Latest news with #FriendsoftheHighLine
Time Out
3 days ago
- Lifestyle
- Time Out
The High Line is turning into a free open-air science museum for the summer
This summer, the High Line is going full mad scientist—in the best possible way. Starting today, June 4, the beloved elevated park is transforming into a free, open-air science museum as part of " Nature in the City," a summer-long celebration of urban ecology. Visitors can expect educational signage, expert-led tours, interactive programming and one massive mural—all designed to spotlight how city gardens (yes, even your windowsill herb box) can help create a greener, more resilient New York. 'We're inviting New Yorkers to discover another side of the city—and the park—they love,' Alan van Capelle, executive director of Friends of the High Line, told Time Out. 'Green spaces like the High Line make New York a better place to live, not just for people but for birds, bees and wildlife, too.' At the center of the celebration is a 108-foot mural taking over the 14th Street Passage. It illustrates the High Line's mini-ecosystems, sustainable gardening practices and the big-picture impact of native plants. Meanwhile, 44 new signs throughout the park highlight habitats and flora that feed and shelter everything from monarch butterflies to songbirds. But this isn't just for plant nerds (though, welcome). It's also for brown-thumbed beginners, curious kids and rooftop gardeners looking to up their game. There will be guided tours with the park's famed horticulturists, plus a virtual event series running through December, kicking off with a buzzworthy session during Pollinator Week featuring entomologist Sarah Kornbluth of the American Museum of Natural History. 'An ecologically informed approach transforms a garden from a static display into a vibrant, living system that supports our urban environment,' Richard Hayden, the High Line's Director of Horticulture, told us. 'Nature in the City is our way of demystifying these practices, giving everyone the tools and knowledge to cultivate resilient, beautiful spaces.' The initiative also underscores a bigger message: nature is already here, woven into the sidewalks, fire escapes and wild corners of the city. More than 150 trees, grasses and wildflowers planted on the High Line are native to NYC, and with Nature in the City, the hope is to inspire even more micro-habitats to flourish, stoop by stoop.
Time Out
21-05-2025
- Business
- Time Out
Hudson Yards could get 4,000 affordable housing units in place of that failed casino
The dice are off the table: Related Companies and Wynn Resorts have officially folded on their controversial Hudson Yards casino bid, clearing the way for a massive housing development that could reshape Manhattan's West Side. Originally pitched as 'Hudson Yards West,' the $12 billion proposal called for three new towers, including a Wynn-run casino, hotel, and 80-story residential skyscraper. But after fierce opposition from elected officials, community boards, and preservation groups like Friends of the High Line, Wynn bailed on the gaming license, and Related pivoted hard. Instead of slot machines and high rollers, the site will now feature 4,000 new apartments, including 400 affordable units, along with a sprawling 6.6-acre park dubbed 'Hudson Green.' The open space, which would rival Bryant Park in scale, promises lawns, gardens and playgrounds stretching from West 30th to 33rd Streets, west of 11th Avenue. This casino proposal did not meet the high bar of community support that such a consequential project demands,' said Councilmember Erik Bottcher, who brokered the new deal and confirmed the casino was dead, in a statement. 'I have always said that any development of this scale must put the needs of New Yorkers first—and that means housing.' While the original proposal only included 324 affordable units, the revised plan bumps that number up and replaces a planned 1,400-foot office tower with two residential buildings. A new office tower, possibly with hotel space, will rise where the casino was once slated. Alan van Capelle, executive director of Friends of the High Line, previously among the project's loudest critics, offered cautious support: 'The latest plans appear to address many of our concerns. However, the devil is in the details.' A zoning vote is set for Thursday, and full Council approval is expected on May 28. If passed, the development could be shovel-ready by 2026, assuming no further delays in platform construction over the 13-acre active rail yard. Jay-Z's Times Square Caesars Palace and Steve Cohen's 'Metropolitan Park' next to Citi Field
Yahoo
20-05-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Hudson Yards casino is not in the cards
The Brief Wynn Resorts has withdrawn its bid for a gaming license in New York City. This means the proposal to build a casino complex in Hudson Yards has been abandoned. The proposal has faced significant opposition. HUDSON YARDS - A proposal to build a $12 billion casino complex in Hudson Yards has been dropped, the New York Post reports. What we know Wynn Resorts had been planning to build Wynn New York City, a casino and resort that would supposedly have employed 5,000 people. Wynn Resort-Related Companies partnership announced today it withdrew its bid for a gaming license in New York City, which was due for submission next month – the company cited "persistent opposition" as the reason for the withdrawal. "The recent rezoning process has made it clear to us that there are uses for our capital more accretive to our shareholders… than investing in an area in which we, or any casino operator, will face years of persistent opposition despite our willingness to employ 5,000 New Yorkers," Wynn said in a statement. The other side The proposal to build a casino complex was opposed by Friends of the High Line and Manhattan Community Board 4. Friends of the High Line oppose the rezoning application, which would make "significant changes" to the zoning for the Western Rail Yards at Hudson Yards; their opposition is not contingent on the building of the casino. Manhattan Community Board 4 voted unanimously to reject the proposal earlier this year. The Source This article includes reporting from the New York Post, as well as a statement from Friends of the High Line.
New York Times
22-03-2025
- General
- New York Times
What You Can See From the High Line
Back in the late 1990s, when Joshua David and I founded Friends of the High Line, a grass-roots organization dedicated to keeping a decrepit elevated freight railway on the west side of Manhattan from being demolished, we could never have predicted how creating a 1.45-mile-long park would also transform the gritty underpopulated industrial blocks alongside it into a bustling area that is now home to some of the flashiest real estate on the planet. Today, the High Line attracts tourists but also, contrary to what you might think, plenty of New Yorkers. And in the process it has inspired cities all over the world to reimagine their own old urban infrastructure. Today its success seems inevitable. How it actually turned out this way is harder to pin down. Back in 2004, as we (with the visionary backing of the Bloomberg administration) sought proposals for a park design, we had only the vaguest notions of what all this might look like, and how it would function. Did the rusty ruin covered in wildflowers have to 'do' something and what would that be exactly? There were a lot of people who helped out on that, but perhaps the most important one, especially in the beginning when the vision was being set, was the architect Ricardo Scofidio, who died on March 6 at age 89. I can't walk on the High Line and not think about how radical and uncompromising so many of his ideas were, but also how he was able to compromise, taking into account other people's ideas, or just practical considerations. And yet the park never feels compromised. Four design teams were the finalists in 2004, including Steven Holl, who had in the 1980s proposed building a series of houses atop the High Line (the model of which is in the collection of MoMA today). There was Zaha Hadid's proposal, which was futuristic and artificial, involving, as I recall, AstroTurf. The architect Michael Van Valkenburgh wanted to create a new version of the old abandoned tracks, imitating as close as possible the industrial detritus and wild landscape that was already there. None seemed quite right. Then there was the team that included Mr. Scofidio and his wife and fellow architect, Elizabeth Diller, as well as the landscape architect James Corner Field Operations and the garden designer Piet Oudolf. I don't remember exactly what this team said in their presentation, but I remember the feeling of it. Ms. Diller and Mr. Scofidio started arguing — first with each other, then with Mr. Corner. Perfect, we thought, and hired them. As it turns out, it was Mr. Scofidio we mostly worked with, since around that time his firm, Diller, Scofidio + Renfro, won a competition to rethink parts of Lincoln Center, and Ms. Diller focused more on that. I was at first a bit disappointed. It was Ms. Diller who had dazzled me with her infectious energy and big ideas during the selection process. Mr. Scofidio was quieter, more reserved. He had a kind of built-in glamour — his sharp suits, skinny ties (which I soon started emulating), his passion for Porsches. I was 34 and not an architect or a planner, and I was frankly a little scared of him. At the time, I was reading 'The Leopard,' the novel by Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa, which has one line that really struck me: 'If we want things to stay as they are, things will have to change.' That was the design challenge of the High Line. So many of us had delighted in the wild landscape that had grown up on the railroad after it fell out of use in the 1980s. To make it accessible to the public, we would have to rip out all the wildflowers we loved, install drainage and remove decades of toxic residue. There was already a famed elevated linear park in Paris, the Promenade Plantée. But with its benches and planters, it was exactly what we didn't want, an ordinary park a few stories up. Mr. Scofidio and his team gave us something entirely new that was inspired by the abandoned landscape that we'd started with, while not showing off. He would often say, 'My job as an architect is to save the High Line from architecture.' And there were no shortage of big ideas; architecture schools had for decades asked their students to come up with proposals for what to build there. But Mr. Scofidio's team focused on stripping things away and exposing the structure instead of adding to it. A new walkway system was at the core of their approach. It featured concrete planks that would comb into the landscaping. The walkways could be put together from a kit — planks in different shapes and sizes that could be used in various ways. Newly planted wildflowers would push up between the planks, just as their predecessors did in the gravel ballast of the abandoned tracks. It would almost be like nature trying to reclaim the space. The High Line was expensive to build, but mostly because of the complex remediation, not the concrete planking system. That wasn't just elegant, it was cost-effective. Above 18th Street the Scofidio team designed seating above 10th Avenue, making a theater for the watching traffic below. The ramp for wheelchair access became a playground for children. I get tired every time I climb the stairs to my walk-up apartment. But I never feel tired walking up the various stairways to the High Line. Mr. Scofidio's team designed those stairs and landings just perfectly — giving you a pause in the right places, a moment to rest and appreciate the city. It's the kind of detail no one notices, but everyone feels. Mr. Scofidio was wildly inventive. I still regret not fighting harder for his proposed glass-walled urinals, which are hard to even describe, but suffice it to say, they were designed in a way that made it look as if their users were watering the grasses growing on the High Line. I also wish we had taken up his proposal for a see-through swimming pool suspended over 14th Street, made of some experimental concrete that he swore would be transparent and also structural. In a city that quickly moves on to the next big thing, continuously and often irreverently erasing its history, block by block, Mr. Scofidio's contribution to the reimagining of the High Line now feels obvious, something we can all take for granted. Over a hundred projects inspired by the High Line have surfaced all over the world. Many have succeeded on their own terms, but the ones that try to just imitate the High Line don't work. As Diller Scofidio grew, the firm moved to offices near the High Line, becoming a part of the vast real estate shift its creation unleashed. And it participated: The firm designed the Shed arts center and the high-rise condo building it nests into at the Hudson Yards development at the northern terminus of the High Line. He embraced the contractions that were inherent in the High Line project: hard/soft, nature/steel, park/development. He gave us a theater to watch it all happen, a place that changed the city where you could also watch as the city changed. I know he didn't love everything that happened around, and because of, the High Line. I remember a discussion not long ago when we were planning to add a bridge from the park across 10th Avenue that would allow an easy path to the Moynihan station train hub. Would as a result the High Line become crowded with commuters in a way that would trammel on its spirit? We argued about it. (The footbridge, which Mr. Scofidio was not involved with the design of in the end, opened in 2023.) Mr. Scofidio never wanted the High Line to be too, well, pedestrian. He thought of it as a linear path that challenged its visitors to break out of linearity. Walking it, you are both observed and observer, part of something larger than yourself, at once humbled and empowered like only New York City can make you feel.
