High Line Park Opens on West Side

NEW YORK CITY-The first section of the High Line, a public park built on a long-disused elevated railroad line, opened Monday on Manhattan’s West Side in a ceremony officiated by Mayor Michael Bloomberg and City Council Speaker Christine Quinn. In a release, city parks commissioner Adrian Benepe says the $152.3-million project “demonstrates our commitment to finding innovative ways to continue adding open space to New York City.” A decade in the making, it’s said to be the first public park of its kind in the US.

The project’s second phase, which runs between 20th and 30th streets, is scheduled for completion next year. Public access will be limited during peak hours during the first summer of the first phase, which runs between Gansevoort and 20th streets.

Seth Pinsky, president of the New York City Economic Development Corp., says in a statement that the project “takes a unique piece of New York’s 20th century industrial past and repurposes it for the 21st century. When we at EDC began work on the High Line more than three years ago, the Far West Side of Manhattan was still in the early stages of its renaissance. We are proud to see that, as this project opens to the public, the promise that it represented has already catalyzed a remarkable transformation of this great and storied neighborhood.”