High Line Section Three_ Groundbreaking Ceremony_ NYC Mayor Michael Bloomberg

Good morning everyone. As you may have guessed, we are not here just to toss a bunch of seeds in the air. Although that was fun, I want to thank the students from Clinton Middle School for joining us this morning. You should know that the seeds that we set free to take root. Yes, nice round of applause for them. I worked them over. Why weren't they in school? They said they'd rather be here. I could never sympathize with that. I always wanted to be in class. No, that's not true. The seeds that we set free are free to take root and will soon grow into flowers and grasses, much like the ones already grown along these tracks. And by the time they are fully grown and well before you guys, these guys, have graduated from high school, this will have become the third and final section of a beautiful, groundbreaking, and now world-famous High Line Park. And we are officially beginning construction on that final section, known as the High Line at the Rail Yards, right today, this day, September 19, 2012. Mark it down. Let me tell you a little bit about how this new section of the High Line will look. It will run half a mile north from the existing park, extending from West 30th to West 34th Streets and from 10th to 12th Avenues. It will wrap around and take its name from the Westside Rail Yards, an active train yard for the Long Island Railroad. Related companies, one of the great developers in our city, has leased that property from the Metropolitan Transportation Authority and will develop a 26-acre mixed-use neighborhood, Hudson Yards, on a platform above that site. And Hudson Yards construction is slated to begin this fall. And the third section of the High Line will integrate seamlessly into that neighborhood and connect it to the thriving districts of West Chelsea and the Meatpacking District. Now, the Rail Yard section will extend and expand on elements of the High Line's distinct design, aspects like the existing park's peel-up benches, walkways built around preserved train tracks, and plantings that invoke the self-seeded wildness or wilderness that took root over the years since the tracks had been abandoned. In fact, a portion of the park's walkway will pass alongside landscape preserved almost exactly as it is today, giving visitors a clear picture of how the tracks looked before the park's construction. There will also be new picnic and play areas, spaces for gathering, relaxation, and public events, and many more of the unique features that make the existing High Line so popular. Construction will proceed in three stages at an estimated total cost of $90 million. The city is providing $10 million in capital funding, and Friends of the High Line have committed another $20 million in private donations, and that provides us with the funding to cover the first phase of construction on the Rail Yard section. Related companies and Oxford Properties have also committed to providing $27.8 million in funding towards the capital construction, as well as additional funding for the park's maintenance. And the first two sections of the High Line, you should know, were generously donated by CSX Transportation, it's one of the big railroad companies in this country, to the city and opened to the public in 2009 and 2011, respectively. And last June, CSX donated this, the final section, and we expect the first phase of the Rail Yards, which comprises the majority of the extension, to open to the public in early 2014, so that's not very long from now. We have every reason to expect that it will add to what has been, and by all accounts, unbelievable success. Since we opened the park's first section in 2009, the High Line has been visited by more than 10 million people. That number exceeds even our greatest hopes, but I think it doesn't begin to encapsulate the High Line's full impact. In the first five years after park construction began in 2006, new building permits in the immediate vicinity doubled, bringing more than $2 billion in private investment and 12,000 jobs, 8,000 of them construction jobs, to this area. West Chelsea and the Meatpacking District have welcomed new residences, hotels, restaurants, galleries, and shops, not to mention leading companies like Google, which bought a 3 million square foot building on Ninth Avenue in what was the largest real estate transaction in America in 2010, and these new arrivals share the fresh, dynamic, creative energy that is the calling card of the High Line, and I think they're great examples of how great parks can spur private investment.