Quantcast
Staten Island seeks proposals for its own High Line in Port Richmond – Metro US

Staten Island seeks proposals for its own High Line in Port Richmond

With Manhattan’s High Line a popular attraction for tourists and New Yorkers alike, Staten Island officials are looking to turn an abandoned rail line into a similar park.

The Staten Island Economic Development Corp. on Wednesday announced that it’s looking for design proposals to turn a half-mile stretch of the former North Shore Rail Line in Port Richmond into parkland.

“I wanted to look into how we could replicate what they did in Manhattan,” SIEDC President and CEO Cesar Claro told SILive.com. Claro said the group met with Friends of the High Line and plan to use that park “as the roadmap.” The Manhattan version stretches 1.45 miles on the West Side, along an elevated former freight rail line, from the Meatpacking District to 34th Street.

If approved, the Staten Island park would run from Richmond Terrace at Heberton Avenue to Nicholas Avenue and cost an estimated $30 million, Claro said. The goal, he added, would be to obtain federal funding and partner with local officials to pay for its construction.

The defunct rail line is a popular spot for illegal dumping, Claro said, with “tons of garbage just dropped there.”

The proposed park could “be a transformative project for the area” that “represents anunprecedented economic and recreational opportunity,” SIEDC Project Ambassador Salvatore Calcagno Jr. said.