High Hopes for High Line
New York—A new, nonprofit group called Friends of the High
Line wants to save from demolition an abandoned elevated ral
platform that runs through Chelsea and turn it into a 1.3-mile
landscaped promenade.
‘Starting at Gansevoort Street in the West Village and ending.
‘Community and celebrity activists want to turn an elevated rail
platform over Tenth Avenue into a pedestrian promenade.
‘at West Sth Street, the High Line isthe last remaining segment
of the steel-girded platform that was erected in the 1930s to re-
duce traffic along Tenth Avenue.
For almost a decade, some owners of easements along the
High Line have been lobbying for the demolition of the plat
form, currently the property of CSX Corporation, so that the
area could be developed. In 1992 a federal order mandated that
the owners would have to share the estimated $7 million to
$9 million cost to tear down the platform, To date, they have
not reached an agreement on how to divide the cost, and the
High Line stil stands,
Modeled alter Paris's Promenade Plantée, which converted an
elevated rail line for public use, the Friends” proposal calls for an
adaptive reuse of the platform—not a historic restoration
incorporating both public space and commercial enterprise,
“We're not against new development,” says Robert Hammond,
a cofounder of the Friends group. “We're for reasonable
‘community-supported development.”
A number of prominent arts-and-entertainment personali-
ties have lent their names to the new proposal, among them
Kevin Bacon, Kyra Sedgwick, Tom Sachs, Cindy Sherman,
Paula Cooper, Matthew Marks, Todd Oldham, and Richard
Meier. “It would be a spectacular thing from an urbanistic
point of view, because Tenth Avenue is a very boring strip,”
says Lucas Schoormans, who opened his West 26th Street
gallery for a December fund-raiser, where the Friends’ plan
‘was unveiled,
A week later, Federal Express announced its decision to relo-
‘cate a new 550,000-square-foot distribution center that would
have required the destruction of the High Line. The city does
not advocate saving the rail platform, but the Friends have
Sought support elsewhere. The independent nonprofit Design
‘Trust for Public Space, which pairs New York projects with ar-
chitects and urban designers, recently selected the group as «
project partner and will help fund research into ways of imple-
‘menting the promenade proposal Jessica Dheere