A sneak peek at the High Line Phase III. This view shows the future 10th Avenue Spur. Credit: Brian Kusler (Flickr Feed)

New York’s High Line has been generating buzz since before its 2009 opening, and the overwhelming success of its first two phases (there were 3,000,000 visitors in 2011) have kept the public anxiously awaiting the last and final phase.  Held up by land ownership issues and fundraising nightmares in a struggling economy, Friends of the High Line scored an amazing win last fall with a record-setting $20 million donation from the Diller-von Furstenberg Family Foundation, the single largest donation ever made to a New York City park.  The generous gift helped build up the park’s endowment and also paid for the design of the last section.

Phase III of the High Line, the last half-mile segment of the abandoned rail line, differs from the first two phases in that it is being constructed simultaneously with Hudson Yards, the 12 million square foot office and residential complex.  The park will be fully built out on the majority of the eastern section of the historic railway, and an interim walkway will be built over the western section.  The park will wrap about the redevelopment and will feature either amphitheater-style seating or an open gathering space with plantings, a spiraling “Guggenheim-esque” staircase providing access to the street level, Play Beams for children, walking paths, and the ever popular “peel-up benches” that are in the first two phases.

The estimated total cost of capital construction on the High Line at the rail yards is $90 million, with $38 million already raised by the conservancy.  A zoning text amendment is already in the works to set a framework and cover approximately 30% of the estimated total cost.  Construction is expected to begin this year and finish by the end of 2013, with a full public opening in spring 2014.

The Bloomingdale Trail and Park. This rendering shows a separate pedestrian zone and bike path.

Unlike the High Line, Chicago’s Bloomingdale Trail and Park will be a multi-use trail as well as a destination linear park.  Steadily moving ahead despite fundraising challenges, the design plan for the entire 2.7-mile elevated rail trail was released last week, and included addressing the conflicting needs between speeding cyclists and slow-moving pedestrians.  While the High Line bans dogs, skateboarders, cyclists, and runners, the Bloomingdale Trail and Park will be an arterial connecting four different neighborhoods and providing alternative modes of transportation for commuters.

In addition to its urban views, the Bloomingdale Trail and Park would keep its retaining walls as a linear gallery with colorful murals and gritty graffiti.  There will be eight access points to the trail, spaced roughly a half-mile apart, and five of the entryways will be from ground-level parks.  Instead of modernistic stairways, berms would form gentle upward slopes from two of the parks, another two parks would have entries as ramps, and the last park would be an L-shaped berm at the trail’s western end.  The multi-use path would be 14 feet wide and have gentle curves and dips to serve multiple purposes, including ever-changing views for pedestrians and speed bumps for cyclists.  Trees and shrubs would also serve triple duty by providing shade, habitat for birds, and a separation zone for the pedestrians and bike path.  In fact, Chicagoans are so concerned about this separation (to avoid a repeat of the pedestrian-cyclist disasters that plague the Lakefront Trail), that there is a proposal for 1.5 miles of pedestrian pathways that would run parallel to the multi-use trail.  Of course there still needs to be room for the benches, art, and lighting on the 30-foot-wide trail.

So far more than $37 million has been secured in federal anti-congestion and air-quality funding for the project’s $46 million first phase, with the remaining $7 million to come from the private sector (Exelon Foundation is said to be giving $5 million, their largest single grant, while Boeing and CNA are each donating $1 million) and $2 million from the Chicago Park District.  Construction is expected to begin as early as next year, with the park opening in phases in fall 2014.

The High Line may only be 1.45 miles long, but it offers New York residents and visitors a completely different park perspective, a tranquil escape from the hustle and bustle of urban living.  The Bloomingdale Trail and Park, twice as long as the High Line, will be Chicago’s first elevated park and the longest elevated park anywhere in the world, and will offer its residents and visitors a connection to different neighborhoods and transportation opportunities toward and out of downtown.

Adam Gopnik, the New Yorker magazine writer who first wrote about the prospects to create the park notes in one video, “all the great city parks of the world are not separate from their cities. They are involved in the cities both physically, architecturally and spirituatlly.”

And in the below video, New York City parks commissioner Adrian Benepe reflects on the value of these spaces in a built up city, saying “parks, because the city is so densely developed, are prescious.” All in all, there are nine videos on the project – all worth viewing.

The High Line offers a retreat from street life, a bucolic space floating 30 feet in the air with Hudson River views. Yet it retains many elements of its gritty past: graffiti is prevalent on the buildings it wends through, and some of the rails have been restored in the park. That the park — which grew from an idea hatched 10 years ago into a $170 million project —is being built at all is a marvel. “When we first started people thought it was crazy,” said Robert Hammond, a co-founder of Friends of the High Line, the community group that pushed for the park.

No longer. The first section of the park will open to the public this spring, but it has already transformed the area near its 22-block stretch near the river, prompting some of the most ambitious development in the city in years.

The park in the sky is attracting several new developments, including offices and buildings along its stretch. Th benefits of turning former industrial rail viaducts into parks is exciting and evident. Other cities are doing the same thing.

In Chicago, the Bloomingdale trail contains an elevated rail segment. Here’s some more info on that project. And then there’s another segment in St. Louis that the Great Rivers Greenway District is developing. We hope to post more on both of these projects more in depth.