The High Line’s Latest Development

Last weekend, I had brunch at the Standard Hotel in the Meatpacking District in NYC and had a chance to walk on the High Line afterward. I was pleasantly surprised by the huge crowd at the High Line, which was originally a stretch of elevated rail line operated from 1934 to 1980.

The High Line allowed meat to be carried to the Meatpacking District, agricultural goods to the factories and warehouses of the industrial West Side, and mail to the post office. Instead of getting rid of the vegetation and old structure, the city has transformed it by building a variegated green space on it that spans more than a mile in the middle of Manhattan. It’s truly a stunning concept, and I was thinking, who knew that an urban relic that has sat in disrepair for so long could have been turned into one of the most popular tourist destinations in the city.

Speaking of transformation, I never could have even dreamed of today’s transformation of the Meatpacking District when I first moved to the city 12 years ago (my apartment was at Horatio and Washington St. in the West Village).

The High Line Section 3 Design Plan

On March 12, initial design plans of Section 3 (West 30th Street to West 34th Street) were revealed to the public for the first time. Section 1 of the High Line (Gansevoort St. to West 20th St.) opened in June 2009, and Section 2 (West 20th St. to West 30th St.), opened in June 2011. Section 3 is the last development phase of the project and will wrap around the forthcoming Hudson Yards development and be closely integrated with the new buildings. Based on the design plan, Section 3 will represent a beautiful mix of old and new buildings.

The Underground Park
[captionpix align=”right” imgsrc=”http://www.ampleen.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/the-underground-park-design-plan-300×180.jpg” captiontext=”The Proposed Design Plan for the LowLine”] While the West Side is taking the high way, the East Side is exploring the underground world. The LowLine, the world’s first underground park in Lower Manhattan, is the hottest new development idea in NYC.

The idea for the LowLine came after Ramsey, a New York-based designer, learned about New York’s underground spaces from an Metropolitan Transit Authority employee. There are 13 acres of space underground that are unused. The underground space is a 1.5 acre terminal built in 1903 for trolley trains to shuttle passengers between Brooklyn and Manhattan across the then newly opened Williamsburg bridge. When the trolley service ended in 1948, the terminal closed, and it has lain dormant since.

The idea of “year-round public space,” supporting farmers markets, concerts and art installations, is a fantastic idea. The obstacle was that the LowLine team needed to raise the money to do three things to propose the idea to the Metropolitan Transit Authority: conduct engineering studies, develop a feasibility model, and build a temporary technology demo to showcase the concept in real form.

Crowdfunding Brings the LowLine Closer to Reality

Have you heard of “crowdfunding”? Crowdfunding is the latest way of raising funds from the public via the Internet, and it’s being used for a variety of purposes, from disaster relief, to artists seeking support from fans, to funding a startup company. Recently, the Pebble e-watch project raised over $7 million via crowdfunding.

The LowLine project moved a step closer to reality on April 6, when Kickstarter, a crowdfunding site, closed an innovative design proposal process. The LowLine project has attracted donations totaling more than $150,000 since February, and, according to the LowLine team, the money has come flowing in from around the world, including from donors in Japan, South Africa and Germany.

With the fund, the LowLine team will be able to get to work on the first stage of the LowLine – a scale model of the park, constructed in an abandoned warehouse steps away from the underground location.  The LowLine remains in the planning stages and the team still faces a long process ahead, but one thing for sure is that over 3,000 individual supporters who already endorsed the project around the world believe that the LowLine will bring positive changes to the Lower Manhattan.

Final Thoughts

Experts in the field of urban design have noticed a new trend in the last 20 years, where architects and designers are looking to reuse old industrial spaces and capture the core functionality and beauty in original architecture, rather than destroying them and developing new buildings. In this post, I’ve explored the High Line and LowLine in NYC that showcase a major urban design trend. But I am curious about how the trend would actually change our perspectives and emotions for the old buildings and what kind of impact it would have on our lives.

What do you think? Share your thoughts!