HIGH LINE EXHIBITION OPENS AT GRAND CENTRAL TERMINAL, SHOWCASING HUNDREDS OF INNOVATIVE IDEAS FOR CONVERTING THE WEST SIDE ELEVATED RAILROAD INTO PUBLIC OPEN SPACE

New York City Council Speaker Gifford Miller Announces $15.75 Million Commitment for Planning and Construction


New York, NY - Designing the High Line, an exhibition of visionary ideas for the conversion of the High Line elevated rail structure to public space, has opened in Grand Central Terminal's Vanderbilt Hall, following a dazzling benefit preview party co-hosted by actor Edward Norton and author Robert Caro. The exhibition is on view to the public July 10-26. Admission is free.

At the July 9 benefit preview, New York City Council Speaker Gifford Miller underscored the feasibility of converting the High Line to public use by announcing a $15.75 million funding commitment for planning and construction. The first $750,000 assigned to redevelopment of the disused High Line, which runs for 1.5 miles down Manhattan's far West Side, was allocated in the budget adopted by the New York City Council on June 27. The funds can be used for planning, design, and construction costs related to the High Line project during the fiscal year that began July 1. The remainder of the $15.75 million commitment will be allocated to the High Line in the following three fiscal years.

"The High Line was built during the Depression to invigorate New York's economy, and it will reinvigorate our City again today," said Speaker Miller. "As we have learned from our City's great parks, public spaces create value and catalyze growth. Central Park was planned in a recession. Even in tough economic times, we have to invest in our future—by planning for the public projects that will keep us at the forefront of the world's great cities."

The funds will come from the City's capital budget, which pays for project costs such as planning, design, construction, and long-term leases. The allocation will not affect municipal services, which are funded separately through the City's expense budget.

Leveraging City Investment
"It's thrilling to see the City's growing commitment to this unprecedented open space initiative," said Philip Aarons, Chairman of the Board of Directors of Friends of the High Line, the 501(c)(3) non-profit organization working to preserve the structure as public open space. "The new funds secured by the Speaker will have a multiplier effect. We can use the City's financial commitment to the project to attract major private, corporate, foundation, and federal funds. The creativity, energy and vision shown by the submissions on display at Grand Central can now be harnessed to develop a brilliant design for what will soon become a great new public space."

Frank Sanchis, Executive Director of the Municipal Art Society of New York, also applauded Speaker Miller's announcement. "What better investment for the City than here, at a time when the livability of New York needs more than ever to be re-established. New York has always been distinguished among American cities by the uniqueness of its neighborhoods. The preservation and re-invention of the High Line is destined to create yet another of these special neighborhoods, in West Chelsea—a neighborhood with a sense of place all its own, deriving from this distinctive feature winding through its midst and connecting its parts—a place to belong to, to live, work and have fun in. Bravo!"

Ideas on Display
The innovative ideas for the High Line's re-use, now on view at Grand Central, include realistic and practical designs such as traditional park environments and sustainable wildflower meadows, as well as visionary, far-reaching proposals for elevated swimming pools, eco-farms, and mid-city roller coasters. The proposals were solicited through the ideas competition Designing the High Line, sponsored by Friends of the High Line (FHL), with support from the National Endowment for the Arts.

"These are bold new ideas, not final plans that will be built," said Robert Hammond, FHL's co-founder. "Our competition sought truly original designs, but those designs did not have to be realistic or practical. Instead we hoped they would provoke public discussion about what's best for the High Line and would help make the selection of a design team and a final plan a more open and more creative process."

The ideas competition attracted 720 entries from 36 countries. More than 100 of the proposals, including award winners selected by a distinguished jury, are displayed in the Grand Central exhibition, which was designed by Ada Tolla and Giuseppe Lignano of LOT/EK Architecture. Exhibition graphics were designed by Paula Scher of Pentagram. The exhibition incorporates a video presentation produced and directed by John Zeiman, featuring narration by Edward Norton and Diane von Furstenberg.

All of the competition entries, the list of jurors, and other competition information can be viewed on Friends of the High Line's Web site, www.thehighline.org.

Next Stages
Friends of the High Line will host a public forum in Fall 2003, open to residents and business-owners in the High Line area and the public at large, with a variety of the competition ideas serving as springboards for discussion. At the end of 2003, Friends of the High Line will incorporate the public comments from this forum into a Request for Proposals. Issuance of the RFP will lead to the selection of a design team and the development of a realizable master plan.

"The range of ideas presented in the competition opened our minds to the endless possibilities that the High Line suggests." said Vishaan Chakrabarti, Director of the Manhattan Office of the New York City Department of City Planning and a competition juror. "As we move toward implementation, that openness of mind will be critical for creating a unique public amenity for the West Side, and in fact for all of New York City."

To kick off the open process, a group of competition jurors will join with moderator Kurt Andersen on Tuesday, July 15, from 5:30 to 7:30 p.m., for a panel discussion about Designing the High Line. The free event, organized in conjunction with the Design Trust for Public Space, will be held at the New York Public Library, 42nd Street and Fifth Avenue.

A Multi-Stage Planning Process: Design Ideas Follow Economic Study
Designing the High Line follows two detailed planning studies: Reclaiming the High Line, which Friends of the High Line produced with the Design Trust for Public Space; and a comprehensive economic feasibility study, which FHL commissioned at the City's request.

Conducted in 2002 by the firm of Hamilton Rabinovitz & Alschuler (HR&A), the economic study determined that reusing the High Line as public space would be technically and legally feasible and economically rational. By creating economically valuable green space and raising property values, the reclaimed High Line would generate new tax revenues, which would equal or exceed the cost of transforming the structure. The HR&A study also identified potential sources of funding for the project, ranging from private, corporate, and foundation donors to a variety of federal funding streams.

Legal Status and July 24 STB Hearing
The High Line project must still clear a legal hurdle before the structure can be converted to public use. In December 2002, The City of New York filed for a Certificate of Interim Trail Use (or CITU) for the High Line. This was the first official step in its plan to enter the structure in the federal "rail-banking" program, which preserves priceless transportation corridors by reusing them as pubic trails. Before the trail-use conversion can be finalized, the City and CSX, the railroad that owns the High Line, must negotiate a trail-use agreement. For those negotiations to begin, the Surface Transportation Board (STB), the federal body with jurisdiction over all interstate rail corridors, must indicate that trail use is appropriate for the High Line.

The STB has scheduled a public hearing on the issue on July 24 at 2 p.m. The hearing will be held in the Federal Conference Center in the Jacob Javits Federal Building, 26 Federal Plaza, New York City.

The High Line Story
The High Line was built in the 1930s as part of the West Side Improvement Project, one of New York City's largest investments in transportation infrastructure. No trains have run on the structure since 1980. In 1999, neighborhood residents founded Friends of the High Line with the mission of converting the structure to an elevated public space-a greenway or promenade. In December 2002, the City of New York took the first step in converting the High Line to a public walkway through federal rails-to-trails legislation.

Support for Friends of the High Line
Friends of the High Line is a non-profit, 501(c)(3) organization, founded in 1999 to preserve the High Line for re-use as an elevated public open space. The co-founders of FHL are Joshua David and Robert Hammond.

Support for the project comes from hundreds of local residents, business-owners, and civic organizations, as well as the following elected officials: Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, New York City Council Speaker Gifford Miller, Congressman Jerrold Nadler, New York State Senator Thomas Duane, New York State Senator Eric Schneiderman, New York State Assembly Member Deborah Glick, New York State Assembly Member Richard Gottfried, New York City Council Member Christine Quinn and Manhattan Borough President C. Virginia Fields, among others.

For information on Friends of the High Line, please visit www.thehighline.org. Questions can be directed to info@thehighline.org.

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