Picture great glass houses in the sky, overlooking a tranquil elevated landscape of wild meadows framed by art deco railings and a multi-textured promenade. This is not a futuristic notion of 21st-century living or an otherworldly dreamscape. Rather, it’s a rapidly evolving urban planning initiative called the High Line.
The High Line, the 22-block, long abandoned railroad viaduct built in the 1930s to service the warehouses of the Meatpacking District, is now the centerpiece of city plans to turn the track bed into an elevated public walkway replete with floating gardens, adjustable park benches and communal spaces.
The current cachet of the West Chelsea and Meatpacking District neighborhoods aside, some critics wonder who’ll buy a multimillion dollar apartment alongside a train track. Rising 30 feet, or two stories, off the ground, the High Line casts deep shadows and would seem to present formidable obstacles to those wishing to develop ground-floor, second-, and third-floor retail or residential space.
At last count, 25 projects had been announced near the High Line. While a number of these will be laid out in the surrounding neighborhood, some are finding it attractive to build alongside, above and even underneath the High Line itself. “Starchitects” including Frank Gehry, Robert A.M. Stern, and Jean Nouvel are being forced to come up with creative ways to resolve the design challenges.
Some developers have decided to start residential units only above the track level of the High Line and put retail below.
At the southwest corner of 23rd Street and 10th Avenue, developer Leviev Boymelgreen is to break ground next spring on a residential tower with stores at street level. Residences will be kept above track level, and resident service spaces will occupy the areas adjacent to the track, said Boymelgreen project manager Sara Mirski.
The Related Companies’ Caledonia residences, located at 10th Avenue between 16th and 17th streets, takes a similar approach — no residences below the level of the High Line. The project, designed by architect Gary Handel, seeks to fuse glass-curtain architecture and green urbanism.
“We’re creating a building where there’s a whole experience of living on a park and over a park,” said David Wine, vice chairman of the Related Companies.
Indeed, portions of a glass tower will hover above the High Line. An entrance at the third-floor level will directly connect the building onto the park. Frontage along 10th Avenue will include a 30,000-square-foot Equinox sports club; in the lobby and atop three setbacks there will be waterfalls and garden spaces interspersed with an industrial chic reminiscent of the neighborhood’s mixed character, Wine said.
Some projects are taking integration with the High Line a step further, with the elevated rail line actually running through the buildings.
The High Line will pass through a Morris Adjmi-designed 15-story hotel developed by Charles Blaichman in partnership with Andre Balazs at the southwest corner of 14th Street and 10th Avenue.
Bruce Sinder of Sinvin Realty said the developer is looking for a flagship retailer to fill the more than 21,000-square-foot multilevel space on the first several floors of the building. The height of ceilings will compensate for any shadows that might result from being located under the High Line, Sinder said.
“It’s on the main street of the Meatpacking District and with 23-foot high ceilings there shouldn’t be a problem with light affecting the retail presence,” Sinder said.
Moreover, the property abuts one of the main street-level High Line entryways, which will provide increased foot traffic, Sinder added.
Other developers, like Alf Naman, a principal of Alf Naman Real Estate Advisors, are counting on the High Line project to draw in creative design ideas that might complement the burgeoning West Chelsea gallery scene.
“There’s been some very flat design on 23rd Street with the early buildings from the late ’90s not having much character, and so everyone is hoping developers lift up their sites a little bit to inspire more challenging buildings,” Naman said.
Naman has plans for four projects and is considering a fifth that abuts the High Line along a narrow parcel at 23rd Street and 10th Avenue. The 12-story tower would cantilever five feet over the High Line and would require a city Planning Commission waiver, according to Ed Kirkland, co-chair of the Chelsea Preservation and Planning Committee of Community Board 4.
Naman’s creative impulses are surely at play, but so are the realities of constraints placed upon those vying to build as close to the High Line as possible.
Naman is planning to put in retail under the track level of the High Line for his building, saying it will have “wonderful scale,” and said there has been interest from several galleries equally taken with the design aesthetic that might result.
Property owners with lots underneath the High Line can transfer their development rights — in keeping with the city’s rezoning incentive intended to preserve the High Line’s open feel — but there are a number of retail spaces that are attempting to use the High Line as their roof, said a city planning official.
A case in point is the newly opened Morimoto Restaurant at Chelsea Market, where Japanese architect Tadao Ando used the High Line to help create a sub-ceiling of rippled canvas reinforced with fiberglass.
The High Line underpass may indeed help form other impressively high-ceilinged retail spaces, but there is still considerable rehabilitation work to be performed. With $84.25 million in city and federal funds, “there’s not enough money to build it all, but enough to get it started,” said City Parks Commissioner Adrian Benepe in an interview with the Villager in February.
Still, major construction began in February and, if all goes according to plan, the park section from Gansevoort to 20th streets will accommodate its first public visitor in 2008.