Eight years into the transformation of an elevated
section of New York Central Railroad’s West Side Line into a public park, the
$273 million project is being hailed as a resounding win for the city. Photo:
Beyond My Ken via Wikimedia Commons
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Last month, developer Related Cos. commissioned Rem
Koolhaas’s firm OMA to design its latest project along the High Line elevated
park. Koolhaas joins a list of well-known names (among them Zaha Hadid, Renzo
Piano, and Robert A.M. Stern) looking to make their mark along the
1.4-mile-long landmark in Chelsea.
Eight years into the transformation of an elevated
section of New York Central Railroad’s West Side Line into a public park, the
$273 million project is being hailed as a resounding win for the city—and not
just for its starchitecture status. Almost overnight, the High Line has become
one of New York’s most popular cultural attractions, drawing some five million
people in 2014.
It has spurred billions of dollars in economic
development activity in Chelsea. In the most dramatic real estate deal to date,
Manhattan developer Ziel Feldman last November acquired a 76,425-sf parcel
adjacent to the park for a hefty $800 million. Days later, Feldman announced
plans for an 800,000-sf mixed-use tower that could fetch as much as $6,000 per
sf for luxury condo space—nearly triple the going rate for the area, according
to the New York Post.
As big money and eager tourists flock to Chelsea, cities
across the globe are starting to take notice. Chicago, Los Angeles, San
Francisco, Seoul, Sydney, Toronto, and Washington, D.C., are among the metros
currently planning High Line-inspired park projects. Some, like Seoul’s $37
million conversion of a 0.6-mile stretch of elevated motorway, are quite
literal adaptations of the concept. Others go off the rails. Here are a few of
the more imaginative projects:
• San Francisco’s new Transbay Transit Center,
scheduled to open in 2017, will feature a 5.4-acre rooftop park with an
amphitheater, water features, restaurant, and gardens that will be easily accessible
from the street.
• In Washington, D.C., if all goes as planned, a dilapidated freeway bridge over the
Anacostia River will be converted into a lush public park, complete
with plazas, lawns, and urban farming plots, as well as space dedicated for the
future development of a café and performance venue.
• Just last month, the Hudson River Park Trust gave the
green light to a $130 million plan backed by
billionaire Barry Diller to build a floating park, called Pier 55,
on the Hudson River on Manhattan’s Lower West Side.
The power of placemaking as an economic development
engine has been a known phenomenon for well more than a century. In fact, 140
years before the “High Line effect” there was the “Central Park effect.” Its
creator, Frederick Law Olmsted, was able to prove through a 17-year study that
the values of property surrounding his grand new park grew substantially—by a
collective $209 million in 1873 dollars—in the years following its completion.
Dozens of other cities across the globe can point to public park projects that
have stimulated swift economic development activity.
What differentiates the High Line project—as well as its
inspiration, the CoulĂ©e verte RenĂ©-Dumont in Paris, which opened in 1993—is its
fresh adaptation of a unique piece of urban infrastructure. The High Line
forces urban planners, city officials, and landscape architects alike to
rethink traditional urban park models.
Will the High Line’s novelty fade once every city has its
version of a gritty urban remake? Maybe. But one thing is a constant: the value
of public parks is stronger than ever.
Source: BDCNetwork
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