City Plugs in Final Piece of High Line Puzzle

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NEW YORK CITY-Construction on the third and final section of the High Line, an elevated park that has already spurred development of hundreds of thousands of square feet of commercial space nearby, can begin later this year now that the city owns the land. City officials said Tuesday that CSX Transportation Inc. had donated the rail yards section of the disused elevated railway, running between West 30th and West 34th streets. The railroad had donated the High Line structure south of 30th Street in 2005.

“The High Line’s first two phases were groundbreaking and with the development of the rail yards section, the trilogy will be complete,” Parks & Recreation Commissioner Adrian Benepe says in a statement. Since the first section of the redeveloped park opened in 2009, Mayor Michael Bloomberg says in a statement, “the High Line has become a treasured neighborhood oasis, a significant generator of economic activity for the entire city and a celebrated icon for planners, designers and leaders around the world.” An estimated eight million people, comprised equally of New Yorkers and out-of-towners, have visited the park since its opening, according to a release.

Much of the park lies within the West Chelsea Special District, created by rezoning in ’05. The rezoning has led to about $2 billion in private investment, 12,000 jobs, 2,558 new residential units, 1,000 hotel rooms, more than 423,000 square feet of new office space and 85,000 square feet of new art gallery space, the Bloomberg administration says.

For Manhattan’s West Side, the park has been an economic development boon that almost didn’t happen. The viaduct had been built in the 1930s to accommodate freight-train traffic, and had fallen into disrepair since being abandoned in 1980. It was slated for demolition before a neighborhood group, Friends of the High Line, began advocating for its preservation and reuse in 1999.

That year, CSX commissioned a study on options for re-purposing the High Line from the Regional Plan Association, with enrolling the viaduct in the federal “Rails to Trails” program as one possible scenario. It would later become the legal framework for transforming the High Line into public open space.

Three years later, Friends of the High Line conducted a study which found that tax revenues created by turning the High Line into a public space would be greater than the project’s construction costs. “We talked about a High Line district and that it would be good for the local economy,” Robert Hammond, cofounder of Friends of the High Line, told the New York Times in 2011. However, he added, “we had no idea that it would happen this fast. If you had said then that Tenth Avenue would be a location for some of the world’s best chefs, it would just be ludicrous.”

Initial design concepts for the High Line’s third phase were released to the public at a community input meeting in Chelsea in March of this year. According to published reports, construction of this phase will cost $90 million. When it’s completed, the High Line will connect Chelsea and the Meatpacking District with Hudson Yards, the 26-acre mega-project being developed by Related Cos. and Oxford Properties Group.