public display.

With an estimated $65 million price tag, the project is expected to be open to the public late in 2006.

Here's some pictures of the Highline I found in it's current state:

http://www.thehighline.org/images/gallery_mapbig.gif

http://www.geocities.com/tjaaf69/highline_files/history_photo3.jpg

http://www.thehighline.org/images/gallery/sternfeld_photo_06.jpg

http://www.thehighline.org/images/gallery/sternfeld_photo_03.jpg

http://www.thehighline.org/images/gallery/sternfeld_photo_13.jpg

http://www.thehighline.org/images/gallery/sternfeld_photo_18.jpg

http://www.thehighline.org/images/gallery/sternfeld_photo_20.jpg

http://www.thehighline.org/images/gallery/sternfeld_photo_17.jpg

http://www.geocities.com/tjaaf69/highline_files/Pict0004b.jpg

Friends of the High Line (http://www.thehighline.org/)

Designing the High Line - View all 720 Proposals (http://www.thehighline.org/competition/)

NY POST

HIGH LINE PARK ON RIGHT TRACK

October 7, 2004 -- The city's unlikeliest new park — set on an abandoned elevated railroad line on the far West Side — took a step closer to reality yesterday when top city officials announced they were pumping another $27.5 million into the project.

Mayor Bloomberg and City Council Speaker Gifford Miller, possible rivals in next year's mayoral election, were as chummy as could be at a press conference on the unused tracks three stories above 14th Street at Tenth Avenue.

"New York is ultimately about reimagining itself every generation," said Miller, an early champion of the plan to transform the 22-block stretch of rail line into a park in the sky.

City funding for the High Line, as the rail line is known, now totals $43.5 million. Officials said private and other government funds would have to be raised to meet a final construction tab estimated at up to $100 million.

NY Times

Designers Detail an Urban Oasis 30 Feet Up

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2005/04/19/arts/19highL.jpg
A computer-generated image of a proposed entrance to the High Line park. Designs go on display tomorrow at the Museum of Modern Art.

By ROBIN POGREBIN

Published: April 19, 2005

The mile-and-a-half path of concrete planks will weave among plants and wildflowers like a curvilinear boardwalk meandering through a floating garden. Some entrances will emphasize a gradual ascent from the grit and congestion of the city's streets to an oasis of pastoral calm. The 22-block stretch is to include the unexpected: an adjustable chair that can become a table or a chaise longue; a walkway flanked by a wetland with lily pads.

These details and others have been refined over the last several months by designers who plan to create an elevated public walkway out of the High Line, an abandoned railway that runs 30 feet above the city between 10th and 11th Avenues in Manhattan, from 34th Street to Gansevoort Street in the meatpacking district. The most recent digital drawings and renderings, including a 20-foot-long architectural model, go on display at the Museum of Modern Art tomorrow.

"Landscape architecture and urban design are completely integrated," said the show's curator, Tina di Carlo, an assistant curator in the museum's architecture and design department.

Construction of the project, designed by the New York-based architectural firms Field Operations and Diller, Scofidio & Renfro, in cooperation with the city and the nonprofit group Friends of the High Line, is expected to begin by year's end.

However innovative the design, the ultimate aesthetics and workaday experience of the High Line will hinge on how it relates to its surroundings, which are currently in flux. New construction is planned along the High Line, including several buildings that will intersect the railway. In addition, the Jets stadium and convention center, if built, could have a profound impact on the High Line's views and crowds.

The design team has been focusing on the first phase of the High Line, the southernmost portion, from Gansevoort Street to 15th Street, deciding on elements like seating, security and access. "It's answered a lot of the practical questions we've always had: how do you make it safe, and how do you get up there? At the same time, how do you keep it interesting?" said Robert Hammond, a founder of Friends of the High Line.

The designers are beginning to consider how the High Line will pass through or abut various new buildings, including a 15-story André Balazs hotel designed by Polshek Partnership at 13th Street; a building designed by Robert A. M. Stern between 17th Street and 18th Street, developed by Edison Properties; and a building designed by Frank Gehry, developed by Georgetown Partners between 18th Street and 19th Street.

"Yes, it poses technical and financial burdens on the hotel," Mr. Balazs said. "But I think the goal is to embrace it. As difficult as it is, I think it's really worth the challenge."

Much of the designers' work has been devoted to seeking a balance between preserving what one called "the romance of the ruin" - wild grasses growing up through the metal skeleton of rails and rivets - and creating a fresh green corridor for pedestrians. (The High Line is currently off limits.) "There is an ecosystem in place," said Elizabeth Diller, one of the architects. "The moment you let people up there, that ecosystem will be destroyed. We have to find a way for humans and growth to coexist."

James Corner, the founder and director of Field Operations, the project's landscape architect, described the challenge as "how to maintain the magic of the High Line as a found landscape in the city, yet at the same time accommodate the numbers of people who want to stroll up there." The concrete planking system is to cover about half of the High Line, a soft layer of vegetation the remainder. But these proportions are flexible; planks can be added to reduce the amount of greenery and vice versa.

"We're trying to keep this as uncommercialized as possible," said Ricardo Scofidio, another of the architects, "to keep it simple and natural and not to overwhelm it."

In developing plans for the downtown portion of the High Line, the designers have been focusing on how the walkway will interact with the street, distinguishing among the different entrances in terms of speed - some will provide a slow ascent; others will be more direct. Every access point is to have a presence at ground level.

The one at Gansevoort, for example, is to feature a large glass-encased area that may be used for a restaurant directly underneath the High Line; it will rise gradually to the walkway, so that people come close to the metal bones of the structure as they move up into it. Also at Gansevoort, where the railway begins, the architects plan to leave the existing exposed section of the High Line, "so you can clearly understand the construction of the structure," Mr. Scofidio said.

The design calls for a variety of seating options all along the High Line, including loose chairs and benches - "all sorts of combinations as to how the public could inhabit this space," said Ms. di Carlo, the assistant curator. "A couple or a couple with a baby or disabled people or someone walking their dog," she added, "all of that has been studied."

The designers hope to use the areas of the High Line that are covered by buildings as rental spaces for events to generate revenue. Lighting along the line is to be kept as a soft ambient glow below eye level. The designers expect the area to be monitored by video cameras. The architects plan to keep the original steel railings - "designed to keep locomotives from plunging into the street," Mr. Scofidio said. To meet the code requirements at crosswalks would require the installation of eight-foot walls that would obstruct east-west views. As a result, the architects are planning to add glass or a fine mesh to the railings and to create a wetlands area at 14th Street that will keep people from the edge.

The show opening tomorrow at the Modern features large-format photographs by Joel Sternfeld, a New York photographer who has documented the High Line's current rough, overgrown condition.

The design team also includes Piet Oudolf, a horticulturalist; Olafur Eliasson, an artist; and the firm Buro Happold, structural engineers.

Friends of the High Line, the nonprofit group that successfully fought to save the railway from demolition in 2001, has raised about $3.5 million in private money. The city has committed about $50 million, and support is expected to come from the federal government and the state.

"For a long time, the mystery of the High Line was it could be anything," said Joshua David, a founder of the High Line group. "Now we have a design developing that retains that same sense of mystery and possibility even as we're narrowing down to a singular vision."

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2005/04/19/arts/19high-chart.gif
The High Line runs from Gansevoort to 34th Street in Manhattan.

Swivle's gonna like this :D
if he didn't already know about it.
btw I don't understand what they meant by how it will fit in with newer buildings?
it's not like they're constructing the new buildings on top of the tracks :dunno:

Yeah Swiv's gonna like this :D

But he had a thread on it a while back, so he knows about it and loves it.

Good to see that construction (or renovation) will start this year!

Excellent
http://img258.echo.cx/img258/7398/image22x31qh.gif

outstanding.. I couldn't be happier with the way things are going.. design, standards, feedback.. I think ppl are really beginning to realize how important, and significant this renovation/restoration is (will be)... and in so many different ways..

the moma showing will be a must see :okay:

UPDATE:

http://img192.echo.cx/img192/3182/screenhunter0013no.gif
http://img192.echo.cx/img192/3173/screenhunter0023fa.gif
http://img192.echo.cx/img192/2921/screenhunter0033th.gif

in the blocks in the 20's it would be nice to see it incorporated w/ all of the galleries in that area...well I guess only time will tell

word..

This park is an unusual and great idea!

If I get to NYC after completion I'll surely want to walk the whole stretch of it.

FHL E-Mail Newsletter
May 9, 2005


IN THIS ISSUE
Dia Art Foundation Plans New Museum Next to the High Line
Positive Review by WSJ's Architecture Critic, Ada Louise Huxtable
May 11 Deadline For New High Line T-Shirt Submissions





DIA ART FOUNDATION PLANS NEW MUSEUM NEXT TO THE HIGH LINE
Today The New York Times reports that the Dia Art Foundation plans to construct a new museum adjacent to the High Line. The museum would be located at the corner of Gansevoort and Washington Streets, at the High Line's southern terminus, in the Meatpacking District.

Read The New York Times article

About Dia: Dia Art Foundation was founded in 1974. A nonprofit institution, Dia plays a vital role among visual-arts organizations nationally and internationally by initiating, supporting, presenting, and preserving art projects, and by serving as a locus for interdisciplinary art and criticism. Dia presents its permanent collection at Dia:Beacon, Riggio Galleries, in Beacon, New York; exhibitions and public programming in New York City; and long-term, site-specific projects in the western United States, in New York City, and on Long Island. For more information: http://www.diacenter.org

"The new High Line park, an industrial reclamation project in-keeping with Dia's long-standing interest in renovating existing structures, will become one of the most exciting new features of New York City," said Dia's President and Director Michael Govan. "We would like to provide a cultural anchor for this innovative public space. It's perfect for Dia – we would have two large light-filled museums on the Hudson, one in Beacon for the collection and one in Manhattan for more contemporary exhibitions." The Nabisco printing facility that has become Dia:Beacon was originally connected by the High Line rail to the former Nabisco buildings on 14th Street, as well as to Dia's proposed new site a few blocks south. The Hudson River's proximity and the adjacent single-story meat market buildings afford the location an unusual abundance of light and open space, not unlike Dia's property in Beacon.

Dia's proposal will require a public review process, and approval by the City of New York. Dia hopes that, if approved, the new facility could open as early as 2007 in conjunction with the first phase of the High Line.


[ BACK TO TOP ]







POSITIVE REVIEW BY WSJ'S ARCHITECTURE CRITIC, ADA LOUISE HUXTABLE
The May 4 edition of The Wall Street Journal included a very positive review by architecture critic Ada Louise Huxtable of "The High Line" exhibition at The Museum of Modern Art and the High Line project as a whole.

"'The High Line'—a project initiated by a private group, the Friends of the High Line, which has already enlisted state and city support and funding—brings us home to New York and a proposal that ranks with the best of them," writes Huxtable. "This imaginative and sensitive scheme is so well conceived and its design development is being so well orchestrated, in everything from its excellent Web site to its practical execution, that it serves as an object lesson for a preservation movement increasingly mired in sentimentality, amateurism and political infighting as judgment is defaulted through a lack of appropriate critical standards for modernist buildings coming of age."

Read The Wall Street Journal article


[ BACK TO TOP ]







MAY 11 DEADLINE FOR NEW HIGH LINE T-SHIRT SUBMISSIONS
Friends of the High Line is looking for a new T-shirt design. The shirts will be worn by members of the public who want to show support for the High Line at an upcoming New York City Council hearing. Following the hearing, the shirts will be sold in local stores.

Contest Deadline: May 11, 2005

The winning designer will receive two tickets to Friends of the High Line's 5th Annual Summer Benefit, on July 13, 2005 ($1,000 value).

View guidelines and submission requirements



...

where is this place? the place of an old rail way?

exactly.. this site will tell you all about it...

Friends of the High Line (http://www.thehighline.org/)

http://img145.echo.cx/img145/1865/screenhunter1042bu.jpg
...http://img145.echo.cx/img145/5869/screenhunter1059vb.jpg

MAJOR FEDERAL AUTHORIZATION FOR HIGH LINE PROJECT

Surface Transportation Board grants railbanking certificate, allowing reuse of New York City's elevated rail structure as pedestrian walkway


June 13, 2005 (New York, NY)—The High Line project received a crucial federal authorization today, effectively opening the way for the High Line's transformation to public open space.

The Surface Transportation Board (STB), the federal body that oversees rail corridors, issued a Certificate of Interim Trail Use (CITU) for the High Line. The CITU enables CSX Transportation, the High Line's current owner, to negotiate a trail use agreement with the City of New York. This agreement would transfer control of the High Line to the City for use as a public walkway and open space.

"The STB's ruling is a great win for all New Yorkers," said Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg. "It allows us to implement our plans to preserve this valuable historic resource, create a much-needed public open space, and strengthen our city's economy."

"Thanks to the STB's ruling, we can move forward with plans to create one of the State's most unique and exciting public open spaces on the West Side of Manhattan," Governor George E. Pataki said. "By using the visionary railbanking program to transform this historic structure, we demonstrate New York's commitment to preserving its heritage and its environment at the same time that we create economic development opportunities for our future."

"We're very pleased with the STB's ruling," said John P. Casellini, Vice President for Public Affairs, CSX Corporation. "We look forward to working with the City of New York on an agreement that will allow the High Line to be used for the public's benefit."

"This is the most important victory yet for the High Line," said Robert Hammond, co-founder of Friends of the High Line (FHL). "Just six years ago, saving the High Line seemed like an impossible dream—and now it's reality. Thanks to railbanking, which preserves priceless transportation corridors and permits their reuse as public parks and walkways, one of New York City's most exciting preservation and urban planning projects can now move toward construction."


About the STB Ruling
By issuing a CITU, the STB has enabled the City and CSX Transportation to conclude agreements that will allow the High Line to become a railbanked trail. Railbanking, a method of creating trails from out-of-use rail corridors, was established by a 1983 Congressional amendment to the National Trails Systems Act. There are over 13,000 miles of rail-trails across the country, with nearly 16,000 more in development.

The City originally petitioned the STB for the CITU in December 2002. Subsequently, the State of New York and CSX Transportation filed with the STB supporting the City's request. In addition, a group representing the underlying property owners filed with the STB withdrawing its previous objections to railbanking.


Next Steps
The City of New York and CSX Transportation will proceed to conclude an agreement for trail use on the High Line. This legal structure is expected to include a transfer of ownership of the High Line from CSX Transportation to the City. Ground-breaking is projected for later this year. It is anticipated that the first phase of the High Line to be converted (from Gansevoort Street to 15th Street) will open to the public in late 2007 or early 2008.


Other Recent Advances for the High Line Project
• Funding: In the fall of 2004, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg and City Council Speaker Gifford Miller announced new capital funding commitments to the High Line project. The City's capital funding commitment now stands at $51.3 million. Senators Charles Schumer and Hillary Rodham Clinton worked with Congressman Jerrold Nadler to bring $1 million to the project in the FY 2005 omnibus appropriations bill. Congressman Nadler has also included $5 million for the High Line in the six-year transportation bill now moving through Congress; Senators Schumer and Clinton are working to supplement that allocation while the bill is in the Senate. $3 million in federal Congestion Mitigation and Air Quality Improvement Program (CMAQ) funding was allocated to the project by the New York Metropolitan Transportation Council's New York City Transportation Coordinating Committee in January 2005. In addition, New York State Assembly Member Richard Gottfried worked to bring $50,000 in State Multi-Modal Transportation Program funds to the High Line.
• Design/MoMA Exhibition: A widely acclaimed Preliminary Design for the first phase of the High Line's transformation (from Gansevoort Street to 15th Street) is on view at the Museum of Modern Art, in New York City, until October 31, 2005. The Preliminary Design was created by Field Operations (landscape architecture), Diller Scofidio + Renfro (architecture), and a team of consultants including experts in engineering, security, lighting, and numerous other disciplines. The Preliminary Design can also be viewed at www.thehighline.org/design.
• Zoning: A rezoning proposal for the West Chelsea neighborhood surrounding the High Line is now moving through the City's public review process. The proposed rezoning includes a number of provisions intended to support the High Line's reuse as a public space. The proposal would also provide opportunities for new residential and commercial development and would enhance the neighborhood's thriving art gallery district. Adoption of the rezoning proposal is expected to take place in June 2005.
• Dia Plans Move to High Line: On May 9, Dia Art Foundation announced a proposal to construct a new museum adjacent to the High Line. The museum would be located at the corner of Gansevoort and Washington Streets, at the High Line's southern terminus, on a City-owned site in the Meatpacking District. Dia seeks to have the main entrance to the new exhibition space on the High Line level. The plan must go through the City's Uniform Land Use Review Procedure (ULURP) before construction can begin.


High Line Project Background
Since 1999, Friends of the High Line (FHL) has been working to preserve the High Line for reuse as an elevated walkway. The City of New York endorsed the project in 2002, when it filed with the STB for a CITU.

The High Line was built in the 1930s as part of the West Side Improvement, a major transportation infrastructure project which eliminated street-level rail crossings from the northern tip of Manhattan down to Spring Street. When rail traffic declined in the 1960s, the southern section of the Line was demolished.

Legal disputes about the future of the High Line began in the mid-1980s, after the final train rolled down its tracks pulling a carload of frozen turkeys. Underlying property owners began lobbying for the structure's demolition, arguing that the Line prevented them from developing their properties. A local resident named Peter Obletz fought for the Line's preservation, at one point even purchasing the Line from Conrail (the High Line's owner at that time) for $10. The purchase was later challenged and overturned by the underlying property owners.

In 1992, the Interstate Commerce Commission (which later became the STB) issued a conditional abandonment order, which would have allowed demolition of the structure if certain financial conditions were met by the underlying property owners. The attempts to satisfy those conditions were never approved by both the railroad owner and the STB.

In 1999, neighborhood residents Joshua David and Robert Hammond founded Friends of the High Line with the mission of converting the structure to an elevated public space—a greenway or promenade—and began building community support.

The Giuliani administration favored and worked towards the demolition of the High Line. When Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg took office, he directed his administration to take a fresh look at the High Line's potential. In 2002, FHL commissioned an economic feasibility study that showed that the High Line would add value to its surrounding neighborhood, generating $262 million in new tax revenues over a 20-year period. In December of 2002, the City changed its policy and took the first step to converting the High Line to a public walkway by filing with the STB for a CITU. The State of New York and CSX Corporation filed in support of the City's petition in the fall of 2004, and the underlying property owners filed to withdraw their objections to railbanking later that year.


About Friends of the High Line (FHL)
FHL is a non-profit, 501(c)(3) organization established to preserve the High Line for reuse as an elevated public open space. Support for the project comes from hundreds of local residents, business-owners, and civic organizations, as well numerous elected officials. For more information on Friends of the High Line, please visit www.thehighline.org.


PLEASE NOTE: The High Line is currently private property, owned by CSX Transportation, and managed by CSX and the City. At this time, the site is not open to the public, and trespassers will be subject to prosecution.


Contact:
Joshua David, FHL (212) 206-9922; josh@thehighline.org
Robert Hammond, FHL, (212) 206-9922; robert@thehighline.org

Wednesday, June 16, 6:00pm - 8:00pm
Lotus
409 West 14th Street (between 9th & 10th Avenues)
Cash Bar


On Monday, June 13, the Surface Transportation Board, the federal regulator with oversight of all rail lines, approved the City of New York's request for a Certificate of Interim Trail Use, or CITU, for the High Line.

This is our biggest victory to date. It means that the most significant obstacle to preservation and reuse of the High Line has been overcome.

Now the City can conclude negotiations on a Trail Use Agreement with CSX Transportation, the railroad that owns the High Line, and plans for the start of construction can move forward.

Because of this victory, the dream of the High Line can finally become a reality.

Friends of the High Line hopes you will join us to celebrate this historic advance.

For more details on this important advance, view the press release.

NOTE: We still need people to support the High Line at City Hall on the morning of Wednesday, June 15. You don't need to speak—just attend—and you will get a free t-shirt. View City Hall hearing details.

About the map on this invitation: Paula Scher, a partner at Pentagram, painted this map of the High Line neighborhoods as part of a larger series of maps that will be exhibited at Maya Stendhal Gallery in fall 2005. (To see Scher's High Line Map without cropping, click here.) Other work by Scher for FHL includes the organization's logo; Reclaiming the High Line, the publication of the 2002 reuse study FHL produced with the Design Trust for Public Space; exhibition graphics and publication for FHL's 2003 ideas competition; and FHL's overall graphic identity.


Friends of the High Line
430 West 14th Street, Suite 304
New York, NY 10014
(212) 206-9922
(212) 206-9118 fax
info@thehighline.org
http://www.thehighline.org


© 2005 Friends of the High Line

http://img300.echo.cx/img300/7938/screenhunter1096ui.jpg

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/06/15/nyregion/15highline.html?pagewanted=print
Rusty Railroad Advances on Road to Pristine Park

By PAUL VITELLO

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2005/06/14/nyregion/highline.slide.2.jpg
If the plans materialize, the project would become one of only two elevated parks in the world; the other, also carved out of an abandoned railroad viaduct, is the Promenade Plantée in Paris.

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2005/06/14/nyregion/highline.slide.3.jpg
The project was designed by the New York-based architectural firms Field Operations and Diller, Scofidio & Renfro, in cooperation with the city and the nonprofit group Friends of the High Line.

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2005/06/14/nyregion/highline.slide.4.jpg
A computer-generated image of a proposed entrance to the park.

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2005/06/14/nyregion/highline.slide.5.jpg
According to the plan, one entrance will feature a large glass-encased area that may be used for a restaurant directly underneath the High Line.

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2005/06/14/nyregion/highline.slide.6.jpg
[i]The plan would allow visitors to come close to the metal bones of the structure as they move up into it

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2005/06/14/nyregion/highline.slide7.jpg
The designers hope to use the areas of the High Line that are covered by buildings as rental spaces for events to generate revenue.

Plans for the city's first elevated park - a singular ribbon of green space stretching a mile and a half along an abandoned railroad viaduct 30 feet above the streets of Chelsea - have taken a major step forward with a favorable ruling by a federal transportation board.

The ruling, on Monday, essentially cleared the way for the city to begin negotiating use and development of the High Line, a weed-overgrown railroad bed that has not been used since the late 1960's and that, seen from above, looks like a painter's thick stroke of brilliant green along the gritty Lower West Side of Manhattan, between 34th Street and Gansevoort Street, in the meatpacking district.

If the plans materialize, the project would become one of only two elevated parks in the world; the other, also carved out of an abandoned railroad viaduct, is the Promenade Plantée in Paris.

"This is one of the most unique open spaces in the world," said Amanda M. Burden, chairwoman of the New York City Planning Commission and an outspoken advocate of the High Line project. "You will be able to walk 22 blocks in the city of New York without ever coming in contact with a vehicle. People will see the city from a completely unique perspective."

The project has had a long gestation, beginning in 1999, when some neighborhood residents, organized as Friends of the High Line, first intervened to block plans for demolishing the viaduct.

Property owners along the right of way, just east of the Hudson River, sought to develop their land beneath the elevated tracks.

The administration of former Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani supported those efforts. But Michael R. Bloomberg, a year after taking office as mayor, reversed the city's position to support preservation.

In 2004, with the enticement of a promised $50 million city investment in the park and other incentives to satisfy local businesses, the property owners withdrew their opposition to the city's plans to develop its first midair park.

On Monday, the federal Surface Transportation Board issued the city what is called a "certificate of interim trail use." That, in effect, permits the city to remove the segment of unused rail line from the national railway grid.

Under the terms of a federal rail-preservation law, such an "interim" use could be revoked in the future should the Surface Transportation Board decide the rail line is again needed, though such revocations are rare.

"Just six years ago, saving the High Line seemed like an impossible dream, and now it's a reality," Robert Hammond, a co-founder of Friends of the High Line, said in a statement.

Along 10th Avenue yesterday, some neighborhood residents were upbeat, if somewhat cautious.

"I think it's going to be great, as long as they make it so the kids don't fall off," said Maribel Vega, 40, holding her 5-year-old son, Pedro, by the hand. "The railings are nothing, you could go right over them."

The iron railings along the viaduct - some of them plain and some with ornate Art Deco designs - would indeed be flimsy protection for 5-year-olds playing 30 feet above street level; but plans call for many improvements, not least of them in safety and security. "They better think about kids throwing stuff down on people, too," said Ms. Vega's sister, Marisol Vega, 33.

"Any green space that we can get in this neighborhood is very welcome," said Jerri Prescott, a 38-year-resident of Chelsea walking her dog on 24th Street. "Terrific."

From the street, the High Line presents itself only intermittently, a stab of rusty gunwale gray appearing at street crossings, then disappearing behind giant movie billboards, or sometimes hidden behind ivy and weed growth that drapes its railings. The line once rumbled with the traffic of freight cars, but now its presence is wistful, mainly invisible, and almost imaginary.

Public access is prohibited, and until the city negotiates terms with the owner of the line, the CSX Corporation, one can only imagine what a walk along this new boulevard might look like. But along 10th Avenue, glimpses are possible:

One will see billboards and fire escapes along some stretches, catch glimpses of crosstown traffic every block, and then, along those patches where no buildings interfere, see a river, and beyond that a lot of sky, possibly a sunset.

The next step is to negotiate a trail use agreement with the railroad, said Deputy Mayor Daniel L. Doctoroff. Gary Sease, a spokesman for CSX, said no problems were foreseen for the negotiations.

nice

amazing project, I love it when the line passes through buildings! Just amazing!

heres the latest skinny..

http://www.thehighline.org/newsletters/080505.html

http://www.therealdeal.net/issues/SEPTEMBER_2005/1125340430.php
September 2005
High times along the High Line

New condos rise with park views

By Tom Acitelli

An elevated promenade could be the ribbon that unwinds through Manhattan's next hot neighborhood, changing what it means to live 'on the park.'

The area of West Chelsea around 10th Avenue to 11th Avenue, from 16th Street north to 30th Street, could in the next few years see some of the briskest condo development of any area in Manhattan. And much of that development will happen around what's being called the High Line, a 6.7-acre span of former elevated train track running 22 blocks ending at 34th Street that's expected to become a park.

Groundbreaking is slated by the end of 2005, and nearly $70 million in public funds has already been allocated for development.

The pending park and a recent rezoning of the area by the city have united like weather fronts over most of West Chelsea to help rain development on a neighborhood dominated by high-rise rentals and aging manufacturing and commercial space.

"Dating back 10 or 12 years ago, it was strictly kind of a gritty, warehouse area," said Stuart Siegel, managing director at Grubb & Ellis, which is marketing a new 20-story commercial condo building called the Chelsea Arts Tower on West 25th Street, an office and art gallery development among the many residential projects set to rise.

Siegel has worked in the area for more than a dozen years. "It was kind of a blighted area," he said. "Not much money had been spent in the buildings."

The site for the Chelsea Arts Tower, which is going up on a former parking lot, was bought for $9 million, said Siegel, who helped broker the land deal. The glass and concrete tower, set to open in early 2006, will feature galleries and terraces for exhibits and collections, with some of the space projected to sell for up to $1,000 a square foot.

Other developments bolster the story of West Chelsea's emergence.

There's 555 West 23rd Street, two new luxury rental buildings with 337 units being redesigned by Andi Pepper and Stephen B. Jacobs as condos. One-bedrooms, according to the New York Post, will start at $550,000 and two-bedrooms could go as high as $1.6 million. Douglaston Development topped out the buildings just this spring, making their short lives as rentals a telling example of the rush to capitalize on West Chelsea's changing residential face.

The former eyesore that's become a beacon for the neighborhood has lent its name to another bright spot, the Highline 519. The project at 519 West 23rd Street features 11 floor-through condos marketed by Prudential Douglas Elliman. Although it's about one block from its namesake, Andy Gerringer, director of Elliman's development marketing, said the Highline 519 was started more than two years ago, "before all the hoopla about the High Line became serious."

Studios there will start at around $700,000 and two-bedrooms may go as high as $1.75 million. These prices are well above Manhattan norms: The average sales price was $380,073 for a studio in the second quarter 2005, according to appraisal firm Miller Samuel, and $1.54 million for a two-bedroom.

The Related Companies is also planning a residential building between 16th and 17th streets on the east side of 10th Avenue, fronting the High Line. Further south, a new luxury hotel is planned at Little West 12th and Washington streets. Developed by Andre Balazs' Hotels AB, it will be dubbed the Standard, New York. Details remain scarce, but Polshek Partnership has been named as the architect.

Overall, between 7,200 and 10,000 new residential units may be built in West Chelsea in the next seven to 10 years, according to broker estimates. As many as 900 could spring up within a single square block, around 23rd Street between 10th and 11th avenues.

"It's really going to be creating a whole entire neighborhood onto itself," said Christopher Mathieson, managing partner at JC DeNiro & Associates, which is nearly doubling the size of its Ninth Avenue office in anticipation of the residential influx.

As Mathieson drove down the West Side Highway in early August, rolling past recent residential developments in the West Village, he posed a question he thinks many will soon ask about 10th and 11th avenues farther north.

"It'll be the same way for West Chelsea," he said, pointing out newer high-rises in the West Village. "People will say, 'Remember when nothing was here?'"

HUGE News for the Highline project.. Green means GO!


So happy......oops
http://img51.imageshack.us/img51/2497/oops1dk.jpg


http://img26.imageshack.us/img26/4627/screenshot0010ti.jpg

Read the press release (http://www.thehighline.org/newsletters/111605_pr.html)




http://img29.imageshack.us/img29/2492/g6ci.jpg

http://img29.imageshack.us/img29/3595/f1is.jpg

http://img29.imageshack.us/img29/4856/e7mb.jpg

http://img29.imageshack.us/img29/3977/d4uf.jpg

http://img29.imageshack.us/img29/6115/c5dt.jpg

http://img29.imageshack.us/img29/6697/b8de.jpg

http://img29.imageshack.us/img29/7573/a2tm.jpg

Building an enormous snowman on the highline is in order this winter, who's with me?

take pics!

Absolutely. I'll be invincible! Can you image NYPD taking you in for trespassing for such a jolly holiday contribution to the west side? Maybe for being intoxicated...you only live once :wink2:

:D be ready to... with the recent shift in ownership security is being bumped up and they will prosecute.. with the start day right around the corner they aren't taking any chances..

that park thing is awesome.

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/18/realestate/18cover.html
Turning the High Line Into ... the High Life

By CLAIRE WILSON
Published: December 18, 2005

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2005/12/16/realestate/18cov583.jpg
MARILYNN K. YEE/The New York Times

The High Line, above, looking north from 19th Street.

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2005/12/18/realestate/18cov2184.jpg
Frank Maresca, from top, a partner in the Ricco/Maresca Gallery; Melva Max, the owner of La Luncheonette; and the developers Craig D. Wood of Cape Advisors Inc. and Alf Naman of Alf Naman Real Estate Advisors.

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2005/12/16/realestate/18cov3.jpg
Marilynn K. Yee/The New York Times

The High Line crossing 10th Avenue at 16th Street.

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2005/12/16/realestate/18cov2.jpg
Marilynn K. Yee/The New York Times

Magda Sawon, the owner of the Postmasters Gallery.

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2005/12/18/realestate/18cov1.jpg
Marilynn K. Yee/The New York Times

The High Line heading south from 19th Street.

SAY bye-bye to the parking lots along 10th Avenue, between 14th and 30th Streets, and maybe a few of the chaotic clubs and bars on the side streets. Bid adieu to the rough-and-tumble allure of taxi garages and the fringe of weeds running the length of the High Line, the derelict but irresistibly charming dinosaur of an elevated railroad that is the backbone of West Chelsea's thriving gallery scene.

Say hello to designer buildings, valet parking, concierges, meditation gardens and, oh yes, lines of limos jockeying for position outside the borough's trendiest new restaurants branded by celebrity chefs like Mario Batali, Tom Colicchio and Masaharu Morimoto.

The heady grit-and-glamour cocktail that New Yorkers so love about the meatpacking district is about to expand northward - although perhaps with more glamour than grit in the final equation - as the city's major developers snatch up any and all available parcels along the High Line and start work on a planned 5,500 units of housing, all but 1,100 of them for the fabulously well-heeled.

Zoning changes made final last summer have won praise for how they put the spotlight on the elevated 22-block park the High Line is to become and protect the estimated 200 galleries while allowing extensive luxury residential development. Height limitations and required setbacks on some new buildings will complement the 66-year-old structure and conserve views of it, while preserving some of the light and open spaces that have defined the neighborhood. Work on the High Line is to begin next year, with the first phase scheduled to be completed by 2008.

Alf Naman, a principal with Alf Naman Real Estate Advisors, plans four projects and is considering a fifth along the High Line, which the city officially took possession of last month from CSX Transportation.

"The neighborhood would not be half as interesting if it didn't have the galleries, which bring vitality and life to an area that would otherwise be just a bunch of residential buildings," said Mr. Naman. One of his projects is a 20-story condo tower designed by the French architect Jean Nouvel.

What some say amounts to Manhattan's biggest land grab since a handful of Native Americans took a few beads in trade for the entire borough gets high grades for the most part, but that was not always the case. Developers balked - and some who wanted it torn down threatened to sue - when Friends of the High Line was formed in 1999 and proposed the idea of turning the railroad bed into an elevated park. Six years later, the corridor is like catnip to the same developers, with more than a dozen projects planned and countless others being considered.

At the southern end of the High Line, at Gansevoort Street in the meatpacking district, the Dia:Chelsea museum will serve as anchor for the new neighborhood, with a tony 330-room André Balazs hotel, the Standard, nearby. One block north, 10 stories of commercial space will be added to the building on the southwest corner of 14th Street and 10th Avenue, and the adjacent building will likewise be converted to commercial space, according to Charles Blakeman of High Line Development LLC.

At 16th Street, between 9th and 10th Avenues, partners in the Chelsea Market, Stephan Zoukis, who is a partner at Jamestown Properties, and Irwin Cohen, have hired Gwathmey Siegel & Associates Architects to explore adding a residential component to the popular shopping complex, which will also be home to Mr. Morimoto's restaurant. Across the street, at 85 10th Avenue, is where Del Posto, Mr. Batali's new restaurant with Joseph Bastianich and his mother, Lidia Bastianich, is to open sometime in the next month. Craftsteak, Mr. Colicchio's restaurant, is to follow next year.

Where the Chelsea Garden Center once stood, on the east side of 10th Avenue between 16th and 17th Streets, the Related Companies and Taconic Investment Partners plan a 23-story tower that will have 200 condos and 250 rentals, with stores on the 10th Avenue side. Related is also considering development at 30th Street and 10th Avenue, where the High Line ends, but no details are available, according to David J. Wine, vice chairman of the company.

Diagonally opposite the Related project, on the block that stretches between 10th and 11th Avenues and 17th and 18th Streets, Edison Properties will be constructing two mixed commercial and residential buildings, both designed by Robert A. M. Stern Architects, replacing two parking lots. Both buildings have been controversial because of their height, one topping out at 25 to 30 stories, the other at 35 to 40 stories - more than double most of the other new projects.

The community fought the heights of these buildings but lost. Melva Max, the owner of La Luncheonette, across the street from the Edison projects, who has lived in the neighborhood since opening the restaurant 18 years ago, worries about density and how the tall buildings will obscure views of the new 6.7-acre High Line park.

"You won't even see the High Line any more and there won't be any light," Ms. Max said. "What are they going to do, put grow lights in there?"

On 11th Avenue between 18th and 19th Streets, the buildings are on a smaller scale. Work has begun on a project by the Georgetown Company and IAC/InterActiveCorp, a nine-story building that will be the architect Frank Gehry's first in New York. Adjacent to the Kitchen Theater Company, it will serve as headquarters for IAC's Home Shopping Network, Ticketmaster, Lending Tree, Expedia.com, Match.com and Citysearch. Georgetown is also in the predevelopment stage of a mixed-use building, likewise designed by Frank Gehry, that is to occupy the 10th Avenue side of the block.

As per the new zoning, midblock buildings will be smaller in scale than those on the avenues. On the north side of 18th Street east of 10th Avenue, Madison Equities plans a 12-story residential structure, with gallery configurations at ground level.

Adjacent to the Kitchen on the south side of 19th Street, Bishop's Court Realty is to begin construction next month on an 11-story residential building designed by the architect Annabelle Seldorf. It will replace a three-story vacant warehouse, according to John Jacobson, a partner in the company.

The Jean Nouvel building being built by Alf Naman, in partnership with Cape Advisors, is to be at 11th Avenue and 19th Street, in place of a parking lot. A block away, Tamarkin Architects P.C. plans a 12-story condo tower on the southeast corner of 10th Avenue and 19th Street, once the site of a driving school.

On 21st Street, the General Theological Seminary has proposed a 17-story residential tower on Ninth Avenue, at the east side of its historic campus, which occupies the entire block.

At 23rd Street and 10th Avenue, the developer Leviev Boymelgreen is to break ground next spring on a residential tower with retail stores at street level, where a gasoline station once stood. On the north side of 23rd Street, between 10th and 11th Avenues, Alf Naman is to build a 12-story apartment building, behind which, on 24th Street, there will be two small galleries and a retail complex. Alf Naman is also planning a 12-story residential building on the north side of 24th Street and west of 10th Avenue.

Developers are reluctant to speculate on prices for new residential buildings, none of which will open before 2007. Recent sales of new apartments in the area include $2.7 million for a triplex penthouse in the Chelsea Club, on West 19th Street near 10th Avenue, and $3.65 million for one of four penthouses at the 14-story Vesta 24, nearing completion on 10th Avenue near 24th Street.

Demand for new apartments in the neighborhood will not be a problem if the Vesta 24 is any indication. "All the two-bedroom apartments sold out within 36 hours," said Jim Brawders, senior vice president for the Corcoran Group. When the sales occurred a year ago, prices on a two-bedroom ranged from $1.1 million to $1.4 million.

On West 25th Street close to 11th Avenue, floors of the Chelsea Arts Tower, a 20-story commercial condo tower under construction, have been selling for $750 to $1,200 a square foot, or an average of $3 million, according to Stuart Siegel, managing director of Grubb & Ellis, which is marketing the building. Designed to house galleries and private collections, the 75,000-square-foot structure will open in August.

Area rents will probably be higher than in the adjacent Chelsea historic district, but they are also hard to predict. At the Tate, a rental building with two towers on 23rd Street that was built by Related and opened in late 2001, rents range from $2,300 for a studio to $6,500 for a two-bedroom, two-bath unit with a terrace, according to Mr. Wine.

Sites for the affordable-housing units have not yet been determined but will be designed for a broad swath of working people, not just the poorest of the poor, according to Lee Compton, chairman of Community Board 4. Chelsea has historically been a working-class area, but hurtling gentrification over the last two decades has forced many of those people out and isolated those who remain, particularly in places like the Fulton Houses, the 944-unit public housing project on Ninth Avenue between 16th and 19th Streets.

"We were a blue-collar neighborhood where people had lived for 40 or 50 years," Mr. Compton said. "We wanted to preserve the opportunity for them and their children to stay in the community. We didn't want it to become completely gentrified."

Del Posto will be the latest arrival on a restaurant row that includes established hot spots like Florent, Jean-Georges Vongerichten's Spice Market, La Luncheonette, the Red Cat and Bottino. There are also the other newcomers: Cookshop, the Korean-infused D'or Ahn, and Stephen Starr's Buddakan, as well as Craftsteak and Mr. Morimoto's restaurant when they open.

Add that lineup to the stellar roster of top-tier architects, a hip hotel, design museum, Hudson River Park, Chelsea Piers and the High Line itself, and what is emerging is a strangely organic yet somewhat self-consciously cutting-edge neighborhood where just about everything passes the style test. If that is the goal, it appears to be succeeding in ways no one ever imagined.

"It makes the city young, attractive and exciting and it will bring people to New York to visit, to work and to look at it," said Amanda M. Burden, commissioner of the Department of City Planning. "It puts us on the world stage in a whole new way."

The high-profile architects are a big part of that. It is something the art galleries and the reinvented High Line, with its $130 million price tag, laid the groundwork for, according to Joseph Rose, partner in the Georgetown Company and a former planning commissioner. "The art world has brought a sensibility that creates a context where the commitment to first-class architecture is not something that's alien," Mr. Rose said. "This is clearly a recognition on the part of the private sector that there is value in being open to and investing in architectural quality."

If clubs in the area - and there are many, like Bungalow 8, Spirit, Glass, Crobar and Marquee - become casualties of development, many area residents won't miss the chaos of late-night traffic and noise. Gallery owners worry about the same fate, and whether they will eventually have to move out of Chelsea the way many moved from SoHo as real estate prices soared.

Magda Sawon, the owner of the 20-year-old Postmasters Gallery on 10th Avenue, migrated to Chelsea from SoHo eight years ago and was in the East Village before that. She views 5,000 high-income newcomers as potential art viewers and art shoppers but worries about the effect increasing costs will have on the rent galleries pay.

"The radical work which guides art and makes it progress will get priced out," she said.

Frank Maresca, a partner in the 27-year-old Ricco/Maresca Gallery, which also started in SoHo, said it is hard to imagine people buying in Chelsea and not being influenced by the gallery scene or wanting to support it. But he acknowledged that the vitality of the Chelsea art community is impossible to predict.

"Right now, the art market is hot, but art is of the moment and when the moment is over, it won't be there," he said. "If you want to know the future, just look at the past."

nice....

http://www.nypost.com/realestate/59757.htm
WALK THE HIGH LINE

By ADAM BONISLAWSKI
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
http://www.nypost.com/photos/realestate02042006036.jpg
Photo: N.Y. Post/Jim Alcorn

February 4, 2006 -- New developments and hot spots are raising the stakes in Chelsea
A resident of West Chelsea for a bit over a year now, technology consultant Elcio Salgado cites the neighborhood's quiet as one of its main selling points.

"I can go out anytime and it's peaceful," he says. "It's a little off the radar, still up-and-coming. To me, it's the last undeveloped place in Manhattan between 14th Street and the 90s. It's not really a high-traffic area. You can walk your dog without a million people around."

Enjoy it while you can.

While it's news to no one that Chelsea has been hot property for the past few years, the area's temperature is on the rise once again. With the rezoning of the neighborhood's westernmost reaches last summer, much of the land between 10th and 11th avenues is now open to new residential development - and buildings are popping up all over.

Much of the buzz surrounds the old High Line rail viaduct. Built between 1929 and 1934 to raise freight-train traffic above street level, the viaduct closed in 1980, leaving a rusting, weed-choked stretch of track running between 10th and 11th avenues from the Lower 30s down to the Meatpacking District.

For years various groups have advocated turning the space into an elevated public park, but it was only with the recent rezoning that this idea garnered official city support. With a plan in place, protective fencing and netting will be installed around the structure later this month. And if the future construction work goes as scheduled, the span between Gansevoort and 20th Street should open to the public in 2008, adding another perk to what, with its many galleries, clubs and restaurants, is already a neighborhood chock full of amenities.

These elements are, in part, what have made the neighborhood so attractive to developers.

"We try to design and build our jobs in a manner that we believe the market wants to see, and people have been moving to the Chelsea and West Chelsea area in droves for the last five years," says builder/developer Jeffrey Levine, whose 336-unit luxury condo building opened just down the block from the High Line at 555 W. 23rd St.

With studios starting at $465,000 and two-bedroom penthouses starting at $1,645,000 (one-bedroom units range from $585,000 to $1 million, and regular two-bedrooms run from $1,085,000 to $1,400,000), 555 W. 23rd is about 60 percent sold. In addition to 24-hour concierge and doorman service, the development offers a courtyard, a fitness center and a lounge.

Salgado is among the new owners at 555 W. 23rd, though he plans to continue living in his two-bedroom apartment just across the street in the Marais building at 520 W. 23rd St.

"I'm going to rent it," he says of the new unit. "I look at it as a long-term investment."

Jill Abitbol and her husband, on the other hand, actually needed a place where they and their 11/2-year-old daughter could live. Having lived for several years in the eastern half of Chelsea, they were drawn to their two-bedroom apartment at 555 W. 23rd St. by the building's amenities and proximity to Chelsea Piers and West Side parks.

"Some people might say that central Chelsea is more convenient for a lot of things," Abitbol says, "but with a child this age, being further west puts us very close to a lot of play areas.

"We like the art and the culture the area has to offer. It's easy when we're just walking around with our stroller to go into a gallery if we want to."

Abitbol suggests others have noticed the same thing.

"I definitely see more kids and families in the area," she says. "I remember when we first went to our old apartment, looking to see how many strollers I could see. I would say the number has grown exponentially in the last three or four years."

Which is not to say, though, that West Chelsea has turned into Park Slope. The 'hood still seems to be attracting its share of well-to-do scenesters.

Just down the way at 519 W. 23rd, developer Sleepy Hudson is putting up a high-toned, 14-unit luxury condo named High Line 519.

"The building is aimed at artsy, upper-echelon, young urban professionals," says Andy Gerringer, managing director of Prudential Douglas Elliman's Development Marketing Group, which represents the condo.

At $700,000 and up for studios and $1,750,000 and up for two-bedrooms, it's not the cheapest of spots to get into. But that kind of money does buy amenities, such as Macassar ebony vanities, teak spa benches and floor-to-ceiling glass walls that expand into French balconies.

It's the sort of space that, Gerringer notes, would have seemed rather out of place even just a few years ago.

"We did the Spears building in 1996, which was one of the first developments, over at 525 W. 22nd," he says. "Nobody was there then. There wasn't a gallery in the area when we opened that building. We opened it up at $300 a square foot, and we're doing resale now at $1,200 a square foot."

The hope of rising prices like those is a big reason buyers have been lured westward.

At 444 W. 19th St., the 42-unit Chelsea Club condo is scheduled for occupancy this month. From MOeJOe Developers, the building sold out last April, with its one- and two-bedroom units going in the $1,100-per-square-foot range.

Vesta 24, a new condominium building at 231 10th Ave., has done similarly well, selling out entirely except for a three-bedroom penthouse that's still available to anyone able to shell out $3.95 million.

And Taconic Partners and The Related Companies have partnered to build a new mixed rental/condo development on 16th Street between Ninth and 10th avenues on the site of the old Chelsea Garden Center.

Add a few new high-profile dining additions, such as Mario Batali's Del Posto at 85 10th Ave., and fellow Iron Chef Masaharu Morimoto's eponymous spot just across the street, and you've got what looks very much like an area on the make.

"There's just a confluence of events right now," Gerringer says. "There's a lot of exciting stuff going on."

Work to begin on High Line Park in Chelsea this month


http://www.cityrealty.com/graphics/uploads/1139944358_highline1.gif


14-FEB-06

The Friends of the High Line had a public presentation last night of revised plans for the planned elevated park in Chelsea.

The elevated park follows the example of one recently opened in Paris, which is known as the “Promenade Plantée” and St. Louis recently announced that it would also create one.

The design has been inspired by what the architects call the "High Line's melancholic, unruly beauty, in which nature has reclaimed a once vital piece of urban infrastructure" and the project is intended to “create and preserve experiences of slowness, otherworldliness, and distraction.”

The first section of the new High Line Park will be from Ganesvoort Street to 20th Street and it is anticipated to be completed in the spring of 2008. “Everything comes out,” Robert Hammond, a co-founder of the Friends of the High Line, which initiated the “unlikely idea” in 1999, explaining that site preparation includes removal of lead paint, repair of concrete, “pidgeon mitigation” and removal of the rails, which will be tagged and many of which will be replaced.

Joshua Laird of the City Planning Department told those in attendance at the Cedar Lake Theater at 527 West 26th Street that funding for the $130-million project will permit work to begin this month. He said that federal and city funds already in place total about $80 million and that the project expects another $20 million from developers who will avail themselves of zoning bonuses provided in the recent Special West Chelsea zoning district that controls development around the elevated train tracks that run from Ganesvoort Street to 30th Street to support its reuse as a public space and to provide opportunities for new residential and commercial development and to enhance the neighborhood’s thriving art gallery district.

Jack Corner of Field Operations, which is designing the park with the architectural firm of Diller, Scofidio + Renfro, said that the revised designs are still “a work in progress.” He said that concrete planking will “peel up” for seating, and light will project downward from side railings and the seating.

Rick Scofidio, the architect, told the meeting that glass walls at the High Line’s intersections with cross-streets have been replaced in the plan with suspended, thin, black screens. Graffitists, he noted, now scrawl and scratch glass surfaces, he explained.

The park, Mr. Scofidio said, will have outlooks, sun decks and a wide variety of perennial plantings as well as trellises.

There will be no bikes allowed and access will probably be from sunrise to sunset.

The Museum of Modern Art in New York opened an exhibition April 30 that ran through October 31 last year and Mr. Hammond said that it hopes to have another exhibition in the Chelsea neighborhood that would be free.

The recently enacted rezoning of the area creates a High Line Transfer Corridor in which owners of property could transfer their development rights to designated receiving sites with the Special District with construction of stair access to the High Line required as a condition of the transfer on some properties.

To create a varied experience along the length of the High Line open spaces, portions of buildings would be required to set back from the High Line while other portions of buildings would be permitted to rise directly adjacent to, and connect with, the High Line

The High Line was built between 1929 and 1934 as part of the West Side Improvement, a transportation project that eliminated street-level rail crossings from the northern tip of Manhattan to Spring Street. The southern section of the line was demolished in the 1960s and the last train on its tracks in the 1980s carried frozen turkeys.


Copyright © 1994-2006 CITY REALTY

A Lifeline for the Upper High Line?

http://nymag.com/daily/intel/20070419highline.jpg

4/19/07
By: Alec Appelbaum
nymag.com (http://nymag.com/daily/intel/2007/04/a_lifeline_for_the_high_line.html)

Last we checked in, it seemed that the officials were willing to let a successful bidder for the MTA's Hudson Yards site tear down the part of the High Line that runs through it. But now it seems that the old rail trestle, slowly becoming a park, has a better chance of survival. Real Estate Board of New York president Steven Spinola, the developers’ rep in the bidding process for Yards site, tells us that the Hudson Yards Development Corporation showed a presentation yesterday that included a preference for cultural institutions, lots of open space, an attempt at affordable housing, and sympathy for the High Line. “They likely will say to developers: We would like to see the High Line continue, so explain what the ramifications would be of keeping it,” Spinola said. “I think they started off negative about the High Line and they’re now looking to keep it an open question.” Will developers — who must sink more than $300 million just to install a platform over the rail yards — willingly invest around an elevated park? “The High Line, if done properly, can clearly be an attractive amenity for the city,” Spinola says. “A few months ago people said, ‘Of course it’s a problem,’ and yesterday people said, ‘We’ll analyze it.’”

No High Line in Redeveloped Hudson Yards? MTA Promises Public Will Have Last Word

http://nymag.com/daily/intel/20070510hudsonyards.jpg

5/10/07
By: Alec Appelbaum
http://nymag.com/daily/intel/2007/05/no_high_line_in_redeveloped_hu.html

At the Hudson Yards Development Corporation public meeting about redevelopment plans for the huge West Side rail yard the other night, Friends of the High Line boosters distributed American Apparel T-shirts with the logo "High Line Railyards," a reminder that a good chunk of the now-beloved trestle runs through the site and implicitly urging the MTA to ensure that whoever develops there protects it. MTA chief planner Bill Wheeler dubbed himself a High Line fan, but he warned that developers' bid prices would guide the MTA's decision about protecting it. (In other words, if someone will pay more for the site but plan to remove the High Line, the MTA would be okay with that.) But here's the good news for High Line supporters: The public-review process for the site means the MTA's decision won't be the last word.

After a bid is chosen, explains authority spokesman Jeremy Soffin, public hearings will be held and community groups and the City Council will vet the project. (This is the process Bruce Ratner dodged — er, streamlined — at Atlantic Yards.) "There is a public benefit to preserving the High Line," Soffin told us, "and it should be a matter for the public to decide with full knowledge of the cost." Friends of the High Line is no doubt printing up lots more T-shirts.

In Winds of Winter, Midair Park Takes Shape

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/packages/images/photo/2008/01/02/0102-HIGHLINE/21182517.JPG

By GLENN COLLINS
Published: January 2, 2008
nytimes.com (http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/02/nyregion/02highline.html)

The sleek, computer-driven architectural previews of New York’s first midair park, the High Line, depict pedestrians navigating a public promenade that is on track to be celebrated next fall. Like space-age schematics, they offer a futuristic refuge: a pristine ribbon of green providing exquisite views of Manhattan.

But the High Line has been something quite different, a flaking, rusting industrial ruin that needed to be transformed to match the digital renderings. And someone has been doing all that work. So right now the High Line is one hairy construction site.

The defunct elevated railway — which stretches from Gansevoort Street to 34th Street on the Far West Side — is a secret world these days, barred to the meatpacking district crowds that mob the new Apple Store and swarm to a high-end shopping festival in a once-scruffy quarter that real estate advertisements now call “the prestigious High Line District.”

Fifty hard hats in safety orange — including ironworkers, carpenters, painters and garden-variety laborers — perform a fast-tracked logistical ballet 30 feet up on the line, as steel and concrete are delivered just in time to be grappled into place.

Bridges freeze before roadways, of course, and thus it is on the High Line, which shimmers with icicles at times while vibrating with hard winds from the Hudson. Safety railings sing in the gales, and it is not uncommon for snow and sleet to blow upward, swirling in updrafts shaped by the patchwork of low-rise buildings underneath.

Not unlike the hardy wildflowers, shrubs and even apple trees that adapted to the lost world of the track bed, workers have already embraced the onset of winter.

[...]

The project that has been promoted as the new Central Park for downtown is, currently, a mile-long obstacle course. The rail bed threads its way not only through High Line construction but also 10 other developments, including a new tunnel through the Standard Hotel at Washington and Little West 12th Streets.

[...]

Near Gansevoort Street, laborers are already installing the concrete planking surface destined to be a walkway for visitors. Cast in Quebec and weighing 600 to 800 pounds, the planks — some 7,600 of them — are hefted by forklifts “and then we muscle them into place with crowbars,” said Emilio Arostegui, 40, who leads a labor crew. They are jigsaw puzzle pieces of a structural system of pedestrian promenades that extend like concrete fingers into the planting beds that will restore the park greenery using 6,300 cubic yards of soil.

Workers up on the line are laboring to complete the first, $71 million phase of the $170 million High Line construction, a section from Gansevoort Street up to 20th Street.

“Next fall’s opening is breathing down our neck,” said Peter Mullan, director of planning for Friends of the High Line, a nonprofit group that helped block attempts to demolish the viaduct and helped design its renovation.

The structure is owned by the city south of 30th Street under the jurisdiction of the Department of Parks and Recreation and the Friends of the High Line. The city’s Economic Development Corporation is overseeing construction on the site along with the mayor’s office and the Department of City Planning.

The remainder of the city-owned roadbed is scheduled to become a park by 2009. Another half-mile section rings the railyards north of 30th Street and 12th Avenue, and five bidders are competing to develop the property; only three want to preserve that part of the High Line.

“There has never been another project like it, there is no model, and it involves a tangle of jurisdictions,” said Daniel L. Doctoroff, the deputy mayor for economic development. He said he designated the High Line the first project in his new Office of Capital Project Development to spearhead construction “on an extremely accelerated schedule requiring precise coordination among multiple city agencies.”

He added, “It is on budget and essentially on time.”

Enemies of the High Line once claimed that the corridor, built from 1928 to 1934, was disintegrating in a rain of concrete. But despite its appearance, engineers have found it to be mostly well preserved and massively strong, “built to support locomotives, designed for 10 times the load it will carry as a park,” said Michael Bradley, the High Line’s project planning administrator for the parks department.

Already, workers have ripped out the High Line’s original roadbed down to the concrete slab, removing gravel, tracks, ties, soil and the urban wilderness of vegetation that had seeded itself there. This was mandatory, Mr. Mullan said, since toxic chemical contaminants had leaked from the freight trains, the last of which bowled through with a load of frozen turkeys in 1980.

Video (http://video.on.nytimes.com/?fr_story=1a6fa16953dcf40f28f5c90f54aae8acf5f89e00)

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/packages/images/photo/2008/01/02/0102-HIGHLINE/21182471.JPG

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/packages/images/photo/2008/01/02/0102-HIGHLINE/21182307.JPG

“There has never been another project like it, there is no model,

not exactly true, the Promenade plantée in Paris is a 4,5 km long parc partly on an old railroad track above the ground. Under the arcades beneath the viaduct are Retail shops and galeries.
Splendid idea though :) Hope it boost the areas around it.

No news on this for 18 months on here guys, what with that? do the Americans just not use skyscraper city? I thought everyone was on here ;-)