Great Museums at the High Line Groundbreaking Ceremony： September 2012)

When visitors arrive at 30th street there's a chain link gate which marks the end of the park and the beginning of section three or the high line at the rail yard and people visiting the park and seeing that section really can get a feel for what the high line looked like after the landscape had seated itself in. That's a very untouched portion of the park. 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 west side rail yards and active train yards for the long island railroad. Related companies, one of the great developers in our city has leased that property and will develop a 26 acre mixed-use neighborhood and the third section of the high line will integrate into that neighborhood and connect it to the thriving districts of west Chelsea and the meatpacking district. You have to try to get a sense of the scale of this development right. I mean basically the Hudson yard stretches from here all the way to that crane and from here all the way to the river. It's essentially the equivalent of six mega city blocks that are all together right. I mean it's enormous and it's going to be a really whole new development, a whole new neighborhood unto itself with the high line basically wrapping around it. 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 wilderness that took root over the years since the tracks had been abandoned. We're actually talking about opening up one section to the west just as is right. Creating a very simple path, a simple interim walkway to allow the public to be able to see the existing condition that really inspired the whole thing. It's a little messy, it's a little unkempt. I think that's one of the things that makes it interesting. You know as we get farther to the west you can start to see some of the denser brush and denser shrubs that have grown up over time out here. You know it's very windy so it's a pretty rugged environment but you can see the plants survive and they've done their thing. We're going to preserve all the tracks. There's a lot of really interesting track work here where the tracks are crossing and part of the idea is to show all that to the public as well. This is a wonderful day for the city and I just think it keeps showing. You know we keep growing and we're doing things and pretty soon we'll be back here and all of that land. Just look this side, stage left. That's all going to be offices and apartments and a whole part of the city that just didn't exist ever. This city, you know, you listen to the critics and you'd think the world's coming to an end but the evidence is quite the contrary. Thank you and Barry and everybody, thank you.