Cooper Union

 

Today's blog post was guest written by one of our new Greeters, Claudia Berger.
Today I was on the High Line for its first morning in operation. I was very impressed by how determined people were to see it– not even the rain could stop them. Visitors braved the rain, but none of them felt it wasn't worth it. The morning attracted not only die-hard fans of the High Line, but some curious opponents. However, even in the rain, they could not help but enjoy it. One visitor told me she was determined to hate the High Line, but spent her time up there in awe. She loved it, rain and all.

At a panel discussion at the Museum of the City of New York last night, planners and community advocates criticized the lack of coordination going into the planning for the West Side.

The sheer mass of public and private development planned for the West Side (between 14th and 42nd Street, West of 8th Avenue) is staggering.  

Besides the Rail Yards themselves, current planning initiatives include:

HYCAC, an official community coalition made up of members of Community Board 4, local electeds and community organizations, has written a letter to MTA CEO Lee Sander with its reaction to the five proposals.

Manhattan Community Board 4 and HYCAC developed this document to synthesize information about the MTA's guidelines for the rail yards site, as well as overviews of the five proposals. It was intended for discussion at the December 10 public forum, but serves as a good reference for comparing the plans side-by-side.

Download the PDF (Be patient: It's 9MB)

  

As promised, here's a quick discussion of the break-out sessions moderated (in some cases) by members of Friends of the High Liine at the community forum presented by Community Board 4 on Monday. The graph above represents some of the main concerns expressed by the various groups (there were 13 groups in all, so you can get a feel for what concerns people most).

Friday is the last day of the public exhibition of all five developer proposals, in a storefront near Grand Central. The exhibition includes design boards, models, and last time we checked, a representative from each developer on hand to answer questions. Those details again:

On Monday night, over 200 interested members of the community (as well as political figures such as New York State Senator Tom Duane) gathered at the Hudson Guild at an event sponsored by Community Board 4 and the Hudson Yards Community Advocacy Coalition that included presentations from the five developers who have submitted plans for the rail yards. After the presentations, attendees had the opportunity to break into small groups to discuss the plans and give their feedback in a formal way.

Photos of the event can be found here. 

CB4 prepared a handy info sheet (PDF) comparing each plan by the numbers. A summary from the community discussion will be available soon.

The developers' presentations were short and business-like, as they labored mightily to conform to a time limit of ten minutes per proposal. That was still plenty of time for lots of shiny pictures (and in the case of the Durst/Vornado plan, a snappy video), as well as for some revealing rhetorical moments. A brief digest after the jump.

On Monday, architects from the five development teams presented their designs to the public at Cooper Union. Videos of each presentation are now available. Please note these videos have been edited down for length, and the sound quality is not great.


Steven Holl for Extell

Rail Yards Blog is developing a set of five questions to ask each developer about their proposals for the rail yards site.


We want to hear from you: what would you most like to ask the developers?

The five questions will be posted on Rail Yards Blog next week.

Friends of the High Line is developing a series of principles for the treatment of the High Line at the rail yards. We strongly urge the MTA to make the following principles a requirement for the selected rail yards developer.  The developers' proposals demonstrate that all of these principles are feasible.  We look forward to working with the selected developer to incorporate these principles in the final development of the site.