Using the High Line as a Model, Jersey City Bets on the Embankment

[M II A II R II K]

Using the High Line as a Model, Jersey City Bets on the Embankment


June 08, 2012

By Sharyn Jackson



Read More: http://www.wnyc.org/articles/new-jer...08/embankment/

At the intersection of Jersey Avenue and 6th Street, in downtown Jersey City, stands an imposing structure of stone and granite that towers over a Brownstone-lined street. Ivy cascades down the sides, while 20- and 30-foot-tall trees grow on top. Huge reddish brown boulders pile up for two stories, with tiny fern-like plants breaking out of the crevices. It’s Stephen Gucciardo’s favorite section of the Embankment, a six-block, half mile-long spur of the Pennsylvania Railroad. “Without any of us having touched the Embankment, it’s already a park,” Gucciardo said.

- Jersey City residents and government officials are closer than ever to concluding a 13-year battle to acquire the Embankment and turn it into an open space at the center of this urban neighborhood. The process has been saddled by a series of lawsuits involving the city, private developer Steve Hyman and railroad company Conrail, over who has the right to own the property. The issue hinges on arcane federal railroad law over whether Conrail’s sale of the property to Hyman in 2003 for $3 million was legal. So far, the city has spent $500,000 in legal fees, according to corporation counsel Bill Matsikoudis.

- “I would say we get a call almost every week from somebody doing a similar kind of project,” said Robert Hammond, the co-founder and executive director of Friends of the High Line. “They’re not all elevated rail lines, but they’re just community-initiated projects of reclaiming industrial space and trying use them in different ways.” Hammond serves on the advisory council for the Embankment, and one piece of advice he passed on is remembering that the High Line wasn’t always what it is today. “In the beginning almost all the main groups were opposed to it,” Hammond recalled. “To some people they just thought it was a relic and wasn’t attractive, and would look better torn down.

- Hammond thinks the “Embankment has a whole other feel to it” than the High Line. “It feels more natural in some ways because of these stone walls. And then what’s growing up there is so much more robust and stronger than anything that was ever growing up on the High Line. In the Embankment, you really feel like you have a forest in the middle of Jersey City,” he explained. Jersey City Councilman Steven Fulop, whose district encompasses the Embankment, is optimistic that the project will follow in the High Line’s footsteps. “We think we have an opportunity here to create something at least as powerful, if not better,” Fulop said.

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[Nexis4Jersey]

What another crock from JC leaders ,we were promised another East-West Transit corridor to run atop the embankment....and now we get a park....theres very little future thinking left in this region , its just rail - trail everything...

[J. Will]

The crazy thing is, the Hamilton Park neighbourhood has NO public transit outside of a handful of weekday rush-hour runs of NJT Bus #126. If you live on Hamilton Park and want to go somewhere on say a Sat. afternoon, you have to walk either to the far side of the mall, or down to Newark Ave. An LRT with stops at say Manila Ave. and Monmouth Streets would have been incredibly useful and would have plugged a big hole in JC that is lacking transit.