“We were from the community. We wanted to do it for the neighborhood. Ultimately we failed.”
So, shockingly, says High Line Park visionary Robert Hammond, who with Joshua David conceived and catalyzed the great new public park’s inception and nurtured it through a tortuous, 15-year odyssey of public review and private-sector fundraising.
Hammond now seems to think the park should have done more for local residents, although what more wasn’t clear. He told The Atlantic magazine’s CityLab site that, during the park’s design stage, “I wish we’d asked [local residents], ‘What can we do for you?’ ”
His baffling stroke of creator’s remorse lent dubious gravitas to the High Line Backlash. The case against the most popular, architecturally acclaimed public amenity since Central Park was previously argued by reactionary leftists who prefer the crime- and-decay-ridden New York of the 1980s to today’s reborn city. But if a prime mover behind transforming the derelict train trestle into a park that draws 8 million visitors a year now regrets it, then even some less politically loony citizens can start hating on it, too.
Yes, the High Line has issues. It lost some of its original cityscape views to “starchitect”-designed towers on either side. Tourists love it too much. It will be more crowded as hordes of people occupy homes, offices and stores at the Hudson Yards project at the park’s north end.
But those “problems” signify only limitless popular pleasure in a masterpiece that’s expected, thanks to the neighborhood renewal it stimulated, to generate $1 billion in city tax revenue over the next 20 years.
The “failure” arguments are mostly ridiculous. New development is ruining lower- and lower-middle income West Chelsea! Condo buyers have to put up with parkgoers gazing into their windows!
High Line Park revisionism has gained traction since Mayor de Blasio declared in October 2014 that he’d never gone there. Although he insisted he’s “a fan,” The New York Times suggested his aversion to actually visiting the park was that it was “associated with the themes Mr. de Blasio railed against in his campaign . . . when he denounced the ‘almost colonial dynamic’ between a gentrifying Manhattan and the city’s other boroughs.”
If Hammond ever had misgivings before now, he sure kept them to himself. At least he had the tact not to blame anyone else for the park’s supposed “failure.” He and David persuaded former Mayor Mike Bloomberg to spare the trestle from demolition. He drew together myriad “stakeholders” to fund and design the project. He was on board with Bloomberg’s game-changing 2005 rezoning of West Chelsea, which resulted in large-scale new development along the park’s length.
In an interview with American Society of Landscape Architects writer Jared Green a few years ago, Hammond cheerfully noted that the project “helped spur literally billions of dollars of new property development with . . . buildings by many marquee architects going in. Was that part of the original plan? It was.”
Hammond was making over $380,000 including benefits as executive director of the nonprofit Friends of the High Line as of 2013. He might be entitled to liberal guilt over earning so much in a neighborhood with two large public-housing projects.
Less forgivable is the idiotic implication by others that the High Line is somehow a racist creation.
Habitat magazine cited a CUNY study claiming park users are “overwhelmingly white” even though one-third of Chelsea residents are “people of color.”
The article quoted the head of the tenants association at the nearby lower-income Fulton House project, who said: “Our residents don’t feel it’s a park that’s available to them.”
How can this be, given that the High Line is an entirely free attraction that’s open to all? Its designers, CityLab stated, “chose to put in very few staircase points,” thus “limiting access.” Apparently 10 highly visible entrances constitute a strategy to impose apartheid.
CityLab also claimed “people of color” dislike the park’s prohibition of such activities as “throwing objects,” Rollerblading and bicycling — a suggestion that is itself more than a little racist.
It would be easy to invoke Yogi Berra’s “If people don’t want to come to the ballpark, you can’t stop them.” Except for one thing: Hammond’s own High Line Magazine reported that in 2015, 34 percent of all users were non-white; among New York City residents, 44 percent “of visitors identified as non-white.”
The High Line undeniably generated large crowds and spawned higher prices for housing and goods. But the creation of most large-scale public works entails disruption and even dislocation for local people irrespective of ethnicity.
The Brooklynites of Bay Ridge who lost their homes to Verrazano-Narrows Bridge ramps were mainly Italian-American. South Bronx dwellers uprooted for the Cross-Bronx Expressway were mostly Jewish.
Losing one’s home would seem to be a worse consequence than having too many tourists around. I hope Hammond stops blaming himself for “failure” and accepts that he helped bring forth a true wonder of our age.
Our editors found this article on this site using Google and regenerated it for our readers.
