High Line Inspires Plans for Park Under Delancey Street - NYTimes.com
Inspired by High Line, Park Is Envisioned With Sights Set Low
By LISA W. FODERARO
Published: November 21, 2011
Ever since it opened in 2009, the High Line has drawn out-of-town visitors who hope to replicate its success. Observers of the elevated park on the West Side of Manhattan have come from nearby municipalities like Jersey City and Philadelphia and places as far away as Hong Kong.
Lately, those observers have been coming from across town, with plans for another attention-grabbing green space on a former transit site. But this one comes with a twist — the proposed park would be underground, in a dank former trolley terminal under Delancey Street that is controlled by the Metropolitan Transportation Authority. Though its promoters call it the “Delancey Underground,” another nickname has already been coined: the Low Line.
The two men behind it, James Ramsey and Dan Barasch, come to the project with prestigious résumés (Yale and NASA in Mr. Ramsey’s case, Cornell and Google for Mr. Barasch). They want to convert the space into a subterranean park, using fiber-optic technology to channel in natural light — enough light, in fact, to allow photosynthesis to occur and, as a result, for plants to thrive.
The partners have met several times with officials with the transportation authority, who have expressed interest. And so, a piece of the world under Manhattan may soon have a moment in the sun.
“It’s a little perverse, a little like science fiction, but we realized that we have the technology to grow grass and trees underground,” said Mr. Ramsey, 34, an architect who developed what he calls the “remote skylight” technology.
By following the road map provided by Friends of the High Line, the organization behind that park’s success, the partners are now trying to build community support. They recently made presentations to the local community board and the board of the Lower East Side Business Improvement District. And they are about to begin a feasibility study for the project, as well as a fund-raising campaign, though at this point they do not actually know how much the Low Line would cost to build.
They have also sought guidance from the co-founders of Friends of the High Line, Robert Hammond and Joshua David, whom they met through mutual friends.
“They’re not only a source of inspiration, but they’re helping us strategically,” said Mr. Barasch, 34, who works for a nonprofit organization called PopTech, a network of scientists and designers known for its annual technology conference. “After we presented this to the community, we got an enormously positive response, which was the opposite reaction that the High Line folks initially got.”
Mr. Hammond is enthusiastic. “It’s the kind of industrial infrastructure that you always think has no good use — just like an elevated railway,” he said. “What I like is that it’s not the High Line, and it pairs technology with an interesting location to envision a different use.”
The site, a cavernous rectangular space with 20-foot ceilings, runs for about three blocks under Delancey Street, between Essex Street and the entrance to the Williamsburg Bridge. Until 1948, the space was a terminal where trolleys that crossed the bridge could turn around. On a recent tour, the outlines of the old trolley tracks were still visible through an inch of dust.
Nearby, empty cans of spray paint lay beside graffiti-covered walls. Subway riders waiting for the J, M and Z trains could be seen through a large opening that runs along the space’s northern edge. It is a view that the partners say might be interesting to keep, perhaps with a thick glass wall retaining the sight lines but dulling the screech of the subways.
Mr. Ramsey became aware of the space two years ago; it is just around the corner from the office of his architecture firm, Raad Studio. And it is adjacent to the Seward Park Urban Renewal area, a series of parking lots on the south side of Delancey once occupied by 14 blocks of tenements, which the city razed in the mid 1960s but never redeveloped. Earlier this year the local community board agreed on the guidelines for a mixed-use project.
The plan comes as the transportation authority, which is under severe financial strain, has moved to cash in on its unused assets, both above and below ground. Having recently put its Madison Avenue headquarters on the market, the authority is promoting the development potential of several other properties.
So when Mr. Ramsey called Peter Hine, a senior real estate manager at the transportation authority, to lay out his strange subterranean vision, Mr. Hine did not laugh; he listened.
“We’re looking at it very seriously because we need the money,” Mr. Hine said, “and this is a cool space and we ought to do something with it.”
Mr. Hine cautioned that the authority would first need to issue a request for proposals. The authority’s main interest is in deriving revenue from the site, and whether a free public space can serve that end is unclear.
The partners’ connections helped secure meetings with Jay H. Walder, who recently stepped down as the authority’s chairman; Adrian Benepe, commissioner of the city’s parks department; and others.
Mr. Ramsey and Mr. Barasch know that financing will be a challenge, given the costs related to underground development. But they hope that a combination of donations, grant money, public money and revenue from a limited number of shops inside the space could cover construction and maintenance.
The transportation authority is sure to entertain other proposals. “They’re enthusiastic and gung-ho, and I like that,” Mr. Hine said of the partners. “But there are a million creative people in this city, and I would love to get 500 ideas on how to deal with this space.”
Mr. Ramsey has been working on a way to funnel sunlight remotely for some time. In his scheme, above-ground “collectors” — resembling metal salad bowls on poles — would connect via fiber-optic cables to a series of distributors below ground. The distributors, embedded in the ceiling, would essentially function as superbright light fixtures.
The median on Delancey is one possible place for the collectors. On cloudy days, artificial light would be needed to supplement the natural light collected above ground, Mr. Ramsey said.
Other places around the globe have employed similar solutions. One such system uses tubes and reflectors to direct sunlight into dark interiors, according to Mr. Ramsey, much as the ancient Egyptians did.
Architectural drawings of the proposed Delancey Underground depict visitors lounging on grassy embankments under large pools of light, with tree branches reaching toward the ceiling. “It could be something that people love,” said Susan Stetzer, district manager of Community Board 3, after seeing a presentation on the park in September.
One inevitable question: Might the Low Line wind up providing visitors with, among other things, a rat’s-eye view of the city? The answer seems to be no — nothing skittered during the tour.
“There’s nothing for them to eat,” Mr. Hine explained.
