Deconstructing the High Line

Next Tuesday, October 24 at 6:30pm, the editors of the book Deconstructing the High Line: Postindustrial Urbanism and the Rise of the Elevated Park will explore the after-effects of the popular luxury park, looking at gentrification along with causes and consequences of the “High Line Effect.” (See more description and info here.)



I asked co-editor Brian Rosa some questions:

What motivated you to "deconstruct" the High Line? When the High Line first opened, and for quite awhile, it felt forbidden to critique it in any way. Why this book now? How has the possibility of deconstructing the High Line opened up over time?

The genesis for this project was when Christoph Lindner and I first met at an authors’ meeting for a book he was editing, called Global Garbage, in June of 2014. We were wondering out loud why the reception of the High Line had been almost unanimously celebratory. Your op-ed in the New York Times from 2012, along with a few articles here and there, was the only critical work we could find on the topic, particularly in the design and planning fields. In the meantime, as we were going through the process of publication, more critiques began emerging.

I had been studying the High Line since I was completing a Masters degree in City and Regional Planning at Cornell University, and my PhD research in Human Geography at the University of Manchester was focused on the transformation of the spaces along and beneath the Victorian elevated railways of Manchester, England, and how they were implicated in the city’s attempt to reinvent itself as postindustrial.

The reimaging process of the elevated railway corridors in Manchester came along with quite a bit of property- and design-led industrial gentrification as these sites were gradually transformed from light industrial use and semi-abandonment to landscapes of leisure and consumption.

The whole time I was doing this research I would be asked about my opinions of the High Line, and my impression would be that we would see a number of the same dynamics, only on steroids because of the intense real estate speculation that defines urban redevelopment in New York City.



What do you think made the High Line so resistant to critique?

I think the High Line eluded critique at first because it was not yet apparent the impact that its creation—and the rezoning that was integral to the city’s support of the project—would have on the surrounding areas of the Meatpacking District, West Chelsea, and the area which is now becoming Hudson Yards.

A particular concern of mine is how the High Line fits within the broader framework of rising economic inequality in New York City. Anyone reading the policy documents, along with Mayor Bloomberg’s and Amanda Burden’s support for the project, could have predicted that the High Line would stimulate property values, loosen height restrictions for luxury development, and cause widespread commercial displacement and residential gentrification. It is possible to have underestimated these impacts, but I think claims that the High Line had “unintended consequences” are at best naïve and at worst disingenuous.

One only needs to look at the economic justifications that undergirded the strategic documents that made the High Line possible to see that this was a project focused on priming the pump for further luxury development and the revalorizing of a district that had already gained attention and aesthetic prestige through its art galleries and adaptive reuse of industrial structures.

However, I do not think it was until the point that new buildings started going up, the experience of walking through a low-rise industrial landscape was diminished, and it became (as you called it) a tourist-clogged catwalk, that the backlash started finding a vocal presence in public discourse.



In an interview, High Line co-founder Robert Hammond recently said they "failed" to create the High Line for the local community. He has founded the High Line Network to help keep other "adaptive reuse" parks equitable and accessible. What are your thoughts on that project?

It was clear that Hammond received a lot of pushback from donor-members of Friends of the High Line because of his “the High Line failed” statement. I am a member of their email list, and I took note of the PR damage control email that was sent after that article was published. In essence, it said: “when I said the High Line had failed. I didn’t actually mean failed, just that we could have done better at addressing social equity issues from the start.” I agree completely, but I think it was worked into the very fabric of the project that issues of rising inequality would have to be sidestepped in order to see it through.

The area along the High Line has become among the districts in the United States with the highest levels of income inequality, with almost all of the only remaining low-income housing being in the public housing projects. The High Line played a huge part in this. If it weren’t for the projects and some moderate income housing in the form of co-ops, it would be exclusively for the wealthy at this point.

At the same time, I acknowledge that Friends of the High Line has become more focused on social inclusivity, and this is reflected in Danya Sherman’s chapter in Deconstructing the High Line. Along those lines, I am following the newly-created High Line Network with great interest, and will be discussing the topic at the NYU panel. I am trying to do so without cynicism, but it is very hard. Part of the problem is that so much of the discourse of “equity” is about inclusion and participation of traditionally marginalized, but short of making real demands for social justice.



Do you think it's possible for other High Line-inspired parks to be equitable, considering all the development that is attracted to them? If so, how might that be accomplished?

In reality, I don’t think such adaptive reuse projects can do anything but heighten socio-economic inequality in cities with high levels of property speculation, and I think it is doubtful to see such projects come to fruition if there is not a heavy element of market-rate property development incorporated into plans. In areas where there is less development pressure, the gentrification concerns might perhaps be lower, but at the same time there would be more difficulty in securing the sort of philanthropic funding required to create something like the High Line.

There is actually starting to be some real pushback against “vanity parks,” particularly those perceived to be driven by the personal ambitions of the wealthy: the Garden Bridge in London and “Diller Park” in Manhattan are a few examples of new, semi-private parks that have been defeated in the past year.

Bill de Blasio recently visited the High Line for the first time and seemed to refuse to give it any praise. This refusal was met with frustration from the press. What's your interpretation of that?

My interpretation of Mayor de Blasio’s choice not to visit the High Line until recently is that he has been positioning himself as a champion of neighborhood parks, particularly those in the outer boroughs which have been under-funded for decades. From my understanding, his administration has indeed shifted attention to such parks, which is to be applauded.

However, I would note that it is under his leadership that the management of Flushing Meadows-Corona Park has been passed on to a parks conservancy, making the largest park in Queens less public and more commercialized. It is an extension of the “tale of two cities” narrative that got him elected, but in the end his strategies toward issues like affordable housing are largely market-led. I think this is a folly. In many ways, in the dual sense of the word, the High Line is a folly too.

La Lunchonette

VANISHING

When Melva Max and her husband Jean-François Fraysse moved their restaurant La Lunchonette from the Lower East Side to the remote corner of 10th Avenue and 18th Street in far west Chelsea in 1988, it was a different world. The Meatpacking District was the domain of transgender sex workers, queer sex clubs, and meatpacking plants. The High Line was a derelict rail bed covered in weeds. Gun shots cracked through the night air. Now, 26 years later, this is one of the most expensive neighborhoods in New York City, filled with luxury chain stores and luxury high rises. The sweeping change happened recently, in the blink of an eye—and it is forcing La Lunchonette to shutter.

“The neighborhood is so gross now,” Melva says. “It’s all tourists coming for the High Line. People always say, ‘But wasn’t it great for you?’ The High Line has been the cause of my demise.”

Since the pricey park opened, Melva’s landlord’s phone hasn’t stopped ringing, and it’s always a real-estate developer on the other end. “My landlord’s not a bad guy, but how you can you say no to offers of $30 million?” He’s giving her until June 2015 and then she’s out of business.

[A shorter version of this essay appears in today's Metro NY]



When the High Line opened its first phase in 2009, critics raved as neighboring small business people looked on uncertainly, hoping the park would be a rising tide to lift all boats. That didn’t happen. By the time the High Line’s second phase opened in 2011, small businesses in its shadow were dropping like flies (mostly blue-collar businesses), making room for massive, high-rise development exclusively for the global super-rich.

What most New Yorkers do not know is that the luxury mega-development scheme was baked right in to the High Line preservation plan.

In the book High Line, the park’s co-founders Joshua David and Robert Hammond explain how, in order to preserve the train trestle, the air rights above it would be sold off to developers to build a new neighborhood filled with soaring towers. David recalls saying to Hammond at the time, “If the result of doing the High Line is that you end up with all these tall buildings that you wouldn’t have had otherwise, I don’t want to be a part of it.” Gradually, however, David came around--“my perspective changed,” he wrote. As Joseph Rose, chairman of the New York City Planning Commission, told them, “The High Line had been an impediment for so many years. You and your group changed it into a catalyst.”

Still, what the High Line had catalyzed was unfathomable at the time. Glistening towers rising 20, 30, 40 stories into the air, pressed tightly together, casting cold shadows and blotting out the sky, all along the length of the park? Condos with their own personal swimming pools? Russian oligarchs stashing investment money in glittering vertical ghost towns? Who could believe this claustrophobic dystopian vision would ever be permitted?

In 2011, in a love letter to the High Line, Philip Lopate wrote, “Much of the High Line's present magic stems from its passing though an historic industrial cityscape roughly the same age as the viaduct, supplemented by private tenement backyards and the poetic grunge of taxi garages. It would make a huge difference if High Line walkers were to feel trapped in a canyon of spanking new high-rise condos, providing antlike visual entertainment for one’s financial betters lolling on balconies.”

That vision has come true—and more so every day, now that the High Line’s final phase has opened, a ribbon wrapping a bow around what will be the Hudson Yards billionaire city within a city. The poetic grunge has gone with the exiled taxi garages. And the tenements, like the one containing La Lunchonette, have been pulverized to dust as new towers rise in every remaining open space.



“People aren’t going to like me for saying this,” Melva says, “but it feels like Disneyland around here now. Everyone’s fighting the crowd to get to the next ride. People on the High Line look like lemmings, like they’re walking on a treadmill. They’re not even looking at the plants. They should sell t-shirts up there that say, ‘I Did the High Line.’”

But shouldn’t tourists be good for the local economy? Melva explains that, even though there’s a High Line staircase right outside her building, most tourists don’t come down.

“They get off their big tour bus down at Gansevoort, walk to the end of the High Line, and then the bus picks them up again. Most of them never get off the High Line.”

Those who do venture down the stairs aren’t interested in eating a meal. They’re interested in Melva’s bathroom. “People come down to use my toilet. I get 20 – 30 people a day who just want to use my toilet.” She lets pregnant women, elderly people, and children use her bathroom; the rest she turns away. “They yell at me! Like it’s my job to provide them with a toilet.”



Melva is a warm and generous person. She calls all her customers “Honey” and touches them gently on the shoulder as she quietly glides up to ask if they need anything else, more water, another glass of wine. She makes you feel welcome and well cared for. A reviewer at New York magazine once said that walking into La Lunchonette is “like having someone put two warm hands on your cheeks.” Those are Melva’s hands.

But she’s also angry. Her anger at the High Line, the tourists, and the hyper-gentrification that has decimated Chelsea is shared by many New Yorkers, people who are tired of their neighborhoods changing into pleasure-domes for the rich, amusement parks for tourists, Anywhere USA’s filled with suburban chain stores.

Still, Melva says, "I love the High Line," specifically the views, the sunsets, and the air, all things that are being destroyed by overdevelopment. Even the rich are starting to complain, she says, upset about tourist buses idling in front of their condos, belching black exhaust fumes into the air. Even the rich are talking of leaving.

“What people don’t understand,” Melva explains, “is that it could have been a nice park. The zoning could’ve stayed so it didn’t attract all this grotesque development. It could have been done in a more creative way. And I’d still have my business.”

She adds, “The High Line was a Trojan horse for the real-estate people. All that glitters is not gold.”



Back in 2005, with Dan Doctoroff and Amanda Burden leading the charge, and with support from the Friends of the High Line, the Bloomberg Administration rezoned several blocks of West Chelsea--all “with the High Line at its center,” recalled Hammond in High Line.

In the city’s zoning resolution, they wrote out the explicit purposes of creating this special district. Aside from encouraging development and promoting the “most desirable” use of land (already in use), one purpose was “to facilitate the restoration and reuse of the High Line” as a public space, through, in part, “High Line improvement bonuses and the transfer of development rights from the High Line Transfer Corridor.” Bonuses along the corridor meant that if a luxury developer provided improvements to the High Line itself, that developer would be given permission to build their condo towers even bigger. And they did.

Another purpose of the West Chelsea rezoning, according to the city’s resolution, was to “create and provide a transition to the Hudson Yards area to the north.” In essence, Special West Chelsea was zoned to provide a link between the glamorous Meatpacking District below and the glittering new neighborhood above, all with the High Line running through, like a conveyor belt ferrying tourists and money up and down. To the developers of Hudson Yards, Bloomberg gave millions of dollars in tax breaks, including approximately $510 million to the Related Companies.

On their marketing materials, Related calls Hudson Yards “The New Heart of New York.”



I ask Melva how she might respond to charges that her restaurant helped usher in gentrification back in 1988. She says, “I have to concede that the galleries came, in part, because we were here. But our prices have always been fair, and our clientele is not all rich people. It’s a middle-class place, but there’s no room left for the middle class here. It’s a matter of degrees.” We talk about gentrification versus hyper-gentrification, how today’s changes are being created by the city government in collusion with corporations.

The catastrophically rising cost of Chelsea has pushed many of La Lunchonette’s regulars out of the neighborhood. And for the newcomers who fetishize the flashy and new, La Lunchonette’s “low-key” and “divey charm,” as Zagat puts it, is not their cup of tea.

It’s really too bad because dining at La Lunchonette is an absolute pleasure—and a rare experience. The music is soft--Miles Davis, Edith Piaf--and the rooms are cozy. The food is good—I had the lamb sausages and carrot-pumpkin soup. And then there are Melva’s warm hands and her kind voice asking, “How’re you doin’ Honey?” as she refills your glass. In a city increasingly populated with iZombies, at La Lunchonette you feel like you’ve rejoined humanity, and it feels good.

Melva hopes that by letting her customers know about the closure well ahead of time, they’ll have the chance to come say goodbye and enjoy a last meal. She hopes more people will try La Lunchonette, so she can close next spring without too much debt. She doesn’t know what she’ll do next. With crippling taxes and a draconian Health Department levying Kafkaesque citations and fines, the city makes it very hard to run a small restaurant.

“This place has been my whole life,” Melva says. “I didn’t think it would end like this. This is not the New York that I love. All my customers say the same thing. And no one’s doing anything about it.”



Previously:
Disney World on the Hudson
Brownfeld Auto
Meatpacking Before & After 
J. Crew for the High Line
Special West Chelsea

High Line Op-Ed Response

It's been a week since my High Line op-ed came out in the Times and it's been interesting to read the response to it. The comments on this blog and its Facebook page were overwhelmingly supportive and positive, as were all the emails I received, including notes from several journalists. Many people commented that the op-ed gave them a sense of relief. "It needed to be said," said one, "but everyone else was afraid to say it."

This speaks to the power of the High Line as a sacred cow. It must not be questioned or criticized. People will get upset. [*Update: The Founders of the High Line posted their official response to my Op-Ed.]

A number of responses came out on other blogs. While Choire Sicha at The Awl and Kelly Chan at ArtInfo were largely in favor, author Matthew Gallaway and artist Paul Soulellis took offense. Treehugger wasn't crazy about it, either. And, of course, there were several unhappy commenters, here and on other blogs.

Rather than respond to each piece individually, I've summed up the main arguments against the op-ed and respond to them here.



The High Line is pretty and green, therefore it is made of perfect, total goodness.

1. You're right, the High Line is pretty and green.

2. Nothing is totally good. You might wish it to be that way, but in reality things are more complicated.


The High Line is innocent. It had nothing to do with gentrification in Chelsea. That process was already happening before the High Line got there. Saying the High Line is a gentrification machine is like "equating a cruise ship with a schooner" or "blaming the medicine for the cough" or something like that.

1. Yes, gentrification was already happening there, mostly around the Meatpacking District. But the High Line gave it a tremendous boost and helped to push it north. There is a direct link between the High Line and hyper-gentrification, especially of the area between Meatpacking and Bloomberg's Hudson Yards redevelopment. The Friends of the High Line co-founders talk about it quite openly in their book High Line, as when they explain how then Deputy Mayor Dan Doctoroff signed on to the park plan because they gave him a yes to the question, “Do you think that the community likes the High Line enough to make them supportive of the rezoning in West Chelsea?”

2. Several high-profile articles have been published that champion the High Line as a revitalizer of neighborhoods and an "economic dynamo." These articles put a positive spin on it, but the reality is the same--the High Line has helped to hyper-gentrify West Chelsea, and that means pushing some people out and bringing some people in. My argument is no different, it just comes from the critical side of the same reality.

3. What are you saying about schooners? I'm not following you.


You're a real complainer.

1. Yes, I am, and proud of it.

2. Complaining is one way of raising people's consciousness and maybe even getting things to change.


You're completely ignoring the fact that poor people live in New York City, too. In fact, your article doesn't say anything about people in other neighborhoods like in Brooklyn or the Bronx. Poor people want gentrification. I bet all the poor people who lived in the Bronx in the 1970s would love to have a High Line in their neighborhood today.

1. My article was about West Chelsea, not about other neighborhoods.

2. Many poor people (not all) do often welcome the first stages of gentrification--hoping for jobs and safety--until they get run out of their own neighborhoods by it. Then they're not so thrilled.


The High Line is right near a bunch of NYCHA housing projects, so having those poor people around balances out all the wealth moving in.

1. Correct, there is NYCHA housing nearby.

2. Balance? Have you taken a walk over there lately?


You're a gentrifier yourself--you're part of these big changes. You have no idea what it's like to be poor and want nice things (like artisanal popsicles).

1. I arrived in the East Village at least 30 years after gentrification had begun there. Did I benefit from that gentrification? Yes, I did.

2. My family was on welfare when I was a kid. I didn't live in abject poverty, but I have some idea what it's like to want and not have.

3. If you read it carefully, you'd know that my Op-Ed is not about the old-fashioned, gradual gentrification process. It's about government-engineered hyper-gentrification, which is a different animal. As CUNY professor Neil Smith explained here: In the 1980s "Gentrification became a systematic attempt to remake the central city, to take it back from the working class, from minorities, from homeless people, from immigrants who, in the minds of those who decamped to the suburbs, had stolen the city from its rightful white middle-class owners. What began as a seemingly quaint rediscovery of the drama and edginess of the new urban 'frontier' became in the 1990s broad-based market driven policy."


You want to go back to the 1970s. I guess you must love crime.

1. No, actually, I wasn't crazy about the 70s my first time around.

2. That tired, old "you like crime" argument is too stupid to address.


"It’s not wrong to want a coffee shop and a bakery... Believe it or not, people without millions of dollars also like to drink coffee and have fresh bread."

1. Are we still talking about the High Line?

2. I have nothing against coffee and bread, I swear.


In your piece, you don't even mention how pretty and well-designed the High Line is!

1. Yes, it is pretty.

2. About a million high-profile articles have talked about the High Line's physical attractiveness. I didn't think more praise was necessary--unless the High Line suffers from low self-esteem that must be continually propped up because it just feels so empty inside.


You're an elitist, snobbish Minuteman patrolling a border, trying to keep tourists out of New York City.

1. I don't have the power to keep anybody out of New York City. I wish I did. The city today would be very different.

2. Tourists from America and Europe are not the same as impoverished Mexican immigrants trying to find a better life--that's not a good analogy.

3. I don't hate tourists. Some of my best friends are tourists. But I do have a problem with Bloomberg turning New York into a city for tourists, instead of a city for its residents.

4. When did the right-wing Republican rhetoric of "elitist" become a weapon within Manhattan against the people who live here? Really, I want to know.


Autobody shops are closing! Who cares? They're dirty and cars are bad. You must be in love with autobody shops. Furthermore, people who drive cars are elitists.

1. Those autobody shops are (or were) run by small businesspeople and their families. Some of them for generations. That counts for something. At least, it used to. But maybe you'd prefer they get replaced by artisanal coffee shops and high-end bread bakeries--nothing elitist about that.

2. These mom-and-pop businesses will be replaced by corporate luxury chains or high-end condos. That's the antithesis of diversity.

3. I'm not in love with autobody shops. I don't own a car. The product is not the point. If those shops fixed umbrellas or made shoelaces, I'd point out their mass disappearance, too, and it would have nothing to do with any passion for umbrellas or shoelaces.

4. Again with elitist? What is that about? Fellow complainer Fran Lebowitz put it well when she said, "When Republicans, for instance, you know, disparage elites, they don't mean rich people. They love rich people. They mean smart people." So, if by "elitist" you mean I'm smart and want other people to be smart, too, then thank you.


But the High Line is so pretty! Why do you hate it so much?

1. Yes, once again, the High Line is pretty. It's pretty. It's very pretty!

2. Did I say I hated the High Line? I hate what it's doing to the neighborhood, true, but I also have complicated feelings about the thing itself, aside from its impact.

3. Do you believe that criticizing is the same as hating? Those aren't the same things. I criticize many things that I actually like and that only enhances my experience of it. We need to think more critically about more things more of the time. Our city would be better off if we did.

New High Line

Ever since I first saw the High Line in photos by Joel Sternfeld, I wanted to go up there. Yesterday, when the newly renovated High Line opened to the public, I got my chance. Of course, it wasn't the High Line I remembered from the photos.

That vanished High Line was an off-limits, untrammeled mystery hidden right above our heads. Weeds and wildflowers poked out between rusted railroad tracks. Ailanthus trees sprouted along crumbling, graffiti-covered train platforms. The High Line was a weird, green path cutting between the brick hulks of abandoned buildings. I longed to climb up through the locked gates, where only the brave dared to venture. But I wasn't brave enough to even try.



That was a decade ago. Today, the High Line is a tamed, manicured beauty. An elegant showpiece.

The crazy quilt of weeds, junk trees, and wildflowers that helped make the High Line so mysterious and otherwordly are all gone, and yet returned--in domesticated descendants of themselves. Before removal, they were harvested for their seeds, cultivated in a Staten Island nursery, and then placed with care and planning in the new park.



Signs along the path say the landscape is wild, but it's actually, according to the High Line Blog, "designed to recall the self-sown landscape that grew up on the High Line after the trains stopped running" with "over 7,500 native grasses and perennials" that peek up between hand-laid tracks and track-like slabs of poured concrete.

The new High Line is a simulacrum of the old. In its imitation of nature, it separates us from the natural. We're in Baudrillard's hyperreality territory here.



But in this elevated urban garden, people are not thinking so much about the difference between the real and the hyperreal. They sun themselves, text, talk on the phone. They carry golf clubs and push double-wide strollers. They rest next to piles of shopping bags, exhausted after hours of consuming. One or two read a book.



From way up here, in the rarified air, we gaze at the glazed backdrop of condos, hotels, and shop windows. Sometimes, it feels like a tour of CondoLand, as if the towers had come first and this new High Line was perfectly placed as a scenic viewpoint from which to admire them. Look at all the glass! Mountains and icebergs and glaciers of glass.

As if it were a giant roadside drive-thru tree, we stroll straight through Balasz's luxurious crotch.





Here and there, you'll find remains of the old Meatpacking District. A couple brick buildings are still inhabited. You pass a few cracked windows, some barbed wire, the crazy backside of Novac Noury's building, complete with a dessicated Statue of Liberty and collection of broken urinals. (But where is Noury with his spurting keyboard?)



It's not bad up there on the new High Line. It's very pleasant. Very nice.

I sat down on one of the many benches and enjoyed the view, the breeze, the summery fragrance of the vegetation, which smells like something wild if you close your eyes. And I overheard one young man say to his friend:

"This project was actually controversial. Some people wanted it to stay a natural meadow. But I'm glad they didn't. I mean, that would be dangerous."



See all my photos of the New High Line here

See Joel Sternfeld's photos of the old High Line here

Disney World on the Hudson

The New York Times printed my Op-Ed today on how the High Line "has become a tourist-clogged catwalk and a catalyst for some of the most rapid gentrification in the city’s history."




August 21, 2012
Disney World on the Hudson
By JEREMIAH MOSS

WHEN the first segment of the High Line, the now-famous park built atop an old elevated railway on the West Side of Manhattan, opened in 2009, I experienced a moment of excitement. I had often wondered what it would be like to climb that graffiti-marked trestle with its wild urban meadow. Of course, I’d seen the architectural renderings and knew not to expect a wilderness. Still, the idea was enticing: a public park above the hubbub, a contemplative space where nature softens the city’s abrasiveness.

Today it’s difficult to remember that initial feeling. The High Line has become a tourist-clogged catwalk and a catalyst for some of the most rapid gentrification in the city’s history.

My skepticism took root during my first visit. The designers had scrubbed the graffiti and tamed the wildflowers. Guards admonished me when my foot moved too close to a weed. Was this a park or a museum? I felt like I was in the home of a neatnik with expensive tastes, afraid I would soil the furnishings.

But the park was a hit. Fashion models strutted up and down. Shoppers from the meatpacking district boutiques commandeered the limited number of benches, surrounded by a phalanx of luxury clothing bags. I felt underdressed.

That rarefied state didn’t last, though. As the High Line’s hype grew, the tourists came clamoring. Originally meant for running freight trains, the High Line now runs people, except where those people jam together like spawning salmon crammed in a bottleneck. The park is narrow, and there are few escape routes. I’ve gotten close to a panic attack, stuck in a pool of stagnant tourists at the park’s most congested points.

Not yet four years old, the High Line has already become another stop on the must-see list for out-of-towners, another chapter in the story of New York City’s transformation into Disney World. According to the park’s Web site, 3.7 million people visited the High Line in 2011, only half of them New Yorkers. It’s this overcrowding — not just of the High Line, but of the streets around it — that’s beginning to turn the tide of sentiment.

Recently, an anonymous local set off a small media storm by posting fliers around the park that read: “Attention High Line tourists. West Chelsea is not Times Square. It is not a tourist attraction.” A local newspaper talked to a 24-year-old who reported that young people who once met for dates at the park now say, “How about doing something that doesn’t involve the High Line?”

But the problem isn’t just the crowds. It’s that the park, which will eventually snake through more than 20 blocks, is destroying neighborhoods as it grows.

And it’s doing so by design. While the park began as a grass-roots endeavor — albeit a well-heeled one — it quickly became a tool for the Bloomberg administration’s creation of a new, upscale, corporatized stretch along the West Side. As socialites and celebrities championed the designer park during its early planning stages, whipping community support into a heady froth, the city rezoned West Chelsea for luxury development in 2005.

The neighborhood has since been completely remade. Old buildings fell and mountain ranges of glassy towers with names like High Line 519 and HL23 started to swell — along with prices.

The New York City Economic Development Corporation published a study last year stating that before the High Line was redeveloped, “surrounding residential properties were valued 8 percent below the overall median for Manhattan.” Between 2003 and 2011, property values near the park increased 103 percent.

This is good news for the elite economy but not for many who have lived and worked in the area for decades. It’s easy to forget that until very recently, even with the proliferation of art galleries near the West Side Highway, West Chelsea was a mix of working-class residents and light-industrial businesses.

But the High Line is washing all that away. D&R Auto Parts saw its profits fall by more than 35 percent. Once-thriving restaurants like La Lunchonette and Hector’s diner, a local anchor since 1949, have lost their customer base.

Hardest hit have been the multigenerational businesses of “gasoline alley.” Mostly auto-related establishments that don’t fit into Michael R. Bloomberg’s luxury city vision, several vanished in mere months, like species in a meteoric mass extinction. Bear Auto Shop was out after decades; the Olympia parking garage, after 35 years, closed when its rent reportedly quintupled.

Brownfeld Auto, on West 29th Street near 10th Avenue, lost its lease after nearly a century. Today it’s another hole in the ground. Its third-generation owner, Alan Brownfeld, blamed the High Line for taking away the thriving business he’d inherited from his grandfather. “It’s for the city’s glamorous people,” he said.

Mr. Brownfeld is right, for now. But just as the High Line’s early, trendy denizens gave way to touristic hordes, Chelsea’s haute couture moment may be fleeting. As big a brand as Stella McCartney is, she can’t compete with global chains like Sephora, which are muscling into the area’s commercial space.

Within a few years, the ecosystem disrupted by the High Line will find a new equilibrium. The aquarium-like high rises will be for the elite, along with a few exclusive locales like the Standard Hotel. But the new locals will rarely be found at street level, where chain stores and tourist-friendly restaurants will cater to the crowds of passers-by and passers-through. Gone entirely will be regular New Yorkers, the people who used to call the neighborhood home. But then the High Line was never really about them.

See Also:
Chelsea Mobil
Atlas Meats
Bear Auto
Kamco
Brownfeld Auto
Folsom East and The Eagle

Goodbye Poppy's

We all know that in a very short amount of time the High Line has had a major impact on west Chelsea. The Times just called it "an economic dynamo" that has raised prices on apartments and pretty much everything else that comes close to it. That dynamo is good for some, and not so good for others.

As the second segment opens tomorrow, I wandered back into Poppy's Terminal Food Shop, up at the uppermost end of the High Line on 10th Ave. and 29th St. A true find, a rare piece of the old city, Poppy's is not Poppy's anymore.


today

It was sold about six months ago, the counterman told me, though Poppy Livanis still works there. The interior is mostly the same as before, minus one taxidermied deer head, but the sign outside has been whited out and a banner, tangled by the wind, proclaims this space "The High Line Deli." Everybody wants a piece of the action, but how long will this 30-year-old joint last?

Broke-Ass Stuart called it a place gentrification forgot, filled with "freaks, weirdoes, club kids, and lost souls." In New York, Daniel Maurer said "this proletarian corner deli, open since 1981, quietly keeps it real." In short, the former Poppy's is nothing like what the High Liners envision for the neighborhood around their luxury park.

And that goes for this entire world of auto mechanics, flat fixers, gas pumpers, metal scrappers, and taxi medallion salesmen. The High Line will destroy it because it doesn't fit the High Line's image.


2009


Today

Right next door to Poppy's, the 10th Avenue Tire Shop has already been moved out, leaving their wide-open space to be a High Line amenity called The Lot. This summer, The Lot will include "curated" artisanal food trucks, a bar serving local and seasonal beers, plus a family-friendly "urban playground." In the fall, a condo tower will be constructed here.

One High Line Friend and developer of The Lot, wrote the Times, "foresees restaurants, shops and diversions in the area, given that the once-scruffy, quasi-menacing southern end of the High Line is now a haute shopping and real estate festival that condominium advertisements call 'the prestigious High Line District.'"

In sum: Go say goodbye to Poppy. And try the Gyros Platter. Explore the neighborhood before the prestige bulldozes everything in its path.


Google Maps--circa 2009?

See Also:
The Upper High Line
Poppy's
New High Line

Folsom Street East

VANISHED

We knew it would happen, and now it's happening. Folsom Street East has been cancelled.

The organizers put out a message last night via Facebook and their website:

"It is with sadness that the Producers and Board of Directors of Folsom Street East have to announce that the 17th annual Folsom Street East Street Festival this June is going to be cancelled. Though we continue to receive support for this community-building and fundraising event from Community Board 4 and our neighbors on the block (including our producing partner The Eagle NYC), the ever-growing construction on the north side of 28th street has made it impossible for us to successfully and safely hold our annual street festival. Thank you for the years of support from our attendees, sponsors, partners, exhibitors, vendors, performers and volunteers; we are sad that we will not be able to celebrate Pride with you at our fetish-friendly event this year."



At the end of the message, they write: "Thanks for 16 great years celebrating sexual freedom with the Folsom Street East Street Festival, and we hope to see you back on the kinky streets of New York City in 2014!"

They don't say which streets and we can guess it won't be West 28th. Ever since the High Line opened in that part of town and Bloomberg rezoned it for luxury development, Folsom East has had a target on its back.



Here is a timeline of what has happened on this one block of West 28th Street since it became prime High Line real estate (click the dates for the full articles):

November 2010: A "High Line Boomlet" came to West Chelsea. The first residents of the +ART luxury condo moved onto this block of West 28th.

June 8, 2011: The second section of the High Line opened, bringing many tourists and other folks to a part of town they'd never before entered, including this once-industrial block, over which the High Line stretches.

June 19, 2011: High Line walkers got their first glimpse of Folsom Street East, right beneath their feet. Though the fair had been on this block for years, you had to be a part of it to go looking for it. At the time, I asked, "As the High Line spreads its luxurious seed across upper Chelsea, replacing every rough thing in its path with glass and glamor, how long, really, do you think Folsom will be allowed to party here?"

June 24, 2011: The Eagle gay leather bar was raided by the NYPD. They claimed the bar was the source of chronic noise complaints, but no such complaints were on record--only complaints about noise from all the condo construction. Around the same time, the massive Avalon West Chelsea condo tower broke ground right across the street, with advertisements proclaiming, "Don't miss your chance to be a part of the High Line!"



April 2012: We learned that another luxury condo tower would be coming to this block.

June 13, 2012: A resident of the +ART condo told us about the backlash against Folsom East, saying, "Residents from several surrounding buildings have passed fliers asking our residents to write to the Community Board to relocate or totally eliminate Folsom Street East because 'fetish' fairs shouldn't be allowed so close to so many residential buildings." Meanwhile, a slogan on the windows of the condo stated, "Chelsea is the birthplace of creative modern art and the home of bad behavior."

June 14, 2012: A representative from Folsom East responded to the backlash against them, saying they were doing everything they could to cooperate with the new neighbors.

June 17, 2012: Folsom East went on--surrounded by construction fencing and with a special path built for the condo people. Up on the High Line, tourists gawked like visitors to a freak show, while Christian right-wingers waved banners telling the fair-goers that only Jesus would save them from Hell.

January 2013: We heard that the scrapyard Central Iron and Metal, the last industrial business on the block, would be closing after 86 years in business. It sold for $65 million to a luxury developer.

March 2013: Not on West 28th, but still related, the Rawhide bar was driven out of Chelsea after 34 years of serving the LGBT and leather community.



Queer New York City has, once again, just gotten smaller. It's vanishing day by day. Don't blink, you might miss it.

Very soon, this entire block will be taken over by High Line culture, filled only with luxury condo towers and their occupants, with artisanal-foodie restaurants to feed them and high-end chain stores to fulfill their consumer needs. The Eagle remains, but for how long? In the end, Bloomberg's High Line always wins.

Lost Wild High Line

About a decade ago, Damon Hoydysh, founder of Highline Studios, climbed up onto the old, pre-gentrified High Line and shot a whole bunch of film--of the weedy wilderness and graffiti tunnels before they were turned into artisanal food courts and tourist outlooks.

He shares it here for a first exclusive look (be sure to watch on full screen):



I asked Damon a few questions:

Q: How did you get up to the High Line to take this footage?

A: I hopped the fence at the LIRR railroad yard at the north end of the High Line. Once you cleared the fence, it was just steps to the beginnings of the High Line. It was really hot that day, and when I got to the end, I had to get down through a functioning meat processing facility on 14th street. It was just one of those moments, older guys in white butcher’s coats looking at me funny as I briskly exited via their huge, full-floor meat locker with my camera over my shoulder.

Q: What attracted you to the old High Line?

A: I was always obsessed with it. I just loved the actual structure, the rusted steel--like the biggest Richard Serra piece you've ever seen. When I first started my company, we were located on 23rd Street right above it, and that’s where the name Highline Studios came from. I've always been drawn to anything transportation-related, and even though the railway was abandoned, it felt like a lifeline that ran right through the heart of the neighborhood.

I loved it over there because the streets were empty and still felt industrial--beautiful old factories with smoke-stacks, rail yards, empty warehouses--just awesome, raw NYC. No condos. It was one of the the last vestiges of the old, gritty NYC that I had known as a kid. When I first got up on the High Line, I realized that it encapsulated all that I loved about the area, perfectly preserved, with gorgeous graffiti galleries everywhere. It was also striking how the vegetation had just naturally taken over and blended so perfectly with all the man-made, discarded elements, it was beautiful.




Q: Do you ever go up to the new High Line? How do you think it compares to the old?

A: I think they did a beautiful job for a modern park, but at the same time it's too sterile and user-friendly. We need to help preserve the street art so that it's not lost for future generations. It’s obviously a difficult balance, but I think the real history and heritage of the area has been lost, and it is pretty over-run with the crowds. It's truly the age-old debate, analog vs. digital. Analog for me any day.


Previously:
Disney World on the Hudson
Brownfeld Auto
Meatpacking Before & After 
J. Crew for the High Line
Special West Chelsea

10th Ave. Gas Station

VANISHED 

Time to add yet another casualty to the High Line's hit list, as every single blue-collar business along its length is rapidly being wiped out.



When the blindingly bright luxury condo 245 10th Avenue rose up, wrapping itself around a Lukoil gas station to lean over the High Line, we knew the Lukoil couldn't last. No matter that the gas station was always busy, it just didn't fit with the new neighborhood. The two sides of the condo facing the gas station were built with no windows, obviously awaiting a future tower to come.

And now it's coming.

I walked by recently to find the gas station shuttered, its signs ripped down, and the whole thing surrounded by a wall of tastefully potted shrubbery--musn't upset the neighbors with unsightly developer blight.



A nearby worker told me it closed about a week ago. In a big story about High Line overdevelopment, the New York Post reported that the lot was purchased by luxury developer Michael Shvo "for $23.5 million--about $850 per square foot, which Shvo says is the highest price ever paid for a NYC residential development site."

The Wall Street Journal writes that the site will become "an art-themed, mixed-use condo and retail development that would connect to many of the galleries nearby. 'Something that will combine art, luxury residential, design and architecture,' [Shvo] said. 'We will have river views and we will be looking over the High Line.'"



I've said it before, but I'll say it again: The High Line is an unstoppable hyper-gentrification machine. As one broker told the Post, “It’s Dubai in New York. I’ve never seen such a landscape change so quickly. It’s like they’re building a whole city within the city.” (That same broker also claims that the day CVS opened on 10th "was a good day for West Chelsea." God help us.)

We'll add this one to the ever-growing list of blue-collar businesses shuttered since the second part of the High Line opened in June 2011:

8/2013: 10th Avenue gas station sold for condo tower
5/2013: D&R Auto Parts shuttered
5/2013: GGMC Parking Garage demolished
4/2013: Kamco Building Materials demolished for condo towers
2/2013: Evan Auto moved a block away
1/2013: Edge Auto Rental moved to Brooklyn
1/2013: Central Iron & Metal sold to Related for $65 million
12/2011: Brownfeld Auto pushed out by landlord, demolished for condos
12/2011: Chelsea Mobil sold and shuttered for upscale retail
9/2011: D&R Auto Parts reported 40% drop in profits since High Line opened
8/2011: Bear Auto forced out by landlord for upscale development
8/2011: Olympia Parking Garage closed when landlord quintupled the rent
6/2011: Poppy's Terminal Food Shop changed hands, later shuttered
6/2011: 10th Ave. Tire Shop pushed out for High Line development

Who's next? I worry often about the car wash next door. It's been in business for over 40 years, but for how much longer will the Gods of the High Line permit it to survive?

J. Crew for High Line

The High Line now has a capsule collection by J. Crew. All proceeds from sales go to the High Line. Think they'll do a Flushing Meadow collection next? Doubtful, though that park actually needs the money.



From City & State:

"The organization that built and runs the park, Friends of the High Line, is dominated by a wealthy and politically connected coterie of real estate developers and property owners, which has poured hundreds of thousands of dollars, directly and as intermediaries, into Christine Quinn’s mayoral election campaign. Friends of the High Line, formed in 1999 as a tiny nonprofit by two civic-minded fans of urban decrepitude, has quickly become the richest park conservancy in the city, after the Central Park Conservancy. Friends of the High Line raises double the revenue of the Prospect Park Alliance, for instance, and takes in more than 20 times as much as the Friends of Hudson River Park.

...The City Council, first under Gifford Miller and then Christine Quinn, has doused the High Line with cash. Estimates of city funding for the High Line before it even opened range between $130 and $170 million...

The real question is, why give money to the FoHL at all? They don’t need it. The organization is awash in cash from its board and corporate sponsors. The High Line floats in the center of billions of dollars of residential real estate that was built specifically around it. One of the highest paid staffers for the FoHL is a person listed officially as 'Director of Food,' who makes more than $100,000 per year."



So how about a capsule collection for the Director of Food?

A Zillion Tourists

The mainstream media got itself into quite a lather over those High Line flyers from Anonymous last week--and it tells us something interesting, something critical, about the city and its changing face.


Shawn Chittle's TV

After I first posted the news, Fox 5 picked up the story with a video called "High Line Hater." One woman interviewed said, "Before they rented in this place, they knew this exists," referring to residents who live along the High Line. NY1 interviewed a young man on video who said, "It's the Meatpacking District, the nightlife here is crazy, so you should be kind of used to it. Live somewhere else if you don't like the noise."

CBS Channel 2 found someone to say, "This is New York City, if you want space, move to the country," while another called the flyer's rules "civility." The New York Post, with their take titled "High Line anxiety: Neighbor rips raucous rubes," also featured a video that is largely pro-High Line and pro-tourist, with one detractor who said that the High Line has changed the neighborhood for the worse. In the UK, the Daily Mail took offense, calling the flyer-maker a bossy, nasty, unfriendly whinger.

[*Update: The Atlantic Monthly Cities blog chimes in, recalling when "Many of New York’s neighborhoods weren’t tourist attractions. They were tourist repellents." TIME's blog does not approve of the "tourist hater." The Wall Street Journal looks at the negative impact of High Line tourism on Chelsea.]

In the comments to the original post, many people defended tourists (and many did not). One wrote, "I cannot stand when people hate on tourists." Another called the flyer writer "a flaming liberal...a bigot, a snob." Many of the commenters, here and elsewhere, said in essence: If you don't like tourists, you're an "elitist."

When did tourists become so protected in New York City? And when did local crankiness become elitism? However you feel about the High Line flyer, it has us talking about New York and its new relationship to tourists.



In the 1980s and '90s, the t-shirt "Welcome to New York. Now Go Home" (alternately, "Now Get Out") was popular, a New Yorker's message to tourists and rube newbies. Today, looking at the interviews and comments on the High Line story, the more popular slogan might be: "Welcome to New York. Leave If You Don't Like the Crowds of Tourists--You Knew It Was All One Big Tourist Attraction When You Moved Here."

New Yorkers, once proud of their crankiness, used to delight in maligning tourists. In the late 1990s, as the city was beginning its massive transformation into a tourist economy, Fran Lebowitz said, "What a nightmare! No one who isn't from New York knows how to be a pedestrian. Pedestrians don't mosey. And they don't walk five abreast. I'd like to make New York unsafe for tourists."



But by the 2000s, the "Now Go Home" t-shirt (and sentiment?) had vanished. Journalist Clyde Haberman tried to find it while writing a piece for the Times about the glut of tourists in town. ("We're Glad You Love Us, Don't Overdo It" was the gentle title.) Clyde carefully pleaded, "Really, is it asking too much to have our city back?"

In 2006, Bloomberg launched his multi-pronged marketing plan to bring a record-breaking 50 million tourists per year to New York by 2015. That number was surpassed in 2011—and the record was broken again in 2012, when the city endured 52 million visitors.

Recently, I conducted my own search for the Now Go Home t-shirt, which used to be prominent in the shops along St. Mark's Place. No dice. The salesgirl in Search & Destroy agreed, "That one is hard to find." The closest thing I saw was the anachronistic, gun-toting "Duck Mother Fucker."



So what happened? Why has New York become so welcoming to tourists, so gently tolerant, even protective and defensive? Something shifted somewhere between 1999 and 2006, and it wasn't just the election of Bloomberg. I've written about this extensively before, but briefly: The events of 9/11 turned New York City into America instead of a city of, in Woody's words, "left-wing Communist, Jewish, homosexual, pornographers."

And that scolding word--elitist--it comes right out of the Tea Party playbook. It doesn't mean rich people, as Fran Lebowitz has reminded us, it means smart people. And I think it also means non-mainstream people.


Fleet Week visitors

This past weekend, I visited the USS Wasp, in town for Fleet Week. It was loaded with tourists and with New Yorkers acting like tourists. A gay couple strolled along, one of the men dressed in a trim mini-skirt and high-heeled, snakeskin, go-go boots. (It's no secret that gay men love Fleet Week.) Excited to see such a bold and beautiful human being on the flight deck of a U.S. Naval warship, I took a photo. At that moment, a touristy-looking woman turned to me and said, "That's New York," and I thought she would say something appreciative next, about the city's gutsy individualism, but she didn't. She said, "Scary, isn't it?" I turned and snapped her head off.

As Fran Lebowitz said in an interview, "Present-day New York has been made to attract people who didn’t like New York. That’s how we get a zillion tourists here, especially American tourists, who never liked New York. Now they like New York. What does that mean? Does that mean they’ve suddenly become much more sophisticated? No. It means that New York has become more like the places they come from."

W. 28th Street View: 2010 - Today

For years, the block of West 28th Street between 10th and 11th Avenues was a quiet one, wide open and low rising. It was auto-body shops, a scrap yard, a place to get a slice of pizza, and the Eagle gay bar. Then the new High Line came.

Immediately, a big chunk of the block was flattened. Small construction businesses moved out. The +ART condo went up across the street in 2010.



The second section of the High Line opened in 2011. Construction began for Avalon Bay's AVA High Line.

In 2012, the one-story nightclub in the bottom right of this photo was demolished.



The scrap yard (left side, with yellow machine) kept scrapping. Life went on. Then residents of the +ART condo started complaining about the Folsom East fetish fair. Christian right-wingers stood on the High Line with signs telling the fairgoers they were sinners. Tourists gawked.

The fair was cancelled and eventually moved.



AVA got bigger and bigger and bigger.



Then the scrap yard went in 2013, sold for millions after doing business since 1927. All of the auto-body shops closed. Digging began immediately for the foundation of Zaha Hadid's ultra-luxe, space-age condo.



As Hadid's building rose (left), so did another directly across the street.



And now another is rising, right behind the Hadid.

On the other side of the High Line, behind this view, a little tenement with a bodega was recently demolished. Something else will be rising there. It will certainly be made of glass and shimmer and money.



This all took just six years.

One little block, sun-lit and wide open, is now as dark and suffocating as a sarcophagus. Walking on it used to be a pleasure. No more.

I've quoted this before, and I'll quote it again. In 2011, Philip Lopate wrote a love letter to the High Line. He concluded:

“Much of the High Line’s present magic stems from its passing though an historic industrial cityscape roughly the same age as the viaduct, supplemented by private tenement backyards and the poetic grunge of taxi garages. It would make a huge difference if High Line walkers were to feel trapped in a canyon of spanking new high-rise condos, providing antlike visual entertainment for one’s financial betters lolling on balconies."

It would. And it did.