1 1

2 SURFACE TRANSPORTATION BOARD

3
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4 PUBLIC HEARING

5 IN THE MATTER

6 OF THE

7 CHELSEA PROPERTY OWNERS - ABANDONMENT

8 PORTION of the CONSOLIDATED RAIL

9 CORPORATION\'S WEST 30TH STREET

10 SECONDARY TRACK IN NEW YORK, NEW YORK

11 DOCKET NO. AB-167 (Sub-No. 1094)A

12
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13 Federal Conference Center

14 Jacob Javits Federal

15 Building

16 26 Federal Plaza

17 New York, New York

18 July 24, 2003

19 2:00 p.m.

20 B e f o r e:

21 ROGER NOBER

22 Chairman

23

24

25

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2 A P P E A R A N C E S:

3 Roger Nober, Chairman

4 ADVISORS:

5 Evelyn Kitay, Esq.

6 John Scheib, Chief of Staff

7 Alan Weinstein, Esq.

8 Amy Ziehm, Esq.

9 PANEL I:

10 The City of New York

11 Deputy Mayor Daniel L. Doctoroff

12 City Planning Commission

13 Chairperson Amanda Burden

14 Vishaan Chakrabarti

15 Speaker of the New York City Council

16 Gifford Miller

17 PANEL II:

18 Friends of the High Line, Inc.

19 Phil Aarons, Robert Hammond

20 Chelsea Property Owners

21 John H. Broadley, Doug Sarini

22 Consolidated Rail Corporation, CSX

23 Corporation and CSX Transportation, Inc.

24 Robert M. Jenkins, III

25 Peter J. Shudtz

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2 A P P E A R A N C E S (Cont\'d.):

3 PANEL III:

4 Congressman Jerrold Nadler\'s Designee

5 Daryl Cochrane

6 PANEL IV:

7 The Municipal Art Society of New York

8 Frank Emile Sanchis, III

9 The Greenwich Village Society for Historic

10 Preservation

11 Jo Hamilton

12 The American Institute of Architects, New

13 York Chapter, Fredric Bell

14 The Society for Industrial Archeology

15 Mary Habstritt

16 The Rails-To-Trails Conservancy

17 Jeffrey R. Ciabotti.

18 The New York Metro Chapter of the American

18 Planning Association, Michael Levin

19 The Lerner Group, Inc.

20 Anne-Brigitte Sirois

21 Charles Chotkowski

22 Susan Sands

23 Manhattan Community Board No. 4

24 John Lee Compton

25 Forty Plus Foundation, Tom Neuman

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2 A P P E A R A N C E S (Cont\'d.):

3

4 ALSO PRESENT:

5 Kimberly K. Egan, Esq., Covington &

6 Burling

7 Charles A. Spitulnik, Esq., McLeod,

8 Watkinson & Miller

9 Vernon A. Williams, Secretary, Surface

10 Transportation Board

11 A. Dennis Watson, Ph.D, Director of Media

12 Affairs, Surface Transportation Board

13

14

15

16 Margaret Devine, R.P.R.

17 Reporter

18

19

20

21

22

23

24

25

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2 P R O C E E D I N G S

3 THE CHAIRMAN: Good afternoon,

4 everyone.

5 I want to thank all of you for

6 coming to the Surface Transportation Board\'s

7 field hearing here in New York regarding the

8 Highline abandonment case, which I have to say

9 for the record, in our bureaucrats\' speak, is

10 known as Chelsea Property Owners - Abandonment

11 - Portion of the Consolidated Rail

12 Corporation\'s West 30th Street Secondary Track

13 located here in New York.

14 First of all, on behalf of our

15 agency we would like to offer our condolences

16 to all those who were touched by yesterday\'s

17 violence. We certainly appreciate the desire

18 of the witnesses here today, including the

19 Deputy Mayor and two members of City Council,

20 who wanted to go forward with this hearing.

21 It\'s certainly a testament to the importance of

22 this issue to the folks in New York City.

23 We\'re holding this hearing today

24 to hear the views of the parties, elected

25 officials and interested citizens on the

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2 Highline, the one and a half mile elevated line

3 between West 34th Street and Gansevoort Street

4 here in Manhattan.

5 I have a little more familiarity

6 with the property because I was fortunate that

7 members of our agency and myself and

8 representatives of the City, CSX and the

9 Chelsea Property Owners were able to have the

10 ability to have a tour of the Highline this

11 morning. And certainly an impressive bit of

12 railroad engineering from a prior era and a bit

13 of an eyesore. But we recognize that there is

14 a great deal of interest here in New York as to

15 what happens to the Highline. And that

16 interest is reflected in the extensive and

17 diverse and impressive list of participants in

18 our hearing today.

19 Now, many have asked why are we

20 holding this hearing.

21 I think it starts with the fact

22 that this is one of our agency\'s oldest cases.

23 It has been pending before our agency or our

24 predecessor agency, the Interstate Commerce

25 Commission, in one form or another since 1989.

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2 Its long history also makes it one of our most

3 difficult cases.

4 The ICC authorized its

5 abandonment in 1992. The US Court of Appeals

6 affirmed that decision in 1994. But nearly ten

7 years later the matter still remains

8 unresolved. The Property Owners who sought the

9 abandonment in the first place, the City, the

10 railroad, which owners have now changed, and

11 other interested parties, still have not come

12 to consensus on what to do with Highline.

13 Now recently several parties

14 with an interest in the fate of the Highline

15 have come back to the Board. The primary group

16 seeking its removal, the Chelsea Property

17 Owners, we will hear from today, have asked us

18 to determine whether an unexecuted settlement

19 agreement would comply with the conditions

20 placed on its abandonment by our predecessor

21 agency back in 1992.

22 Now in recent years the

23 character of the neighborhood surrounding the

24 Highline has changed and the public views on

25 what should be done with it have changed as

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2 well.

3 The City of New York had for

4 many years been advocating demolition of the

5 Highline. Now the City and City Council wish

6 to see it preserved for public use and

7 converted into a trail.

8 A relatively recent arrival on

9 the scene, the Friends of the High Line, seeks

10 further environmental and historical review.

11 The City and the Friends of the

12 High Line want the Board to issue a certificate

13 of interim trail use so that the line could be

14 made into a trail in case it might be needed

15 for future rail use.

16 I intend to use today\'s hearing

17 to help us clarify the positions of the parties

18 and some of the issues raised by these

19 requests.

20 Finally, we must be mindful that

21 ultimately the Highline is private property and

22 is currently owned CSX Railroad, who we will

23 also hear from today. CSX acquired the

24 Highline when it purchased ConRail back in

25 1999. Up to now CSX\' most important

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2 consideration has been preserving one of the

3 conditions set by the ICC back in 1992 which

4 capped their liability for demolishing the

5 Highline at a sum certain.

6 Now, as our agency\'s chairman,

7 my primary interest is in resolving this matter

8 once and for all in a matter consistent with

9 the law and the public interest so that the

10 City, the residents and the property owners can

11 all move on.

12 Now, I would like to say two

13 things in sum before we turn to our witnesses.

14 First, I just ask everyone to be

15 mindful that while our agency has jurisdiction

16 over this matter, our power is not unlimited.

17 Our job is to review and decide whether

18 segments of the Highline must remain rail

19 lines, whether parties can be given the right

20 to negotiate and preserve a corridor to become a

21 trail or whether a line can be abandoned. We

22 cannot order it to be used in any particular

23 way. Nor can we order that any particular

24 outcome happen, such as it being demolished.

25 I think for expedition today

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2 what we will do is, we have divided the witness

3 into panels. Our first is sitting before us

4 today. We will call them and allow each of the

5 different witnesses to present their testimony

6 and then ask any questions of the whole panel

7 at the end, if everyone doesn\'t mind.

8 As our secretary said, we would

9 ask you all to please refrain from using cell

10 phones.

11 And I\'ll say we want to thank

12 the City and the Federal government up here for

13 allowing us to use this facility, which I have

14 to say is nicer than our hearing room in

15 Washington. So maybe we should do all of our

16 hearings here.

17 So with that, I will stop the

18 opening statement and turn to the purpose of

19 the hearing, which is hearing from the

20 witnesses, and introduce our first panel, which

21 is Deputy Mayor Daniel Doctoroff; Chairman of

22 the City Planning Commission, Amanda Burden,

23 together with her attorney \-- I am going to do

24 my best to pronounce this right \-- Vishaan

25 Chakrabarti; and the Speaker of the City of New

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2 York Council, Gifford Miller.

3 Thank you all very much for

4 coming.

5 Deputy Mayor Doctoroff, do you

6 mind starting?

7 MR. DOCTOROFF: My pleasure.

8 Thank you very, very much, Mr.

9 Chairman, for the opportunity to present

10 jointly the administration\'s and the City

11 Council\'s view on the Highline and this

12 application.

13 You know, it\'s very, very easy

14 to look at the Highline and see it as it is

15 today, as an unused elevated freight line that

16 snakes through more than 20 blocks of the West

17 Side of Manhattan. It takes a little bit more

18 imagination, but we don\'t think a whole lot

19 more, to see it as it can be and as we hope it

20 will be. As the spine, truly the vital link

21 that connects three rapidly evolving

22 neighborhoods that are absolutely essential to

23 the future of New York City.

24 It takes just a little bit more

25 imagination to imagine walking down 42nd Street

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2 and taking a left between 11th and 12th Avenues

3 and begin walking through a park and continue

4 walking through a park, which the Highline is

5 only one part but a critical part, until you

6 make it in south of 14th into the Gansevoort

7 Meat Market.

8 We believe that with the

9 certificate of interim trail use approval we

10 take a first step in achieving that and turning

11 that into a reality. Indeed, we do see the

12 Highline as a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity

13 for New York City; that if it is torn down it

14 will be lost forever and that spine, in effect,

15 will be severed, never to be replaced.

16 To us it is very clear that the

17 certificate of interim trail use is the single

18 most effective way to seize on this

19 opportunity. In fact, it may be the only

20 practical way to seize on this opportunity.

21 What we would like to do for you

22 today is we would like to describe the City\'s

23 plans for the Highline. I will put it in the

24 context of what the Highline means for the

25 three neighborhoods that we will describe and

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2 why, in fact, it is so vitally important.

3 I will ask Amanda Burden, the

4 chair of the City Planning Commission, and

5 Vishaan Chakrabarti \-- you were very close \--

6 the director of the Manhattan office of the New

7 York City Planning Department, to describe how

8 we have thought about the Highline being an

9 integral part of its neighborhood and the

10 rezoning plan that we have proposed for West

11 Chelsea, which we believe satisfies many of the

12 concerns of the Chelsea Property Owners.

13 And then finally, one of the

14 remarkable things about the effort that we are

15 here to discuss today has been the partnership

16 between the Bloomberg administration and the

17 New York City Council, led by Speaker Gifford

18 Miller, to in effect turn this dream into a

19 reality.

20 So that\'s what we would like to

21 do.

22 I just want to put it in a

23 little bit of historical context.

24 New York City has a rich

25 tradition of using parks to transform entire

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2 unused parts of the City and therefore not only

3 create civic amenities that take their place

4 among some of the great places in the world,

5 but at the same time use them as a catalyst to

6 achieving even greater things.

7 Central Park probably is the

8 best example of that, where 10,000 New Yorkers

9 carted over ten million cart loads of rock and

10 soil and turned what had been an unpopulated,

11 rather desolate and dreary place into what

12 remains today New York City\'s backyard. And in

13 so doing, 15 years after the completion of

14 Central Park the property values of the ward

15 surrounding the park had increased in value by

16 more than nine times.

17 That\'s the most dramatic

18 example.

19 But we see examples all over the

20 City. We see it in Gramercy Park, right here,

21 which again created the foundation for the

22 neighborhood that ultimately surrounded it.

23 We believe that the preservation

24 and enhancement of the Highline can perform a

25 similar function, in many ways something that

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2 rivals these great New York institutions today,

3 when ultimately it is concluded.

4 Now, I said that there are three

5 neighbors that the Highline essentially would

6 be the spine for. It really traverses three

7 very distinct neighborhoods that are either in

8 the middle of transformation or with plans

9 underway that will be transformed over the next

10 few decades.

11 The first one is what we call

12 the Hudson Yards. The Hudson Yards essentially

13 is the area that extends from 30th Street to

14 42nd Street, basically between 9th Avenue and

15 12th Avenues.

16 The City and State together have

17 proposed a bold and ambitious plan to

18 completely transform this area, which today is

19 filled with railyards, vacant lots, parking

20 lots, rail cuts, warehouses that today has

21 virtually nobody living in it.

22 In fact, between 42nd Street and

23 41st Street and 30th Street between 10th Avenue

24 and 12th Avenue there are under 150 legal

25 residences that has generated relatively little

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2 economic activity for the City. And by

3 extending the Number 7 subway line, by creating

4 an open space network that will enable you to

5 walk actually from 42nd Street down to 30th

6 Street, by providing greater waterfront access,

7 by extending our Convention Center and, in

8 addition, by rezoning to make it possible to

9 have commercial and residential development in

10 the area, we believe that we can turn this

11 place into one of New York\'s great places.

12 Here you can see a little bit

13 of what we\'re planning to do.

14 The green, right in the middle,

15 is a park that will extend basically all the

16 way from 42nd Street down to 30th Street. The

17 Number 7 subway line will be extended all the

18 way to the corner of 34th Street and 11th

19 Avenue. A new multi-use facility will be added

20 and the Javits Center will be extended to the

21 north. A big plaza, an open park, will exist

22 between 34th Street and 30th Street.

23 And this will occur in the

24 context of the restoration of Penn Station, the

25 context of parks that will extend over to the

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2 waterfront, new ferry landings, all to create a

3 new district that we think, again, will be a

4 vital part of New York City\'s future.

5 It also provides an answer to

6 the question of how do you maintain the

7 possibility of having the Highline remain

8 connected to the national rail system.

9 And the plan itself that we have

10 developed, which is in the process of being

11 refined as we speak \-- this is the Highline

12 today as it goes through the railyards between

13 30th and 34th Street.

14 The plan ultimately calls for

15 the easement to be maintained by simply

16 building a platform to the west of where the

17 railyards are today and extending around the

18 multi-use facility and then reconnecting with

19 the Highline.

20 While there are technical issues

21 that remain to be resolved, we are confident

22 that we will be able to resolve them.

23 The second major area that the

24 Highline will play a major role in is West

25 Chelsea, which essentially extends from 16th

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2 Street to 30th Street.

3 Over the last few years this has

4 emerged as New York\'s premier art gallery

5 district. A former manufacturing district that

6 is changing very, very rapidly.

7 As part of the plans to maintain

8 the Highline the City, this is the

9 administration as well as the City Council,

10 have taken the initiative to create a vibrant

11 mixed-use district, combining residences, the

12 arts that are thriving there today, as well as

13 commercial uses, and do it, as City Planning

14 Commissioner Chairman Amanda Burden will

15 describe in a minute, through very creative

16 rezoning of the area.

17 We believe that the pedestrian

18 trail along the Highline will provide

19 opportunities for second-level entrances to

20 galleries and shops and connections to the

21 adjacent areas to the north, as well as the

22 south.

23 To the south exists the

24 Gansevoort Meat Market. Historically the

25 warehouse and meat packing district for the

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2 City. It too is evolving very, very rapidly.

3 We see it as being transformed from just a meat

4 market into a destination neighborhood, a

5 neighborhood that will be filled with shoppers,

6 people going to restaurants, more residences,

7 as well as night life. And the pedestrian

8 trail along the Highline will preserve a

9 critical piece of the neighborhood\'s history

10 and its unique character while at the same time

11 preserving that pedestrian link to the north.

12 This is a neighborhood, all

13 three of these neighborhoods really require

14 open space. Today, of the 59 community

15 districts in New York City, Community District

16 4, which surrounds the Highline, ranks 57th in

17 terms of open space acreage per resident.

18 There is less than one-fifth of an acre of open

19 space per 1,000 residents versus the citywide

20 average of 2 and a half acres per 1,000

21 residents.

22 We have seen how critical and

23 how well used recreational space, open space in

24 these communities can be. The Hudson River

25 Park, which is being completed in stages just

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2 to the west of the Highline, ultimately will go

3 from Battery Park all the way up to 59th Street

4 to the north, over five and a half miles, has

5 quickly become one of the City\'s most heavily

6 used parks, certainly on a per-acre basis. In

7 fact, it now draws approximately 5.8 million

8 visitors a year.

9 We believe that the Highline

10 offers a similar opportunity. And it, in fact,

11 forms the anchor for the redevelopment of these

12 three neighborhoods.

13 The question is: Is a CITU the

14 best way to capture this opportunity.

15 We think that there is no

16 question that it is. That the preservation of

17 this vital corridor under Rails-to-Trails

18 actually makes it more feasible. In fact,

19 maybe the only truly feasible way to maintain

20 it. And we believe that we can satisfy the

21 STB\'s standards for maintaining the link to the

22 national rail system in the manner that I

23 described just a little while ago.

24 We\'re attempting very

25 pro-actively and we think we have made

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2 extraordinary progress in terms of resolving

3 the outstanding issues regarding the Highline\'s

4 reuse. Already the City is pursuing the

5 necessary public actions, including the

6 rezoning plan that you will hear about in just

7 a minute, for West Chelsea that we think

8 actually will satisfy the owners of the

9 property alongside and under the Highline.

10 And we think that we have made

11 extraordinary progress, in large part thanks to

12 the Friends of the High Line, who have taken

13 the initiative and really shown the City what

14 the Highline can be. And we are very, very

15 grateful to Joshua David, Robert Hammond and

16 all of the people who have been involved in

17 Friends of the High Line for providing a vision

18 and more specifically helping to point the way

19 to having us understand exactly what an asset

20 the Highline can actually be.

21 So as a result, we certainly

22 encourage, urge the STB to approve a

23 certificate of interim trail use, which

24 ultimately will allow CSX to negotiate a trail

25 use agreement with the City. If we have that

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2 opportunity we are very, very confident that

3 what we will produce for this City is a

4 spectacular asset, one that does serve as that

5 spine of three critical, rapidly evolving and

6 exciting neighborhoods in New York City.

7 Thank you very much for the

8 opportunity to present here today.

9 THE CHAIRMAN: Thank you.

10 Normally, we would go from my

11 right to my left.

12 Speaker Miller.

13 MR. MILLER: No, I think Amanda

14 is going to be next.

15 MS. BURDEN: I am going to go

16 next.

17 THE CHAIRMAN: All right.

18 MS. BURDEN: Chairman Nober, and

19 members of the staff of the Surface

20 Transportation Board \-- I am going to give it

21 to Vishaan, he knows how to use that.

22 There are a couple of slides and

23 images I want to show you.

24 I am very pleased to be able to

25 testify before you today.

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2 It\'s about four years ago that I

3 took the first tour, my first tour of the

4 Highline, which you did today. And as a

5 planner it was a transformative experience. It

6 was clear, I could see, for the City an

7 irreplaceable opportunity and really would

8 create a really unique potential for public

9 open space, an extraordinary public open space.

10 As you probably saw today, it

11 gives a unique perspective of the City, what we

12 would call a floating vantage point, which

13 could enable a pedestrian to cross 22 blocks

14 elevated, going through city blocks without

15 crossing a single street; the ability to,

16 through this park an ability to connect

17 neighborhood to neighborhood, community to

18 community and different park to different

19 park.

20 It\'s clearly a unique piece of

21 infrastructure that can give character and a

22 sense of place like nowhere else in the City,

23 probably nowhere else in any city in the

24 country.

25 When I was appointed by Mayor

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2 Bloomberg a year and a half ago to chair the

3 City Planning Commission and direct the

4 Department of City Planning one of my very

5 first priorities was to create a zoning and

6 planning framework to facilitate the conversion

7 of this rail line into open space. The

8 essential goal of this framework is to create a

9 multi-mixed-use residential community, a

10 vibrant mixed-use residential community with

11 the Highline Park as its central organizing

12 principle.

13 The challenge has been to

14 incentivize \-- you can see actually these

15 images of how extraordinary it looks from both

16 the street edge, as you see how you want to get

17 up onto it. And when you\'re up on it the

18 potential for not only public open space, but

19 just going through the blocks.

20 There you go.

21 So the challenge for us in

22 creating the zoning and planning framework is

23 to incentivize the building form adjacent to

24 the Highline that compliments and enhances the

25 structure, that provides light and air to the

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2 park, that provides multiple points of access

3 to and from the structure, and that also

4 encourages activities along the line, under it,

5 above it and through it.

6 We see this special district not

7 only as providing an extraordinary public

8 amenity but also as an enormous opportunity,

9 an enormous economic development opportunity

10 for the City of New York.

11 This is just some ways to look

12 at it; from underneath it, from above it, from

13 outside it, from along it.

14 And what I am going to do now is

15 actually turn the microphone over to Vishaan

16 Chakrabarti, who is the director of the

17 Department of City Planning, who will go

18 through the zoning and planning framework we

19 worked on this past year to enhance this great

20 possibility for a linear park, but also to

21 provide development opportunities that will

22 transform this district and create a great new

23 place for the City of New York.

24 Vishaan.

25 MR. CHAKRABARTI: Thank you,

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2 Amanda.

3 Mr. Chairman, as Deputy Mayor

4 Doctoroff and Chair Burden have already

5 described, the heart of the Highline moves

6 through the heart of West Chelsea, one of the

7 premier new arts districts of the City. That

8 arts district\'s growth actually occurred

9 because of the zoning that is currently in

10 place in West Chelsea, it is a manufacturing

11 zone, meaning that it doesn\'t allow other types

12 of uses, such as residential.

13 Yet, that zoning is really a

14 reflection of the industrial past of this

15 neighborhood and it is not the future of this

16 neighborhood. The future of this neighborhood

17 very much has to do with the thriving

18 residential neighborhood that exists to the

19 east of West Chelsea.

20 If you look at a typical

21 cross-section through a West Chelsea block,

22 from 10th Avenue to 11th Avenue; and here you

23 see a lot of low-lying manufacturing uses and

24 the Highline existing about 100 feet west of

25 10th Avenue.

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2 What we\'re proposing to do is to

3 allow residential development to occur along

4 the avenues, along 10th Avenue and along 11th

5 Avenue, but retain some of the mid-block uses

6 that are so vital to the City\'s arts district.

7 What would happen is the

8 transformation of the avenue blocks would occur

9 and from manufacturing to new residential

10 buildings. But the key problem that we need to

11 solve with this zoning of course is what to do

12 with the development rights above the Highline

13 and adjacent to the Highline, which of course

14 many of the property owners who own that

15 property are so concerned with.

16 The proposal here is essentially

17 to transfer those air rights from above the

18 Highline and from adjacent to the Highline to

19 adjacent residential buildings on 10th Avenue

20 and on 11th Avenue. This does two critical

21 things.

22 The first thing it does is it

23 brings value and much needed residential to

24 this community by allowing these property

25 owners to use their property rights in a way

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2 that is very important for the City of New

3 York.

4 The second thing it does is it

5 actually helps prevent development directly

6 adjacent to the Highline and it helps keep

7 light and air moving into that new linear

8 park. And it also will maintain the mid-block

9 manufacturing zoning which will maintain the

10 art uses which are so important to us.

11 Taken as a totality what that

12 means for the neighborhood is that what we

13 propose to do is to create a zone around the

14 Highline that is essentially a granting zone of

15 air rights. This zone would transfer

16 development rights to a series of new

17 residential areas along the avenues, as well as

18 along certain mid-block locations in which

19 there is very few arts uses.

20 However, where arts uses exist

21 in the mid-block we would retain the

22 manufacturing zoning that exists today to make

23 sure that that presence continues into the

24 future.

25 Looking at an aerial view of the

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2 neighborhood today, what this means in terms of

3 the transformation of the neighborhood is that

4 as the Highline becomes a linear park and gets

5 green there what you will see is a private

6 market reaction of a new neighborhood that is

7 built around it, much as Deputy Mayor Doctoroff

8 described that improved Central Park, in terms

9 of high-value residential buildings that would

10 line the Highline on 10th Avenue, would border

11 the Highline and adjacent to the new Hudson

12 Yards neighborhood, as well as along 11th

13 Avenue and to the south.

14 In terms of building, what this

15 would result in is our zoning would regulate

16 these buildings such that a number of things

17 would occur relative to the Highline.

18 First, new residential

19 development would not crowd the Highline and

20 there would be space and light and air around

21 the Highline.

22 Also, new apartments would be

23 developed that would bring eyes to the park and

24 make sure that that park was secure day and

25 night.

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2 It would also encourage new uses

3 along the Highline, retail uses or gallery

4 uses, as well as new landscaped open space that

5 could actually expand the amount of open space

6 that the Highline provides.

7 And finally, we are looking at

8 means to incentivize access to the Highline

9 through several points along the side streets,

10 these would be both stairs as well as elevators

11 for ADA access.

12 In terms of scheduling this

13 rezoning, this summer we\'re refining the zoning

14 proposal. We\'re actually working closely with

15 Community Board 4. They have actually proposed

16 rezoning very similar to the zoning that we are

17 proposing as we move forward.

18 This fall we will release a

19 draft environmental scoping document or an EIS

20 and we will conduct a public hearing.

21 By next spring we will certify

22 that the EIS is complete and certify the zoning

23 application is complete and that would initiate

24 a several-month public review period for the

25 rezoning.

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2 In August or September we would

3 anticipate to adopt that rezoning and let this

4 new neighborhood get created.

5 Of course, all of this in terms

6 of the schedule assumes that the CITU would be

7 in place because, of course, the rezoning

8 doesn\'t make sense without the CITU. It only

9 make sense if the Highline will, indeed, be

10 converted into a linear park.

11 With that, I am pleased to turn

12 it over to Honorable Gifford Miller, head of

13 City Council, who we worked so closely with on

14 this.

15 MR. MILLER: Let me thank you,

16 Mr. Chairman, for coming here and for this

17 hearing, the opportunity to speak.

18 I want to thank Deputy Mayor

19 Doctoroff and Chair Amanda Burden, Vishaan \--

20 it\'s easier that way \-- for their presentations

21 and say how excited I am that you\'re here and

22 that we have this opportunity to speak.

23 I think this is one of the most

24 exciting projects in the City of New York, one

25 of the projects that holds, I think, the

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2 greatest promise in terms of expanding economic

3 development for the City, increasing property

4 values and creating something that is a

5 signature district. A signature, something

6 that is unlike anything else even in the United

7 States of America, and perhaps the world. A

8 new kind of urban public park that does all the

9 things that parks are supposed to do.

10 And I want to say, I said this

11 before, that I think the CITU \-- are you

12 supposed to say CITU? Is that the cool thing

13 to say?

14 I think that the CITU and

15 Rails-to-Trails Program is an extraordinary

16 program, an example of the federal government

17 using tremendous foresight in seeing that we

18 cannot always see the future and that we have

19 to preserve rights-of-way that we will never

20 ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever be

21 able to put back together if we lose them.

22 There are possibilities for using them in the

23 interim that can be positive for communities

24 and for the City and for this country.

25 I am just, I think it\'s a

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2 tremendous program. I compliment your agency

3 on its work. I will say I have been actually

4 to other Rails-to-Trails Programs. There is

5 one up in Armenia, New York, which I bike on

6 periodically. It\'s just a great, just a

7 phenomenal program.

8 I know that if you approve this

9 for the Highline, I think it\'s, of course,

10 very, very different from any other application

11 I imagine. But it\'s such a creative and

12 thoughtful and exciting possibility. And it\'s,

13 to me, just so unthinkable that we could not

14 seize this, because of the tremendous

15 possibilities for the future that this

16 possesses.

17 I want to just say a few things.

18 I have no idea what the slides are. These are

19 just to show you how pretty it looks like right

20 now.

21 Let me just get right to what

22 the City Council can do.

23 You have been on it. And I

24 think you have experienced what we all

25 experience, which is that it\'s a very unusual

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2 thing to walk along.

3 I know when I first heard about

4 this, the proposal, I thought it was wacky.

5 And I told the person who called me to go call

6 their local council member and basically leave

7 me alone. He became a very good friend of

8 mine. And then when I got a chance to walk on

9 it, I really experienced just how amazing it

10 is.

11 I admire people who have the

12 vision to see what the Highline can be without

13 walking on it. I think if we could get

14 everyone to walk on it we wouldn\'t be here

15 today. We would have done this long ago.

16 But we are here today. We\'ve

17 made tremendous progress. And I just want to

18 discuss a little bit what the City Council\'s

19 role is.

20 We passed a resolution

21 unanimously in February 2001 calling upon the

22 mayor and the governor to apply for the CITU.

23 And thrilled that the mayor \-- that was the

24 previous mayor and under the previous council.

25 Secondly, to put our money where

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2 our mouth is. Over the last three fiscal years

3 we have provided significant expense budget

4 funding to Friends of the High Line in support

5 of their efforts to support rail banking. And

6 I know you\'re going to hear from them. But let

7 me just say one thing on the subject.

8 I think it\'s important for you

9 to understand just how excited New Yorkers are

10 about this. You don\'t get an opportunity at a

11 hearing like this to really get a feel for it.

12 But you should know, just the

13 other night there was a fundraiser for Friends

14 of the High Line. There were about a thousand

15 people there. It was an amazing moment because

16 you don\'t see very often in a city like this

17 something that really hasn\'t happened that, you

18 know, that has the potential to happen but

19 there are lots of stumbling blocks for it, you

20 don\'t see the kind of excitement and support \--

21 I haven\'t seen it for anything else. It\'s

22 something similar to what happened when they

23 were supposed to tear down Grand Central. You

24 saw people just come out of their homes and ask

25 us what they could do. This kind of same

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2 excitement. It was a very interesting night.

3 People volunteered to testify at community

4 board meetings.

5 Really, there are thousands and

6 thousands of individual citizens who are

7 excited about this project.

8 We have also in this year\'s

9 capital budget, which is a five-year plan or

10 four-year plan, we have allocated nearly \$16

11 million, \$15.75 million towards funding for the

12 capital needs of the Highline.

13 The Council, we recognize, the

14 administration recognizes this isn\'t going to

15 be cheap. We think it\'s an incredibly good

16 investment as was shown by a study that was

17 done by Hamilton Rabinowitz & Altshuller,

18 referenced by the Deputy Mayor, that this is

19 even at much greater numbers that we expect the

20 City to have to invest alone. And we expect to

21 see a tremendous return. We see it being a

22 cooperation between the city, the state and

23 federal government.

24 I have spoken with

25 representatives of the federal government,

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2 Congressman Nadler, who is on the

3 Transportation Appropriation Committee; very

4 supportive. We hope this has the potential for

5 getting some federal support as well. We see a

6 combination of that. And also some private

7 support.

8 We think that there are naming

9 opportunities. I am already beginning to think

10 of this is the Nober Highline.

11 (Laughter.)

12 THE CHAIRMAN: As long as it\'s

13 valued under \$20.

14 MR. DOCTOROFF: Other people are

15 calling for the Miller Highline.

16 MR. MILLER: We\'re approaching

17 the Miller Brewing Company.

18 There are tremendous

19 opportunities for private fund raising.

20 Friends of the High Line have already shown

21 significant success in raising money. It\'s so

22 much easier to raise money, as everyone knows,

23 for a capital nature, major infrastructure type

24 things because people like to put their names

25 on things and say \"I built that,\" as opposed to

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2 \"I paid for that maintenance man.\"

3 However, we also believe it\'s

4 very, very realistic to raise the kind of

5 dollars to support the maintenance that will be

6 necessary.

7 So we think there\'s tremendous

8 opportunity for economic return and for

9 creating \-- ultimately it\'s about creating one

10 of the most exciting spaces in the United

11 States of America and doing it in a way that

12 supports the direction that the community is

13 going. And doing it in a way that supports the

14 city, creates public space.

15 It\'s really important what

16 Deputy Mayor Doctoroff said about that area

17 being one of the most park-starved areas. It

18 really is. Again, that gets back to what the

19 economic development opportunities are.

20 Because we know that park-starved areas end up

21 having lower property values and lower returns

22 and everything else.

23 I just want to close by saying,

24 to return to the remarks you made in the

25 beginning, Mr. Chairman, which was that you

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2 would like, quite understandably, to finally

3 put this miserable project behind you. I

4 understand that, this having gone on for years

5 and years and years.

6 I really think that the CITU

7 offers the best opportunity for doing that.

8 Given the extraordinary degree of consensus

9 which has developed over the last year and a

10 half on how to move forward and the level of

11 commitment on behalf of the Bloomberg

12 administration and the City Council and many of

13 the property owners, who I think it\'s important

14 to understand that if I was a property owner

15 and I was sitting looking at this thing that\'s

16 on my property and I was forced to choose what

17 it is now and none of what it is now, that\'s a

18 no brainer, I mean, it should come down.

19 But I think that the potential

20 here that we show with the rezoning plan, the

21 commitment of administration is that this can

22 be a win, win, win, win, win.

23 I think a lot of the property

24 owners have begun \-- you know, they didn\'t

25 believe. And why should they believe? I mean,

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2 no one has ever done anything like this before

3 in United States of America. It\'s hard to do

4 things.

5 But we\'re now at a point where

6 people are believing. This is going to

7 happen. And it really can happen. You play a

8 tremendous role in that.

9 I think for all of us that are

10 involved in that, we feel a tremendous

11 excitement that in about ten or 15 years from

12 now, you know, the property owners, the

13 community residents, the people in government,

14 to yourself I would hope, that in about 15, 20

15 years from now we\'re going to come back and

16 walk on this and think to ourselves that, thank

17 God we preserved this for future generations.

18 That\'s all I have to say.

19 THE CHAIRMAN: Thank you very

20 much.

21 I certainly appreciate all of

22 your presentations. It\'s clear the enthusiasm

23 of all your agencies for this project is

24 significant.

25 Let me start with, from our

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2 agency\'s perspective.

3 The case has been before us

4 since 1989. And much of what our original

5 decision was based on was the position, I

6 guess, two prior administrations ago, is that

7 the public, we have to look at what the public

8 deems a necessity when we grant an

9 abandonment. Essentially what\'s in the public

10 interest.

11 And back then the elected

12 officials, the City said, you know, the

13 Highline needed to come down and that it was an

14 impediment to development in the region.

15 That was in large measure what

16 the ICC based the abandonment on and what the

17 Court of Appeals affirmed.

18 So what\'s changed?

19 Why is this in the public

20 interest now to maintain it?

21 MR. MILLER: Well, I will just

22 say that I think there really wasn\'t \-- first

23 of all, there was no organized group out there

24 that was developing the kind of community

25 support for preservation of the Highline.

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2 What\'s changed significantly is

3 at that time there was nobody that was offering

4 a vision of the future, a positive vision of

5 the future. So now that we have seen, now that

6 the City has seen that, there is extraordinary

7 community support for preserving it.

8 Secondly, there are just much

9 wiser elected officials in office today.

10 (Laughter.)

11 MR. MILLER: And I think what\'s

12 really changed, there was a positive vision of

13 the future, there was a realization that this

14 could be done. I would say, we haven\'t

15 mentioned it, the existence of the Promenade

16 Plantee in Paris I think also sort of has held

17 out what can be done here.

18 I think that the Highline is

19 going to be better. Everything we do is

20 better. But it was a tremendous success. I

21 think looking at that, looking at the positive

22 issues, the Friends and the administration.

23 I will finally say, I just want

24 to compliment \-- when I started working on this

25 there was a lot of nay sayers. I didn\'t really

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2 know exactly how we were going to get where I

3 thought we could get. The work of the

4 administration under Dan and Amanda\'s

5 leadership, laying out a really thoughtful

6 rezoning plan that really lays out what the

7 positives are and how they can work in New York

8 is really incredibly important.

9 MR. DOCTOROFF: I agree with all

10 of that and would add one other dynamic that

11 clearly is coming in to play here.

12 If you look at each of those

13 three neighborhoods that I described and you

14 looked at them ten years ago, what you would

15 find is something very, very different than

16 what you find today.

17 Ten years ago there were

18 virtually no galleries in West Chelsea. Ten

19 years ago there was no way that you would be

20 able to develop housing in that area and have

21 it sell and sell very, very well.

22 To the north there was no

23 activity, had been no activity literally in 70

24 years in the area that we\'re describing as the

25 Hudson Yards. Today, not only do we have what

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2 we believe is a spectacular plan for the Hudson

3 Yards, but in addition it is moving through the

4 environmental review process already.

5 Finally, to the south, what you

6 had ten years ago was a meat market. Today

7 what you have is a rapidly changing community

8 south of 14th Street or south of 16th Street

9 that we think will be a wonderful, special,

10 truly unique place in New York City and that

11 will be preserved as a special place.

12 The important thing to recognize

13 is that with the vision that we have now seen

14 of the Highline, we now all understand, I am

15 speaking for everyone here and a lot of the

16 people who will speak later, how the Highline

17 provides really the vital link between all of

18 those things and most importantly enhances each

19 one of those individual plans as well as does

20 it collectively.

21 THE CHAIRMAN: Let me just focus

22 a minute on what you have asked for, which is

23 that we grant a CITU or certificate of interim

24 trail use.

25 For those who may not know, what

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2 that does is that gives the requestor the right

3 to negotiate with the railroad for a period of

4 time. It doesn\'t make it a trail. It gives

5 you the right to negotiate, in this case the

6 City with CSX.

7 Now you could negotiate today

8 with CSX.

9 Why do you need us to grant this

10 for you to be able to negotiate with the

11 railroad to make it a trail?

12 MR. DOCTOROFF: CSX will

13 obviously have to speak for itself, which it

14 will do later.

15 But I think they have been

16 reluctant to enter into negotiations with us

17 without some sort of sense from the STB as to

18 which direction you intend to go.

19 We believe that we will be able

20 to satisfy all of CSX\' requirements. The major

21 one is that they be indemnified against any

22 losses or damage. We\'re prepared to do that.

23 So we think we will be able to satisfy them.

24 But I think, again, it\'s a

25 question that\'s more appropriate for them. I

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2 think they want some direction from you first.

3 THE CHAIRMAN: Obviously much of

4 what you described is, you know, a vibrant and

5 tremendous vision for that part of the City.

6 But much of it really focuses on

7 local land use decisions, what the Planning

8 Commission decides and how to zone it; what you

9 all decide; what the administration decides,

10 where do you want to promote the development.

11 Just to sort of follow through

12 for a second, if we just, you know, approve the

13 settlement agreement that were out there now,

14 as I understand from your pleading you all

15 would still have to give approval to demolish

16 the Highline.

17 Is that your view?

18 MR. DOCTOROFF: That is

19 correct.

20 I think the resolution that you

21 seek, the quick resolution in the event that

22 you don\'t grant our request for the CITU, would

23 not necessarily be forthcoming.

24 THE CHAIRMAN: Well, resolution

25 for whom?

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2 We would be out of it at that

3 point.

4 That\'s one question that was

5 asked. If we just granted that,

6 hypothetically, you would be left with, you and

7 the property owners, to figure out what happens

8 next, right?

9 MR. DOCTOROFF: If you

10 granted \--

11 THE CHAIRMAN: If we approved

12 the settlement agreement and said it satisfies

13 our conditions, I mean, still the City \-- the

14 Highline couldn\'t be torn down without, as I

15 understand it, with out both City and City Council

16 approval?

17 MR. MILLER: That\'s our view.

18 THE CHAIRMAN: In which case you

19 all wouldn\'t grant it, right?

20 MR. DOCTOROFF: What we would

21 probably be left with is an enormous delay,

22 potentially a substantial lost opportunity.

23 We obviously hope that that is

24 not the course.

25 THE CHAIRMAN: I am just trying

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2 to get why that \--

3 MR. DOCTOROFF: Because we think

4 the CITU is the most effective, the fastest

5 way, in some ways the only truly feasible way

6 of achieving the vision that we have laid out

7 here.

8 THE CHAIRMAN: Your view is that

9 for the public interest to be served we really

10 have to grant this, you couldn\'t do this on

11 your own?

12 MR. DOCTOROFF: Right.

13 I am sorry. Say it again.

14 THE CHAIRMAN: Again, the

15 standard we have to look at is the public

16 interest. And your view is the public

17 interest, we would have to grant this trail

18 use, you wouldn\'t be able to achieve this on

19 your own?

20 MR. DOCTOROFF: We think it is

21 far, far less likely that we would be able to

22 achieve it on our own.

23 MR. MILLER: From our view, the

24 answer to that question is yes.

25 THE CHAIRMAN: The other public

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2 entities, I know the MTA is not here, I know

3 the Javits Center was originally, but they\'re

4 not now; do they have a different view?

5 MR. DOCTOROFF: I think we all

6 share the view that the Highline ought to not

7 impede the development of the railyards, the

8 area between 30th and 34th essentially, that\'s

9 owned by the Javits Center and the MTA. There

10 is no dispute about that.

11 We believe, and as I mentioned

12 before, we are still working on refining the

13 plans, that the requirement for the maintenance

14 of the easement and the connection to the

15 national rail system could be maintained. We

16 expect over time that we will be able to bring

17 them along to that view. They just want to

18 make absolutely sure, and we agree with this,

19 that nothing impedes the ability to develop in

20 those railyards.

21 As you saw earlier, our plans

22 for the Hudson Yards area assume the same kind

23 of development that the MTA and the Javits

24 Center wish to see. So we believe that there

25 can and will be a very successful resolution to

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2 their concerns and at the same time satisfy

3 STB\'s requirements.

4 THE CHAIRMAN: One final

5 question and I will let you all go. I know you

6 need to do other things.

7 Do you all have any question or

8 do your attorneys have any views as to whether

9 or not the Trails Act can be granted in the

10 case of adverse abandonment?

11 Do you think that\'s clear cut or

12 think that is something uncertain?

13 MR. SPITULNIK: Good afternoon,

14 Mr. Chairman.

15 My name is Charles Spitulnik. I

16 have the privilege of representing the great

17 City of New York in this proceeding.

18 The answer to the question is

19 that the STB does have the authority, we

20 believe they do have the authority to grant

21 this request in this context, because the STB\'s

22 cases make it very clear that the same rules

23 that apply and govern any regular abandonment

24 proceeding are the rules that govern an adverse

25 abandonment proceeding. And since the

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2 certificate of interim trail use is available

3 in a regular abandonment proceeding it ought to

4 be available as well in an adverse abandonment

5 proceeding.

6 THE CHAIRMAN: I recognize you

7 all need to go.

8 I appreciate all the time and

9 thought and care that went into all your

10 presentations and that you have taken your time

11 out of your busy schedules to come here.

12 We have a number of other

13 witnesses.

14 Your views, given what the

15 standards are that we have to look at, they are

16 very, very important, and it shows how

17 important this project is to the City.

18 Thank you very much for your

19 time and thoughts.

20 Okay. We will move on to our

21 next panel.

22 First, we will have the Friends

23 of the High Line, represented by Phil Aarons

24 and Robert Hammond.

25 Second, Chelsea Property Owners,

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2 John Broadley and Doug Sarini.

3 And ConRail and CSX, by Robert

4 Jenkins and Peter Shudtz.

5 Gentlemen, come on up.

6 MR. HAMMOND: My name is Robert

7 Hammond. I and Joshua David we\'re the

8 co-founders of Friends of the High Line.

9 Mr. Chairman, and your staff, I

10 want to thank you all for coming to New York.

11 We appreciate spending the day on this issue.

12 I want to just talk a little bit

13 about who the Friends of the High Line are, why

14 we\'re here, a little bit about our goals and

15 mission.

16 We\'re going to show a short

17 video about the Highline. And then I\'ll turn

18 it over to our board chair, Phil Aarons, to

19 talk a little bit about the financial

20 feasibility study we have done and our next

21 steps.

22 We began Friends of the High

23 Line in 1999 with a goal of not just preserving

24 the Line but developing a public reuse for the

25 Line.

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2 I also want to just point out

3 that we\'re here in coordination with the City

4 New York, but Friends of the High Line is a

5 separate party in these proceedings and we

6 filed a separate brief to the Board.

7 The Highline was built to serve

8 a transportation need in the last century. And

9 we feel it can play a new transportation role

10 in this century.

11 Part of the reason, as we

12 understood, is you wanted to hear from the

13 different parties why we are here personally.

14 I can say for myself and I

15 think a lot of people, Joshua and I have in

16 some ways devoted our careers to this project.

17 A lot of people have devoted a lot of time and

18 energy to it. I think the simple reason why is

19 we believe this is once-in-a-lifetime

20 opportunity to create one of the most unique,

21 exciting open spaces anywhere in the world

22 while at the same time preserving part of our

23 country\'s transportation infrastructure.

24 The Highline is a great

25 connector. Dan talked about it connecting

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2 neighborhoods. It also connects current and

3 future transportation hubs, the new Penn

4 Station, specifically the Number 7 line. And

5 also things that people think of as far away in

6 New York. You think of the Javits Center as

7 very far away from galleries in Chelsea, the

8 shops and restaurants, the meat packing. It\'s

9 actually just a short walk on the Highline.

10 Some of the other benefits

11 include, as Dan already pointed out, the

12 creation of much needed open space. Our vision

13 for the Highline is not just paving it and

14 putting up a few planters. We want to work

15 with the community to create an exiting and

16 dynamic environment on top of the Highline. At

17 the same time, when we bring people off the

18 streets we\'re enhancing safety and reducing

19 traffic congestion.

20 This is an image of a business

21 map that we put together this year.

22 I think it\'s important to note

23 that over 240 local property owners and

24 business owners have supported and rallied

25 behind the Highline. And many people are

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2 starting to see it as the centerpiece of a new

3 district, the Highline District.

4 Now we\'re going to play a

5 12-minute video that gives a far better

6 picture, a little bit of a taste of what you

7 got walking on the line and what we can

8 envision it becoming.

9 As I close, I just want to say

10 that when we started this we recognized that

11 the plan would have to meet the needs of the

12 community, the city and the state, the property

13 owners and the railroad. I think in the past

14 four years we have come a long way to meeting,

15 you know, a lot of people have turned around.

16 We hope, given your blessing, we will be able

17 to work with all those parties to come to an

18 agreement that not only preserves the

19 transportation aspect but gives the country one

20 of its most exciting open spaces.

21 Now we\'re going to play the

22 video.

23 (Video played.)

24 MR. AARONS: Thank you, Mr.

25 Chairman.

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2 My name is Philip Aarons. I am

3 chairman of Friends of the High Line. But in

4 my daily life, I am a founder of Millenium

5 Partners, which is a large national real estate

6 development company which has developed over

7 the last ten years nearly \$3 billion worth of

8 mixed-use projects in five major US cities.

9 I wanted to spend a brief amount

10 of time this afternoon simply sharing with you

11 an important component of the early work of

12 Friends of the High Line, which was determining

13 the economic feasibility of the preservation

14 and reuse of the structure.

15 We were asked in the spring of

16 last year by the City of New York to conduct a

17 feasibility study. We were interested and they

18 were interested in assuring themselves that the

19 new tax revenues and overall economic benefits

20 which would flow from the preservation and

21 reuse of the Highline far exceeded any

22 reasonable expectation of its cost. And

23 perhaps more importantly or equally

24 importantly, they wanted to make sure that it

25 was feasible in terms of the structural

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2 integrity of the Highline and that the

3 preservation and reuse of the Highline would

4 allow, as has been mentioned earlier, the reuse

5 of the Hudson River Yards in the ways that were

6 then being contemplated by the City of New York

7 and the State of New York.

8 What we found after a study,

9 which we did by commissioning HR & A, a major

10 economic firm here in New York, was that there

11 was no question that the benefits of the

12 Highline and its reuse far exceeded its cost

13 and that anything envisioned currently for the

14 Hudson River Yards was feasible while

15 maintaining a connection to the national rail

16 system, as well as being available and used by

17 the structures that were being contemplated for

18 both the Olympics and for the far West Side.

19 The tax revenues were determined

20 by trying to identify specific increases in

21 overall property value that would be generated

22 by the preservation of the Highline. And here

23 we found that benefits would accrue in three

24 different areas:

25 In the existence of new, really,

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2 avenues or new venues for light and air to new

3 buildings that were being discussed by the real

4 estate development community; by making sure

5 that any new development that took place in the

6 West Chelsea and Meat Packing District would

7 have proximity to scarce open space that was

8 severely lacking on the far West Side; and also

9 through the creation of a sense of identity for

10 the entire district, which was severely lacking

11 in this area, that runs from 10th to 11th

12 Avenue from 14th street up to 34th Street.

13 The economic benefits of light

14 and air for any real estate developer really is

15 as simple as saying that you could build a far

16 more attractive residential building if you

17 have light and air coming in from all four

18 sides than you can in an ordinary situation

19 where Manhattan\'s geography requires large

20 blocks and a high degree of difficulty in

21 getting feasible residential sites.

22 The Highline is nicely located

23 100 feet from 10th Avenue; thereby giving the

24 possibility of the buildings, as was explained

25 in the Department of City Planning\'s

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2 presentation, of a 100-foot deep building, an

3 excellent size for many residential areas,

4 allowing for windows on all four sides of a

5 typical residential building.

6 It was also important to

7 understand that the Highline as an elevated

8 pedestrian way or new park would create a

9 significant benefit to the buildings that

10 surrounded it. And this is as old a story as

11 you heard earlier about the increase in

12 property values that surrounded Central Park

13 soon after its completion. Here we felt in an

14 area that was dramatically lower than any other

15 in the City of park land, having identified

16 open space available to citizens near it would

17 make a significant increase in the property

18 values around it.

19 We also felt that there was no

20 identifying monument or name for the district

21 on the far West Side. And we thought the

22 Highline District, as many people have taken to

23 call it, would be something that would be

24 important from a real estate perspective,

25 allowing real estate developers and residents

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2 to direct themselves and understand where they

3 were living and promote a significant increase

4 in the value of that property.

5 In a very conservative way, at

6 the very low end of the estimates we had, we

7 are projecting a capitalized value of the

8 increase in the stream of revenues from

9 property values, post the creation of the

10 Highline open space, at 140 million against a

11 projected cost of 65 million for the

12 preservation and reuse of the Highline. More

13 than twice what we anticipate today the cost as

14 being.

15 We also, and very quickly,

16 believe that the Highline met all the

17 feasibility tests the City put in front of us,

18 was structurally sound. We would be able to

19 leverage significant public and private

20 investment. We could make an open space that

21 was safe and accessible. It was a way of

22 preserving future transportation options for a

23 strong and important transportation resource.

24 As I mentioned before, it was consistent with

25 all the objectives outlined for the Hudson

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2 River Yards.

3 With the feasibility study

4 behind us, we began to turn our attention and

5 our imagination to the idea of what we would do

6 on the Highline.

7 As many of you know, we did an

8 international competition to try to bring ideas

9 forward for the Highline. 720 entries were

10 submitted to us from 36 countries. A large

11 number of those are currently on display at

12 Vanderbilt Hall in Grand Central Station. They

13 really are, I think, a great demonstration of

14 how much the Highline can trigger people\'s

15 imagination.

16 This is an extraordinary

17 resource in New York. It is an opportunity

18 that very, very few people seek to constrain.

19 And it really, for the first time, we believe,

20 with the work that has been done by the City

21 and the State we have an opportunity to move

22 from our thoughts of four years ago to a plan

23 that can be implemented with your approval of

24 the CITU.

25 We appreciate your consideration

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2 of that.

3 Thank you.

4 THE CHAIRMAN: Okay.

5 Mr. Broadley or Mr. Sarini.

6 MR. BROADLEY: If you wouldn\'t

7 mind, Mr. Sarini has a brief statement on

8 behalf of CPO.

9 MR. SARINI: Good afternoon, Mr.

10 Chairman.

11 My name is Douglas Sarini. I am

12 the president of Chelsea Property Owners and

13 the vice president of Edison Properties, a

14 member of CPO.

15 As you all know, CPO has

16 stedfastly advocated the abandonment and

17 demolition of the Highline.

18 Certain members of CPO have been

19 in discussions with the City regarding the

20 redevelopment of the Highline and the

21 surrounding area.

22 CPO\'s position at this juncture

23 is that if the City can conclude satisfactory

24 agreements with each of its members, and

25 deliver upon those agreements, CPO will

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2 withdraw it\'s objection to CITU application and

3 its motions to approve demolition plans.

4 Until that occurs however, CPO

5 must continue to press its positions previously

6 submitted to this Board.

7 Thank you very much.

8 THE CHAIRMAN: Thank you.

9 Mr. Jenkins, Mr. Shudtz.

10 MR. JENKINS: Thank you, Mr.

11 Chairman.

12 I am going to speak first here

13 and then Mr. Shudtz \-- I\'m representing ConRail

14 and Mr. Shudtz is representing CSX.

15 We appreciate the opportunity to

16 be here.

17 ConRail and CSX have been

18 working for a very long time with many of the

19 parties that are represented here today in an

20 effort to try to finally resolve this very

21 long-standing matter.

22 Obviously there is a significant

23 debate about the best disposition of the

24 Highline. ConRail and CSX don\'t wish to take

25 sides in this debate.

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2 THE CHAIRMAN: Are the

3 microphones working?

4 I think the people in the back

5 are having trouble hearing.

6 MR. WILLIAMS: You have to pull

7 them closer.

8 MR. JENKINS: We would like to

9 see it resolved sooner rather than later.

10 That\'s been our position throughout this.

11 There are three pending

12 petitions before the Board that we have urged

13 the Board to resolve as soon as it can.

14 The first is the petition that

15 CPO filed last August asking for confirmation

16 that the form of the agreement, that the

17 parties reached and hammered out over a very

18 long period of time, meets the conditions that

19 the ICC set in 1992 and that the Board itself

20 reaffirmed in 1999.

21 We had negotiations with, I

22 think, all of the parties that are represented

23 here and some others about that.

24 All CPO is asking is that the

25 form of the agreement be confirmed as

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2 consistent with those decisions.

3 And the MTA and the Javits

4 Center are supporting that request, and so do

5 we.

6 The second petition that\'s

7 before you is the Friends\' petition to reopen

8 the \'92 decision on environmental and historic

9 preservation grounds.

10 ConRail and CSX haven\'t taken a

11 position on that other than to note that the

12 only basis upon which they can ask to have it

13 reopened is environmental and historic

14 preservation grounds.

15 Again, the Javits Center and the

16 MTA and CPO have opposed that. We think it\'s

17 in everyone\'s interest to get it resolved as

18 quickly as possible too.

19 And the final one is the CITU

20 request by the City.

21 The City itself in its statement

22 here has asked that the Board rule on the

23 legality of its request, because CPO has

24 challenged the legality of that request, as

25 soon as possible. I think even the Friends

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2 have now come in in favor of getting that

3 resolved as quickly as possible. And we

4 support that as well.

5 I should add, there was some

6 discussion earlier about discussions with the

7 railroads in advance of issuing a CITU. And

8 the fact of the matter is that you can\'t issue

9 a CITU without the concurrence of the

10 railroads, as you know. But until we get a

11 resolution of whether or not the CITU request

12 itself is lawful, we don\'t think there is a lot

13 of point in spending time on negotiations. So

14 we have been waiting for that.

15 What we want in those

16 negotiations has been made very clear. And I

17 would refer you to our January 13th filing

18 which lays that out. But I won\'t go into that

19 in any greater detail. It asks that we receive

20 at least as much protection as a settlement

21 agreement would give us.

22 Again, we appreciate the

23 opportunity to be here. And I would note that

24 we have, ConRail and CSX have spent literally

25 millions of dollars over the last few years in

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2 dealing with this case, with various lawsuits,

3 with the negotiations of the settlement

4 agreement and, as I said, we would love to see

5 this get resolved sooner rather than later.

6 Mr. Shudtz.

7 MR. SHUDTZ: Good afternoon,

8 Chairman Nober.

9 I am Pete Shudtz from CSX.

10 I want to express our

11 appreciation for your conducting this hearing

12 today and also our appreciation to CPO, the

13 City and the Friends of the High Line, all of

14 whom we have worked with quite a bit over the

15 years.

16 I must say, I was so enthused by

17 the movie and the program I am just sorry I

18 didn\'t bring a deed with me today, I would

19 convey this to you all.

20 But on a more serious note, CSX

21 believes the Board can use this hearing to

22 resolve all the issues before it.

23 As we indicated in our

24 pleadings, we support ConRail\'s position. We

25 urge the Board to rule on the three motions

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2 before it.

3 As Mr. Jenkins has mentioned,

4 over the last several years CSX, along with

5 ConRail, have worked hard to comply with the

6 Board\'s orders and we have cooperated with all

7 the parties in the proceeding as CPO, Friends

8 and so on. And we wanted to assure you, Mr.

9 Chairman, that CSX will continue to comply with

10 the Board\'s orders and we will continue to work

11 with all the parties.

12 Thank you again.

13 If there are any questions, I

14 will be happy to answer them.

15 THE CHAIRMAN: Start with

16 questions for CSX and then with Friends, I

17 guess based on who has been in the case the

18 longest.

19 MR. SHUDTZ: CPO.

20 THE CHAIRMAN: There\'s no better

21 way to do it.

22 The Board issued a decision in

23 1992 granting your adverse abandonment. That

24 was affirmed by a Court of Appeals in 1994.

25 It\'s nine years later.

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2 Why is this matter still

3 pending?

4 Why have you not been able to

5 reach a conclusive settlement agreement?

6 MR. SARINI: I will answer that

7 from a business standpoint and I\'ll let counsel

8 answer it from legal standpoint.

9 That decision had a condition

10 that required, that provided an open-ended

11 indemnification for the railroad for any and

12 all costs over \$7 million. And as hard as we

13 tried to negotiate and to get insurance against

14 that condition, it was impossible to do so. We

15 asked the MTA to file a petition subsequent to

16 our attempting to do that asking for that

17 condition to be removed from the decision and

18 that was turned down. That condition alone was

19 what prevented that from going forward.

20 THE CHAIRMAN: You asked us to

21 approve a new settlement agreement, but the \$7

22 million condition is still there.

23 In the end, can the case be

24 resolved with that condition in there?

25 Can you ever reach an agreement

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2 with that there, do you believe?

3 MR. BROADLEY: Mr. Chairman, we

4 did reach an agreement on the shape of the

5 indemnity which would meet that condition. And

6 the railroads are satisfied with it. And in

7 late 2001 the City was satisfied with it and

8 CPO was satisfied with it.

9 Basically what it involved doing

10 was shaping, eliminating the concept of an

11 unlimited indemnity and shaping an indemnity

12 that had reasonable limits so that it was

13 insurable, that were satisfactory to the

14 railways. That\'s what the settlement agreement

15 and all its 40,000 words agreed to.

16 THE CHAIRMAN: And that\'s been

17 agreed to by everyone?

18 MR. JENKINS: It\'s been agreed

19 to by the railroads and some of the other

20 parties.

21 THE CHAIRMAN: The City is no

22 longer a signatory. I know they are gone now.

23 MR. BROADLEY: The City signed

24 the settlement agreement. They were the first

25 signatories on the settlement agreement.

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2 The present status of settlement

3 agreement, in view of the change in

4 administration of the City, seems to be really

5 a matter for New York State law. It\'s a

6 contractual matter that if you approve the

7 terms, the shape of the indemnity as meeting

8 the 1992 condition, it would have to be worked

9 out either in negotiations with the City or

10 before the New York courts.

11 THE CHAIRMAN: The indemnity was

12 put in originally to protect the railroad. If

13 the railroad is happy with it, why would we

14 need to bless it?

15 MR. JENKINS: Could I respond to

16 that?

17 THE CHAIRMAN: It\'s for your

18 protection. If you\'re happy with it, why would

19 we need to opine on that?

20 MR. JENKINS: As you know, the

21 Board\'s decision in 1999 addressed the prior

22 dispute in which we had a debate about whether

23 the indemnity that was being offered by CPO met

24 our requirements.

25 Is the microphone still working?

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2 I am happy to proceed.

3 THE CHAIRMAN: They think you

4 had a movie.

5 MR. JENKINS: One of the things

6 that has troubled us is whether or not we would

7 go through this whole process again and find

8 some things that are requirements but that

9 someone else might challenge as not meeting

10 those requirements.

11 In fact, the Friends have said

12 that the agreement we have reached doesn\'t

13 sufficiently protect ConRail against

14 environmental liability.

15 Now we have taken the position

16 that we think it does protect us enough. We

17 would sure like to see any question resolved

18 about whether or not this agreement meets our,

19 meets the requirements of the \'92 and \'99

20 decisions.

21 THE CHAIRMAN: When you ask for

22 more time to negotiate, how much more time

23 would you want?

24 You have had \-- this has been

25 going on for 14 years. You have had nine years

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2 since the Court of Appeals affirmed the

3 decision and I guess four years since we

4 objected to the first settlement.

5 What will time produce?

6 Why would that be productive

7 here; do you think it would be?

8 MR. BROADLEY: Mr. Chairman, the

9 core issue in the negotiations is whether the

10 City is prepared to provide the same type of

11 indemnity to CSX that is provided in the

12 settlement agreement. The City in its request,

13 I know they are looking for 270 days in the

14 event you do issue the CITU. One of those

15 issues typically discussed is tangential.

16 The core issue is whether they

17 are willing to come to the table with an

18 adequate indemnity, one that satisfies the

19 railroads. Once that hurdle is passed, then

20 consideration of additional time may be

21 appropriate.

22 But at least at this stage, if

23 you issue the CITU, it doesn\'t seem to me that

24 anything more than 30 days is going to be

25 required for this core issue to be resolved.

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2 If you recall, when the City

3 filed its original request for a CITU back in

4 December, they said 120 days is all they would

5 need for the whole thing. Now, six months

6 later they\'re telling us that they need 270

7 days.

8 Whether they are willing to meet

9 the indemnity conditions that the railroads

10 have set should not take 270 days.

11 THE CHAIRMAN: Maybe I am now

12 confused.

13 The indemnity conditions, those

14 are contained in the settlement agreement which

15 would lead to demolition, right?

16 MR. BROADLEY: Right.

17 THE CHAIRMAN: Why would that be

18 an issue in a negotiation for trails use?

19 Maybe I just need to

20 understand.

21 MR. SARINI: I think the

22 negotiations, correct me if I am incorrect, but

23 the negotiations you\'re talking about are those

24 negotiations that the City is now having with

25 the property owners to see whether or not an

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2 agreement can be made that would protect the

3 property owners interests.

4 THE CHAIRMAN: That\'s the one

5 you referred to.

6 MR. SARINI: With regard to

7 rehabilitating the structure, versus the

8 demolition agreement that\'s before you. The

9 settlement agreement from our standpoint has

10 already been negotiated and is fine.

11 The question is: How much time

12 will that take.

13 From our standpoint, I don\'t

14 know if we control that process. I think it\'s

15 probably a question better asked of the City.

16 But we are more than willing to entertain that

17 process to see whether or not a settlement can

18 be reached.

19 MR. JENKINS: As far as I know,

20 the only request for an extension that\'s before

21 you, the City asked that instead of 180 days to

22 negotiate a trail use agreement that they have

23 270 days.

24 Before you get to that, the

25 first question is whether the request for a

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2 CITU at all is legal.

3 The second question, as far as

4 the railroads are concerned, because a CITU

5 cannot issue unless we concur, is whether or

6 not the indemnification that the City is

7 offering meets our requirements, which is that

8 we not be \-- that we get at least as much

9 protection as the settlement agreement gives

10 us.

11 If we concur, then we will sit

12 down and negotiate the trail use agreement.

13 But we\'re two steps back from

14 that. And you can look then at whether or not

15 more than 180 days is required.

16 THE CHAIRMAN: Now, if I

17 understand what you were saying, is that if the

18 City is willing to negotiate an indemnification

19 agreement with the railroad for a trail, then

20 they should be able to do one for the

21 settlement agreement as well; is that correct?

22 MR. BROADLEY: That\'s correct.

23 THE CHAIRMAN: Their view is

24 that, if I understood it, is that regardless of

25 whether the settlement agreement is signed \-- I

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2 asked the City this question. I will ask you.

3 Let\'s just say we approve the

4 settlement agreement, for argument\'s sake, not

5 that we would or it\'s a legal, assume for the

6 moment we did; at that point isn\'t it then

7 between the City, yourselves and the railroad

8 to figure out what happens next?

9 I mean, the City\'s position is

10 it can\'t be demolished at that point, until

11 they approve it.

12 Where would that leave us; would

13 that help, in your view?

14 The City\'s view is that it would

15 not help the process.

16 MR. SARINI: I don\'t know how

17 long the City \-- if you agreed to the

18 settlement agreement and if an abandonment

19 certificate was issued by the Board subject to

20 the easements, I don\'t know how long the City

21 could really hold up demolition, that\'s a state

22 court issue, real estate issue that probably

23 would get argued out in state court.

24 The property owners\' position

25 with regard to that is if the Board determines

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2 that a CITU is appropriate here, that we would

3 agree to stay whatever decision the Board makes

4 for some period of time to negotiate a

5 settlement with the renovation and

6 rehabilitation of the structure.

7 We strongly feel, however, that

8 some date in the future should be determined so

9 that this doesn\'t go on for another 15 years.

10 THE CHAIRMAN: So if we ruled

11 that a trail use was legal in this

12 circumstance, then you would want a period of

13 time to negotiate what to do next; is that

14 correct?

15 MR. SARINI: That\'s correct.

16 THE CHAIRMAN: One final

17 question, which really is along the lines of,

18 if at the end, there had been a lot of

19 contentions about whether or not trail use is

20 legal, do you all believe that that\'s true; do

21 you believe it is or is not?

22 That\'s a two-prong question,

23 sorry.

24 MR. BROADLEY: We\'re taking the

25 position that in an adverse event it would be

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2 improper for the Board to issue a CITU. As I

3 am sure you no doubt recognize, this is a case

4 of first impression. Unfortunately, the

5 legislative history of the Trails Act doesn\'t

6 provide a great deal of help.

7 I think there are substantial

8 reasons why the issuance of a CITU in an

9 adverse event would undermine the very purpose

10 of the adverse abandonment. We refer to this

11 in our filing and opposition to the City\'s

12 motion to file a CITU. In effect, it relates

13 to the adverse abandonment essentially taking

14 away from the railroad the weapon to hold over

15 third parties or the shield provided by a

16 signature, notwithstanding that the

17 continuation of the rail line, the rail service

18 is no longer in the public convenience and

19 necessity.

20 THE CHAIRMAN: Can I ask one

21 question about that, the public convenience and

22 necessity.

23 In the end, when I went back and

24 looked at our original decisions and spent some

25 time studying what we had ruled on, the basis

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2 of our decision granting the adverse

3 abandonment was in large measure \-- it was

4 two-fold.

5 One, the Board found no

6 possibility of future rail use.

7 And the second was the position

8 of public authorities at the time, that the

9 Highline was an impediment to the development

10 of that region.

11 We found that, you know, there

12 is a two-part test that we have to have; is

13 there any possibility of the rail service and

14 any public interest essentially.

15 And at the time we found the

16 public interest was in demolition. And we

17 granted the adverse abandonment.

18 Do you believe circumstances

19 have changed over 14 years and now the City

20 officials are saying that the Highline,

21 maintaining it is the key to the economic

22 revitalization of the region, which is 180

23 degrees from what they argued 14 years ago?

24 MR. BROADLEY: I think when the

25 City was testifying the true story came to

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2 light. Two years ago there was a change in

3 management of the City. Up until 2001 the City

4 was standing firmly behind the position it held

5 since 1992.

6 THE CHAIRMAN: I asked them

7 point blank what changed.

8 Do you think we should take that

9 into account?

10 Because we have to reopen the

11 whole proceeding if we did that, which no one

12 wants.

13 That is an option, I guess.

14 MR. BROADLEY: The problem \--

15 MR. JENKINS: No one has asked

16 for that.

17 THE CHAIRMAN: We could.

18 Review the public convenience

19 and necessity too.

20 Well, you have asked for

21 something different. We will get to that in a

22 second.

23 We could do that.

24 What\'s your position on that?

25 MR. JENKINS: Our position on

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2 that would be, is that you would be going back

3 and revisiting the entire economic rational of

4 the original decision and we would be going

5 back and looking again at whether or not we

6 could move waste out of Manhattan by rail or

7 some other rail use that would be much less

8 expensive to ConRail and CSX than demolishing

9 the Highline.

10 So you would be, if you did

11 this \--

12 THE CHAIRMAN: You would be in

13 favor of that?

14 MR. JENKINS: No, we would not

15 be in favor of that at all.

16 That\'s why I emphasized earlier

17 that the Friends\' petition to reopen was

18 limited to environmental and historical

19 preservation. Had they petitioned to reopen

20 the entire decision we would very much not be

21 in favor of that.

22 THE CHAIRMAN: If I could turn

23 to the Friends.

24 Thank you very much.

25 I apologize for the follow up.

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2 What you all have asked for is

3 to reopen the historical and environmental

4 findings that were made back, by my

5 calculation, October of \'89. They are 14 years

6 out of date.

7 Let\'s just say for the sake of

8 argument that we agree; we said okay to that;

9 and then we took the next step and did an

10 environmental review; and again, let\'s say for

11 the sake of argument, for a hypothetical here,

12 that we agreed that our inspection and

13 environmental analysis found that the structure

14 was, indeed, historic; what could we then do?

15 MS. EGAN: Mr. Chairman, I\'m Kim

16 Egan, counsel for Friends of the High Line.

17 THE CHAIRMAN: If we granted

18 what you\'re asking for, what would it lead to?

19 MS. EGAN: Well, the regulations

20 would require, The National Historic

21 Preservation Act regulations require that the

22 Board mitigate the effects of any action it

23 would take in connection with a request for a

24 final abandonment order.

25 The manner in which the Board

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2 would mitigate those essentially adverse

3 impacts would depend partly on what the final

4 settlement agreement would call for. You know,

5 there are a few sections of the Highline that

6 would be torn down even if we hadn\'t filed our

7 petition and everything was just going off the

8 October 14th petition.

9 In addition, it would depend in

10 part on what exactly the results of the

11 historic determination were; if it were the

12 Highline itself, if it were just certain

13 buildings that it passes through or near, the

14 entire district, entire neighborhoods, et

15 cetera.

16 Our interest has always been to

17 preserve it and reuse it. So we would argue

18 that the only way to mitigate the adverse

19 impact is to not demolish it.

20 THE CHAIRMAN: Has the Board

21 ever ordered preservation of an abandoned line

22 based on historic evaluation?

23 MS. EGAN: I believe that

24 certain historic structures have been ordered

25 preserved. I am not sure about an entire line.

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2 THE CHAIRMAN: I think our

3 doctrines have been to order documentation.

4 MS. EGAN: Documentation of?

5 THE CHAIRMAN: Of what\'s being

6 torn down.

7 MS. EGAN: I think there is one

8 decision we cited in our original petition

9 where the structure was ordered not to be torn

10 down. It wasn\'t on the railway, it was in the

11 railyard.

12 THE CHAIRMAN: So your view

13 would be that if we were to find it historic we

14 could order the entire railroad preserved?

15 MS. EGAN: We would argue that

16 that would be appropriate.

17 THE CHAIRMAN: Would there be

18 financial consequences to that?

19 What would we do?

20 What would you propose that our

21 orders be in that circumstance?

22 MS. EGAN: It\'s a little

23 difficult to answer in the abstract because the

24 final settlement agreement that we demolish the

25 Highline is a little up in the air. If it does

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2 not all come down anyway or if the property

3 owners and the railroad and the city arrange to

4 redistribute their development rights \--

5 THE CHAIRMAN: That\'s a

6 different question.

7 I guess I am asking the question

8 what, in your opinion, does our agency have the

9 power to order?

10 You asked us to make a finding

11 that the structure is historic. And I am just

12 saying, if we agreed with you, what do we have

13 the power to order be done in that

14 circumstance?

15 MS. EGAN: One of the things you

16 have the power to do is order the parties to

17 negotiate. And as everyone has come here and

18 is saying, they are willing and actively doing

19 so. That would be one resolution.

20 THE CHAIRMAN: So what

21 productive end would be served by doing a new

22 environmental review?

23 You\'re not saying it could

24 result in \-- it wouldn\'t result in directly

25 preserving it, would it?

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2 MS. EGAN: It could.

3 THE CHAIRMAN: By the fact that

4 we could order it preserved or by the fact that

5 just time would pass?

6 MS. EGAN: If the Board were to

7 determine that the Highline itself were

8 historic and that it could not mitigate any

9 adverse impacts in its abandonment decision in

10 permitting demolition, one thing the Board

11 could do, in theory, this is all hypothetical,

12 would be to modify the abandonment decision and

13 not permit demolition; would be to order the

14 attorneys to negotiate over possible

15 resolutions.

16 THE CHAIRMAN: Do we have the

17 power to prevent demolition if we approve

18 abandonment, even if it is a historic

19 structure?

20 I don\'t believe we do.

21 MS. EGAN: I understand that.

22 But I think the question is

23 whether the easement itself requires, in the

24 event of abandonment \--

25 MS. DEVINE: I can\'t hear you.

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2 MS. EGAN: I think the railroad

3 might be in a better position to answer that

4 question.

5 THE CHAIRMAN: Putting aside the

6 trails use for the moment, my question really,

7 I guess what I am trying to get at, would it

8 serve any productive end towards getting to a

9 resolution of the case even by granting your

10 request to conduct a new environmental review

11 for historical reasons.

12 MS. EGAN: We certainly think it

13 would because we think the Highline needs to be

14 preserved.

15 THE CHAIRMAN: How would it help

16 it be preserved other than stretching out the

17 time of the proceeding?

18 You think we could order that it

19 be preserved in the end?

20 MS. EGAN: Well, as I said, you

21 could order the parties to continue ongoing

22 negotiations to preserve it.

23 THE CHAIRMAN: We could do that

24 now.

25 MS. EGAN: The circumstances

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2 have changed somewhat since we started. The

3 City has become involved, the property owners

4 have expressed a willingness to negotiate.

5 That process is underway.

6 If you were to determine that

7 the structure were historic that would further

8 encourage that process to reach its, perhaps,

9 natural conclusion.

10 THE CHAIRMAN: So what you would

11 urge is that we \-- we could order negotiations

12 now?

13 MS. EGAN: That\'s what we said

14 in our prehearing submission. That\'s the best

15 way to resolve it.

16 THE CHAIRMAN: In your view \-- I

17 have asked all the other parties, let me ask

18 you this:

19 Do you think we should approve

20 the settlement agreement?

21 And let\'s just say for the sake

22 of argument we did approve the settlement

23 agreement, would that preclude the preservation

24 of the Highline or would that just leave it

25 within New York City\'s power to decide?

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2 MS. EGAN: Let\'s take your

3 second question first.

4 Not approving the settlement

5 agreement would not prevent preservation of the

6 Highline. As you have noted, the parties are

7 free to negotiate the settlement agreement

8 now. There\'s nothing to prevent that. In

9 fact, it\'s going on.

10 We have taken the position that

11 we still believe that the settlement agreement

12 should not be approved. It has not been signed

13 by all parties. Certain parties who have

14 signed it appear to have stepped away from it.

15 I am not sure I understand what

16 it means to ask the Board to approve a form; if

17 it\'s not an effective agreement then it can\'t

18 be certain enough to satisfy the limitations.

19 Otherwise we can have a party come to the Board

20 and ask: Well, what do you think about that.

21 It would be essentially a revised opinion.

22 We don\'t think that approving

23 the settlement agreement now would accomplish

24 anything because it would not, other than get

25 the case off the Court\'s docket, it would not

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2 preserve the Highline. It would not satisfy

3 the railroads immediately. It would not

4 satisfy the City\'s land use rules.

5 THE CHAIRMAN: I agree that \--

6 you know, we have more precedent that has

7 reviewed this, that\'s a difficulty. But I

8 agree that asking for an advisory opinion on

9 the settlement agreement is, you know,

10 something I\'m slightly uncomfortable with.

11 Essentially it says the cap on liability was

12 put in for your protection.

13 You could take the position that

14 if you\'re happy with it, why is that our

15 concern.

16 It\'s for your benefit. If you

17 feel you\'re protected, why then would the

18 agency need to opine further on it?

19 MR. JENKINS: As I mentioned

20 earlier, somewhat ironically, it\'s the Friends

21 of the High Line who are saying that the

22 agreement that we have doesn\'t sufficiently

23 protect ConRail. And we would sure as heck not

24 want to go further down the road and then have

25 the Board agree with the Friends of the High

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2 Line that this doesn\'t give ConRail enough

3 protection.

4 Remember that the Board\'s charge

5 normally is to maintain rail lines.

6 THE CHAIRMAN: Correct.

7 MR. JENKINS: And to protect

8 railroads, or at least railroad finances.

9 If you are concerned, as the

10 Friends are, that this agreement doesn\'t

11 protect us enough, then we need to know about

12 that. Sure, it\'s an advisory opinion, but

13 that\'s what declaratory orders are, they are

14 advisory.

15 What we\'re looking for is advice

16 on whether this form of agreement will get us

17 over the hump.

18 THE CHAIRMAN: How are we in a

19 better position to know that than you?

20 MR. JENKINS: As I said, I

21 wouldn\'t have thought that the Friends would

22 have told us that the agreement wasn\'t good

23 enough for us. But they have.

24 THE CHAIRMAN: You all are the

25 experts in you company more so than we are. I

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2 don\'t mean to give you a hard time. I am just

3 curious.

4 MR. JENKINS: No, I understand

5 that.

6 And it just suggests to me that

7 it ought to be relatively easy for you to say

8 that this form of agreement does meet our

9 requirements. That doesn\'t mean that the

10 agreement will necessarily come to fruition if

11 all parties don\'t sign and if all the

12 requirements in it aren\'t met. But it will

13 take us a long way down the road to know that

14 at least this form of agreement is a form that

15 will meet the requirements in the \'92 and \'99

16 decisions.

17 THE CHAIRMAN: Which would cap

18 the railroad\'s liability at \$7 million?

19 MR. JENKINS: Yes.

20 THE CHAIRMAN: It\'s a difficult,

21 I have had a hard time with that particular

22 point, because I am not sure how we would be in

23 a better position than you all would be to know

24 what protects you.

25 Again, I understand what you

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2 said.

3 Let me ask a question for the

4 panel.

5 Do you all believe that the

6 Highline can be demolished without City and

7 City Council approval, or must there be City

8 and City Council approval?

9 I will ask everyone.

10 MR. AARONS: One thing we didn\'t

11 mention was the fact that Friends of the High

12 Line suggested that the City\'s signature on the

13 settlement agreement violated the City\'s Land

14 Use Review Procedures, which is a City Charter

15 mandate that requires the review of all land

16 use decisions and that was victorious in the

17 lower courts, now on appeal with no judgment.

18 But we believe that it will be

19 upheld on appeal and therefore that the City\'s

20 signature is not valid because it violates its

21 own Land Use Review Procedures.

22 We also, I would continue to say

23 that I think the City stated in its earlier

24 testimony that it would not go through with the

25 actual physical demolition of the Highline

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2 based on its views of changed circumstances.

3 MR. SARINI: I would just take

4 the counter argument that only if the decision

5 that\'s currently under appeal, the appellate

6 decision with regard to whether or not the

7 demolition of the Highline would require to go

8 through the Uniform Land Use Review Process,

9 only if that was upheld would the City be able,

10 the City Council be able to prevent the

11 demolition.

12 The assumption is that the

13 City\'s a party to that petition saying that the

14 Uniform Land Use process is not required here.

15 My assumption is or hope is that that would get

16 overturned by appeal and therefore that would

17 not be a public review process requirement.

18 MR. JENKINS: As I said earlier,

19 the railroads really don\'t want to take sides

20 in this matter if we can possibly avoid it.

21 And we think the cooperation of the City and

22 City Council are very important.

23 In terms of parsing the various

24 pieces of litigation that have been presented

25 and the question of whether the prior

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2 administration\'s signing the settlement

3 agreement binds them, we are just not prepared

4 to take a position on that.

5 THE CHAIRMAN: Although, I

6 think, if I understand both your arguments,

7 whether or not the City has signed it is really

8 not relevant to the question you posed before

9 us, which is does the settlement agreement meet

10 the terms of our decision, signed or unsigned.

11 MR. JENKINS: That is correct.

12 This has been a hotly-litigated

13 question, the question of how much protection

14 meets the requirements of your \'92 and \'99

15 decisions. As I said before, we hate to be

16 standing before a Court of Appeals having to

17 defend whether this met the requirements.

18 THE CHAIRMAN: I think the court

19 reporter can\'t get nodding of the head. I

20 apologize for making you do it.

21 I think you pointed out one

22 thing, that our doctrines are not really set up

23 for this kind of case. In fact, essentially

24 the legal doctrines under which we apply apply

25 to the exact opposite case, where there is

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2 service on a line that\'s costing more than

3 tearing it up. And the abandonment proceedings

4 are really geared toward that situation, where

5 the railroad is losing money by providing

6 service.

7 Here you have the exact opposite

8 situation, you lose money by tearing it up

9 essentially and it costs less.

10 It makes this a difficult

11 situation for us in that the legal standards

12 that apply to us don\'t really apply to this

13 kind of situation.

14 When you look at the \'92

15 decision it was really that specific and

16 unique. I don\'t think it\'s terribly

17 precedential one way or another. Even now

18 circumstances have changed and there is

19 question of how precedential it is.

20 It sounds like, listening to

21 you, to go forward there are really two legal

22 questions we have to settle. The most

23 important of which is:

24 Can we issue a certificate of

25 interim trails use in an adverse abandonment?

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2 Now, I know all of you have

3 referred to this in your briefs, and I hate to

4 ask for more paper, but I think the one thing

5 that would help us go forward is to get briefs

6 from the parties within 30 days on that one

7 question, to focus it for us and let us, then

8 we will have a clear focus between that and,

9 you know, the settlement agreement as to what

10 to do next and take it from there.

11 As I said, we will still

12 consider obviously your request to do further

13 environmental historic preservation.

14 I do raise the question whether

15 or not it would be any help to move us to a

16 settlement because I don\'t think we could order

17 preservation in that circumstance, but we will

18 still look at it and consider it.

19 If we can ask for that, I am

20 reluctant after all the paper and all the

21 filings to ask for more, but I do think that in

22 this case, with this hearing, that is what

23 would help us get to a resolution. If it\'s not

24 legal, that\'s a clear situation. If it is

25 legal, then we will have to decide what to do

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2 next.

3 It\'s my goal to try to come to

4 some resolution. I know you all care very

5 deeply about this. And to a certain extent, as

6 all of your pleadings said, any decision is

7 better than no decision. As an agency it\'s our

8 responsibility to get a decision out.

9 From that standpoint, unless

10 anybody has any questions, thank you very much

11 for your testimony.

12 Finally, our third panel is

13 Congressman Nadler, whom I did speak to and he

14 very much wanted to be here, but unfortunately

15 there are votes today and he wasn\'t able to be

16 here. So his staff, Daryl Cochrane, is here.

17 And Christine Quinn from the New

18 York City Council.

19 Is she here?

20 (No response.)

21 THE CHAIRMAN: Do you want to

22 make an oral statement or written statement?

23 MR. COCHRANE: I will just read

24 the last paragraph.

25 THE CHAIRMAN: Let me just say,

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2 I worked with Mr. Nadler for many years as

3 chief counsel to the committee he serves on.

4 MR. COCHRANE: The Highline is a

5 monument to New York\'s great passes, the

6 transportation and manufacturing hub. Let us

7 not lose the unique opportunity it presents us

8 now to create a spectacular public space for

9 future generations to enjoy.

10 Many of you have heard me say

11 before, by preserving this one-of-a-kind

12 monument to New York\'s railroad heritage, the

13 City can keep its transportation options open

14 in a rapidly changing neighborhood.

15 I urge the STB to preserve the

16 Highline.

17 Thank you.

18 THE CHAIRMAN: Then our final

19 panel I think is, Frank Sanchis for the

20 Municipal Art Society of New York; Jo Hamilton,

21 from the Greenwich Village Society for Historic

22 Preservation; Fredric Bell, from the American

23 Institute of Architects; Mary Habstritt, from

24 the Society for Industrial Archeology; Jeffrey

25 Ciabotti, from the Rails-to-Trails Conservancy;

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2 Michael Levin, from the New York Metro Chapter

3 of the American Planning Association;

4 Anne-Brigitte Sirois, from The Lerner Group;

5 Charles Chotkowski; Sue Sands; John Lee

6 Compton, from Manhattan Community Board 4.

7 And I think we have three late

8 requests. If you all would join us at the

9 table. We will have three minutes like

10 everyone.

11 Tom Neuman, from the Forty Plus

12 Foundation; Ronald Adams, from Research

13 Consultants; and Joseph Homgrun, whom I

14 understand is a resident.

15 Again, in our agency\'s tradition

16 of going from my right to my left, we will

17 start with who is on my right, take it from

18 there.

19 MS. SIROIS: My name is

20 Anne-Brigitte Sirois. I\'m a representative of

21 Chelsea Village Business Owners and I\'m here to

22 testify on behalf of over 200 businesses

23 surrounding the Highline in West Chelsea in the

24 Meat Packing District.

25 Chelsea Village Business Owners

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2 is largely composed of contempory art

3 galleries, but also includes art and fashion

4 stores, such as Jeffrey, and not-for-profit

5 inferential art institutions, such as DS Center

6 for the Arts, the Kitchen and Creative Time,

7 amongst others.

8 As director of real estate

9 development for the arts with The Lerner Group

10 since 1995, my job has been to bring art

11 galleries to Chelsea. I have witnessed first

12 hand the dynamics that caused the art galleries

13 to flee SoHo and the 57th Street area to the

14 new Art Chelsea.

15 In 1995 there was as few as six

16 galleries in West Chelsea. Today there are

17 over 175. Most of them are gathered between

18 10th and 11th Avenues from 14th through 29th

19 Street.

20 Today art Chelsea has replaced

21 SoHo as the world\'s center of contempory art

22 culture. Although this is a fact, the

23 ramifications of this development have hardly

24 begun. Galleries mostly function with small

25 budgets and tend to continually populate and

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2 gentrify dilapidated and distressed areas of

3 the city. They occupy garages and storage

4 facilities all around the Highline. They are

5 the driving force that push forward the new

6 ideas in American art culture.

7 The art world of New York brings

8 intellectuals from all over the world to walk

9 around the area surrounding the Highline. New

10 York has an opportunity to tap this

11 extraordinary district with a unique and

12 sensational pathway with magnificent views. It

13 would bring more people to all the businesses

14 that exist in the area and would further

15 broaden the interest in the arts in general.

16 The development of Art Chelsea

17 is not finished. It is still largely unknown

18 and is in need of being properly distinguished

19 with such a splendid and innovative path as the

20 Highline could provide.

21 THE CHAIRMAN: Thank you very

22 much.

23 MR. COMPTON: Mr. Chairman, my

24 name is Lee Compton. I am a member of

25 Community Board 4 of Manhattan. I am the

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2 co-chairman of the Chelsea Preservation and

3 Planning Committee. The reason that that is

4 relevant is that except for the very short

5 portion in the Gansevoort Market the Highline

6 is entirely within Community Board 4.

7 The Community Board has voted to

8 endorse the conversion to the park. We hope to

9 achieve increase in our open space, as was

10 noted earlier that, in fact, we are

11 disproportionately lacking in that.

12 However, the Chelsea Property

13 Owners are also members of our community. We

14 have been working with the city agencies, City

15 Planning, to ensure that they receive whatever

16 compensation is reasonable for them to receive.

17 We certainly hope that you will

18 be able to go ahead and grant the interim,

19 certificate of interim trail use.

20 The only basis on which we can

21 speak on is the one on is it in the public

22 interest.

23 We certainly believe it is in

24 the public interest. It is in the community\'s

25 interest. And we urge you to find so.

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2 Thank you.

3 THE CHAIRMAN: Thank you very

4 much.

5 MR. SANCHIS: Good afternoon,

6 Mr. Chairman.

7 My name is Frank Sanchis. I am

8 the executive director of the Municipal Arts

9 Society of New York. The Society is a private

10 membership organization with the mission of

11 making New York a more livable city. We do so

12 by advocating for excellence in design,

13 focusing on architecture, planning, historic

14 preservation and public art.

15 The preservation and reuse of

16 the Highline touches on each of these

17 disciplines, which is why from the very

18 beginning we have been supportive in every way

19 of the Friends of the High Line, their advocacy

20 on behalf of preserving the Highline.

21 You heard this earlier, but we

22 think it\'s true, that it\'s often the case with

23 historic buildings and structures that it\'s

24 hard to look beyond their current often poor

25 and deteriorated condition, and see their

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2 inherent promise. Just as often after they

3 have been saved, restored and reused, they

4 become cherished parts of our environment and

5 people look back and they say: Why didn\'t we

6 see that.

7 New York abounds with such

8 examples. Grand Central Terminal is one.

9 Schermerhorn Row in South Street Seaport is

10 another. The Custom House at Battery Park is

11 yet another. They were all preservation

12 battles. They were all adaptively reused and

13 they all are thriving and adding immeasurably

14 to our City.

15 The Highline presents a great

16 planning opportunity, a signature element

17 around which to create a new community. There

18 is nothing else like it in New York. An

19 elevated linear space that offers a new

20 perspective, which you also heard, on blocks

21 and buildings we\'re used to seeing from the

22 ground and used to using in more traditional

23 ways. It\'s an opportunity for an elevated

24 green space linking to an existing and future

25 street-level parks. It\'s a chance to create

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2 new commercial activity and pedestrian passage

3 ways on an irreplaceable piece of

4 infrastructure. It will be a catalyst for new

5 design, both architectural and landscape

6 design. It\'s an important artifact that

7 deserves preservation. It\'s a highly visible

8 feature of the City\'s industrial and

9 transportation history in lower Manhattan, one

10 which future generations would have a hard time

11 understanding without this physical reminder.

12 And it can be a setting for public art. And in

13 a way, it\'s really a piece of installation art

14 in itself.

15 New York is a city of

16 neighborhoods, each one of them is

17 distinctive. The Highline will be the

18 distinguishing feature of yet another new

19 neighborhood, one which at once respects and

20 celebrates its past and looks forward to the

21 future in the most innovative and creative

22 way. That combination is what makes New York

23 the city that we\'re proud of and the place

24 where we all want to live.

25 The Society urges you to enable

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2 the rail banking of the Highline, to allow its

3 reinvention into the new and memorable New York

4 City place.

5 Thank you very much.

6 THE CHAIRMAN: Thank you very

7 much.

8 MR. BELL: Good afternoon.

9 My name is Fredric Bell. I\'m

10 the executive director of the American

11 Institute of Architects, New York Chapter.

12 I am here speaking on behalf of

13 its 3400 members, including architects and

14 urban designers who have studied the issue at

15 hand and formally and repeatedly expressed

16 support for preservation of the Highline.

17 The AIA, founded in New York in

18 1857, now has 70,000 members nationwide, and is

19 arguably the architectural vocation\'s leading

20 professional organization.

21 The chapter has previously given

22 its strong endorsement in support of use of the

23 Highline as public open space for Manhattan\'s

24 far West Side. I am honored to be invited to

25 speak today to reiterate that the architectural

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2 community in New York City strongly supports

3 the proposal of the Friends of the High Line to

4 save this historic elevated railway for interim

5 trail use, as a greenway surmounting an

6 important relic of New York\'s industrial

7 heritage.

8 As has been said by others

9 already, and I hate to be redundant, but to

10 reinforce it, the area in which the Highline is

11 situated is an urban district that is not

12 adequately graced by parks and recreational

13 open space. By rail banking the Highline, we

14 could quickly add open space of nearly seven

15 acres in a linear configuration more than a

16 mile and a half in length. It has been

17 estimated that purchasing an equivalent amount

18 of open space in the real estate market today

19 might cost over a quarter of billion dollars.

20 That kind of money is simply not available in

21 the municipal budget or is it likely will

22 become so.

23 Preserving the Highline and

24 reusing it as open public space will provide

25 an important pedestrian link between the

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2 communities on Manhattan\'s West side. It will

3 add value to surrounding properties,

4 contributing to the long-term economic health

5 of the city.

6 The Highline will most certainly

7 become a well-loved public environment

8 treasured by residents, workers and visitors to

9 the community for generations to come. It has

10 already catalyzed rethinking of open space

11 possibilities in adjacent neighborhoods.

12 For example, published plans for

13 the proposed Olympic Stadium or New York Jets

14 Green football stadium immediately to the north

15 would benefit from the Highline as an elevated

16 pedestrian pathway and connector. Imagine, for

17 instance, the Olympic Torch finding its way in

18 the 2012 summer games, carried aloft in the

19 Highline, in what has been called the City\'s

20 second home, the eyes of the world focused, not

21 only focused on the Torch bearer but on the

22 Highline itself.

23 It\'s almost axiomatic that

24 reusing the Highline as open public space is

25 feasible. There are no impediments. Ample

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2 access can be demonstrated. A safe and secure

3 environment can certainly be created below its

4 protective canopy as well as atop its elevated

5 platform.

6 Speaking personally for a

7 moment, I still recall, some 24 years after,

8 the opportunity I had as a New Yorker to

9 bicycle and occasionally stroll to work atop

10 the now demolished stretch of the West Side, or

11 I thought it was made for the Speaker Gifford

12 Miller, Miller Highway, knowing that the daily

13 journey to my first architectural job was not

14 imperiled by rushing taxicabs, looming trucks

15 or any other frustrated motorists that made the

16 separation from the morning rush hour street

17 frenzy almost indescribably pleasurable, a

18 chance to greet others not encumbered by

19 on-grade grubbing and an opportunity to breathe

20 in the relatively fresh air a story above the

21 mean streets below.

22 Perhaps you can\'t go home again,

23 even by bicycle, but I would like to think that

24 with the solidity of the air-borne Highline

25 linear structure in place, that a new

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2 generation of New Yorkers, visitors, commuters,

3 strollers and railroad buffs will have a chance

4 to experience our City\'s special resource first

5 hand, not through photographs of a moment lost

6 in vague memories related decades later, but

7 experienced viscerally, through what could be

8 called voting with ones\' feet.

9 To conclude, the AIA, New York

10 Chapter, hopes and requests that the Surface

11 Transportation Board ratify and assist the

12 efforts of the Friends of the High Line, the

13 many professional and civic organizations

14 gathered here today and allied in its efforts,

15 and the elected leaders of the City of New York

16 to create a spectacular new public space on the

17 West Side by allowing for interim trail use of

18 this extraordinary historic structure.

19 I just wanted to add, not answer

20 a question posed to somebody else or to

21 anticipate one, but in learning about the

22 Surface Transportation Board the first time as

23 an architect, I haven\'t had dealings

24 previously, and trying to understand through

25 its capsule history and functions what you\'re

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2 here to do, I go to the bottom of the first

3 page, which says:

4 \"The Board continues to strive

5 to develop, through rulemakings and case

6 dispositions, new and better ways to analyze

7 unique and complex problems, to reach fully

8 justified decisions more quickly, to reduce the

9 costs associated with regulatory oversight, and

10 to encourage private-sector negotiations and

11 resolutions to problems where appropriate.\"

12 It seems to me that this meeting

13 might have been both shorter and in many ways

14 more pleasurable if it was in situ at the

15 Highline, outside. It\'s is a beautiful day.

16 And two, I am not suggesting

17 that we adjourn there, to make a decision less

18 than that of a court of law, it certainly has

19 to relate to the history at hand. But to

20 suggest perhaps that there is a creative

21 solution that that relates to a new designation

22 that is perhaps an interim new CITU or new CITU

23 that would go to the point that you raised

24 previously, to the previous panel, that this is

25 sort of the obverse of what you\'re used to

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2 doing but it\'s none the less as necessary as if

3 it were the tenth time that you have done it.

4 THE CHAIRMAN: I appreciate

5 that.

6 The fact that, the reason we\'re

7 holding this hearing is because we\'re trying to

8 figure out a way to resolve those. This is a

9 unique case for us. Our agency hasn\'t done a

10 field hearing in, probably as long as the case

11 has been pending. It shows you the difficulty

12 we are having in figuring out what the right

13 thing to do is. We are struggling.

14 MR. LEVIN: My name is Michael

15 Levin. I represent the New York Metro Chapter

16 of the American Planning Association.

17 I would like to thank you for

18 giving me this opportunity to appear today

19 along with all the other civic organizations to

20 present our testimony on this very significant

21 planning initiative in New York City.

22 The New York Metro Chapter of

23 the American Planning Association represents

24 close to 1,000 members in the New York area,

25 the five boroughs of the City of New York,

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2 Nassau and Suffolk Counties on Long Island,

3 Westchester County and the Hudson Valley. Our

4 members are planners involved in land use, open

5 space preservation and development,

6 transportation, community and economic

7 development, urban design and historic

8 preservation. We are a small but very diverse

9 group of planners.

10 New York has an unusual

11 opportunity to plan for its future by acting to

12 preserve an engineering marvel that is part of

13 the City\'s unique industrial and transportation

14 history. The one and a half mile Highline,

15 which was built as an innovative and efficient

16 means of transportation in a dense and

17 congested city, brought goods to the area and

18 the region by means of trains moving along

19 tracks above the streets and directly into

20 warehouses and factories; a unique solution to

21 the conflict between pedestrians and vehicular

22 traffic in a very congested city.

23 Now this commercial structure

24 can become a resource for residents and

25 visitors to enjoy the vistas of New York\'s

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2 waterfront, to walk and to bicycle for

3 recreation and to use as a practical means to

4 get to their destinations along the thriving

5 West Side of Manhattan.

6 Also, as you heard several times

7 today, New Yorkers in this part of Manhattan

8 desperately need more open space. This

9 Highline can provide a resource for much needed

10 open space. To preserve the Highline for

11 pedestrian use and as a pedestrian corridor for

12 future potential innovative transit use is to

13 promote long-range civic and municipal planning

14 at its best.

15 This Board can assist us in that

16 long-range planning.

17 It is important not to forever

18 preclude adaptive reuse of this unusual

19 structure by allowing its demolition. The

20 Highline is located in the neighborhoods of

21 Chelsea and Clinton, Hell\'s Kitchen, which are

22 themselves examples of the City\'s vitality, its

23 adaptability to changing needs, to market

24 trends and its ability to reinvent itself in

25 the urban place.

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2 The west Midtown area to the

3 north is now the focus, as you heard, of the

4 City\'s most far-reaching comprehensive planning

5 efforts for commercial and housing development,

6 cultural and recreational expansion and

7 improved pedestrian and transportation

8 amenities. The City, as you also heard, is

9 also exploring new zoning options for West

10 Chelsea.

11 Planning for the reuse of the

12 Highline should be an integral part of this

13 broader planning initiative and should be

14 central to the civic dialogue.

15 It\'s encouraging that the

16 Bloomberg administration and the City Council

17 are supporting efforts to obtain agreement with

18 the owners for interim trail use and that funds

19 have been appropriated to promote planning and

20 reconstruction measures. The New York Metro

21 Chapter of the American Planning Association

22 applauds these efforts and urges the Surface

23 Transportation Board to grant a certificate of

24 interim trail use for the Highline.

25 Thank you for giving me this

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2 opportunity to testify today.

3 THE CHAIRMAN: Thank you.

4 MS. SANDS: My name is Susan

5 Sands. I am a resident of Community Board 2,

6 right on the border of Community Board 4. And

7 I have been working a lot with Chelsea

8 residents on this issue of the Highline.

9 I have lived in the area I

10 reside in for 40 years. I have worked, been

11 employed in the same area for 30 years. And I

12 have worked also with many, many grass-roots

13 movements. And I would like to say, of all the

14 causes I have worked with, the Highline issue

15 has shown more exponential growth, more

16 fascination, more support from the grass-roots

17 level. I have never seen anything with such

18 enormous depth and breath as I have when people

19 learn about the Highline.

20 When I first started advancing

21 the cause, there were a lot of Chelsea

22 residents who thought it was an eyesore, that

23 it should simply be torn down so they could see

24 the river.

25 Well, I remember, it brought me

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2 back to the time when I first came to Greenwich

3 Village. There was a building called the

4 Jefferson Market Courthouse, which was thought

5 to be a terrible monstrosity, an eyesore. But

6 some visionary people, Margo Gail among them,

7 saw to it that it was turned into a beautiful

8 library and now it\'s the gem of the

9 neighborhood.

10 Anyway, I think that whatever

11 can be done to preserve the Highline, it\'s an

12 artifact of industrial history, as a park, as

13 green space for the people of Chelsea, should

14 be done. The CITU is something that I was for.

15 Thank you for this opportunity.

16 THE CHAIRMAN: Thank you.

17 MS. HABSTRITT: Good afternoon,

18 Chairman Nober.

19 My name is Mary Habstritt. I am

20 here representing the Society for Industrial

21 Archeology.

22 The SIA is an educational,

23 nonprofit organization that encourages the

24 study, interpretation and preservation of

25 historically significant industrial structures

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2 and artifacts. Our national organization

3 currently numbers 1900 members in North

4 America. The Robeling Chapter, of which I am

5 president, has 430 members in the greater New

6 York Metropolitan area and is SIA\'s largest

7 chapter.

8 And in the video earlier you

9 heard from Tom Clay, an industrial

10 archeologist, who is also a member of our

11 chapter\'s board.

12 The SIA supports the Friends of

13 the High Line and its plans to preserve this

14 historic viaduct and reuse it to develop a park

15 in partnership with the City of New York.

16 The Highline is all that remains

17 of Manhattan\'s only all-freight railway. It is

18 a dramatic remnant soaring temptingly overhead

19 in some of our most vibrant neighborhoods and

20 providing a visual symbol of the area\'s

21 industrial past. The Highline was the heart of

22 an industrial corridor that once thrived being

23 parallel with an industrial waterfront on the

24 world\'s busiest port.

25 In building the elevated portion

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2 of the West Side Freight Line the New York

3 Central\'s engineers not only eliminated the

4 problem of dangerous traffic, but found

5 ingenious solutions to the problems of

6 delivering freight cars to sitings built at the

7 second or third-floor level of factories and

8 warehouses built alongside.

9 These adaptations constituted a

10 magnificent solution to the problem of urban

11 freight delivery. Once called the life line of

12 New York, the freight line brought milk to the

13 city from the country, delivered packaging to

14 Nabisco\'s cracker factory, shipped beef to

15 Swift & Company\'s processing plant, and

16 chickens to New York Dress Poultry, as well as

17 carrying mail to the Morgan Parcel Post

18 facility for sorting and distribution.

19 These manufacturing, processing

20 and trans-shipment operations on the lower West

21 Side provided the lofty spaces now enjoyed by

22 artists, gallery owners, new media innovators

23 and condominium residents. These unusual

24 spaces would not exist without the industry

25 that grew up to be served by the Highline.

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2 Without the Highline the context for these

3 neighborhoods\' architecture will be lost.

4 The SIA opposes demolition of

5 the Highline as this would destroy an

6 industrial and transportation landmark.

7 As we currently understand the

8 legal issues, we support the Friends\' petition

9 to reopen the Highline and the issuance of a

10 certificate of interim trail use to the City in

11 order that this monument of our industrial

12 mid-century golden age be preserved to transmit

13 the record of the West Side\'s industrial

14 heritage to future generations of New Yorkers.

15 THE CHAIRMAN: Thank you.

16 MS. HAMILTON: Good afternoon.

17 My name is Jo Hamilton. I am

18 co-chair of Save Gansevoort Market.

19 Our organization enjoys the

20 support of almost 3000 people. We were formed

21 three years ago by the Greenwich Village

22 Society for Historic Preservation to advocate

23 for the creation of a historic district in the

24 area located along the Hudson River, in the

25 northwest corner of Greenwich Village and

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2 reaching slightly into southwest Chelsea, the

3 blocks commonly known as the Meat Market, and

4 now referred to as Gansevoort Market. This

5 area includes the five southern blocks of the

6 Highline as it now stands.

7 Our district evokes a

8 significant chapter in New York City\'s

9 commercial history from 1840 to 1950 and

10 beyond. This period highlights the major

11 forces that brought the city to commercial

12 prominence.

13 The most important aspects of

14 the history are the creation of two municipally

15 sanctioned markets in the late 1800s and the

16 transportation systems that contributed to the

17 growth of the Gansevoort markets by giving them

18 access to a wider distribution network. The

19 area became the city\'s center for the

20 production, storage and distribution of meat,

21 produce and many other food products. The

22 Highline is an integral part of this history,

23 as it connected Gansevoort with regional and

24 national markets right up to 1980.

25 Because the Highline remains

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2 intact in the Gansevoort Market and because so

3 much of the physical fabric of the buildings

4 and streets have been largely unchanged since

5 the Market\'s heyday, even the casual observer

6 can read the layers of New York\'s industrial

7 and commercial past in the streetscapes.

8 Last year we presented

9 documentation to the New York State Office for

10 Historic Preservation. They decided that the

11 entire area should be preserved and deemed

12 Gansevoort Market eligible for the State and

13 National Register. We are working with them to

14 achieve designation.

15 We also presented our history to

16 the New York City Landmark\'s Preservation

17 Commission. The Commission was sufficiently

18 impressed that the area was worthy of historic

19 district status that they calendared a

20 potential Gansevoort Market Historic District

21 this past March. Currently they are conducting

22 further research, which is their final stage of

23 the designation process. We are eagerly

24 awaiting an announcement.

25 Unfortunately, the Commission,

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2 the City Commission, decided against the

3 inclusion at this time of the western four and

4 a half blocks of our proposed district,

5 awaiting a resolution on the future status of

6 the Highline. These blocks include a visually

7 stunning sweep of the tracks that can be

8 enjoyed from the street level and two buildings

9 of major importance that the tracks pass

10 through, including the Chelsea Market Building.

11 The current western boundary of

12 the district under consideration by the New

13 York City Landmark\'s Preservation Commission is

14 immediately adjacent to these blocks of the

15 Highline properties. We will continue to

16 advocate for their designation as a second

17 phase of a Gansevoort Market Historic District.

18 We hired noted architectural

19 historian, Thomas Mellins, to document the

20 historical and architectural significance of

21 Gansevoort Market. I would like to read this

22 brief statement from him regarding the

23 Highline.

24 \"I am writing to lend a strong

25 voice of support to the preservation and

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2 adaptive reuse of the Highline on Manhattan\'s

3 West Side. I am an architectural historian and

4 the coauthor of three books on the architecture

5 and urbanism of New York City. Additionally, I

6 have conducted research and written a report

7 for the Greenwich Society for Historic

8 Preservation outlining the significance of the

9 Gansevoort Market area.

10 \"The Highline is a remarkable

11 structure that not only exemplifies the

12 ingenuity and efficiency of 20th Century

13 American transportation systems, but also gives

14 physical reality to the image of New York as a

15 working city. Transportation networks, both

16 water and rail-based, as well as surface modes,

17 were key to New York\'s emergence after the

18 Civil War as the nation\'s economic capital and

19 an unsurpassed center of production and

20 distribution. The New York Central Railroad\'s

21 construction of elevated tracks at once

22 ameliorated the serious problem of roadway

23 congestion and constituted an important

24 contribution to the infrastructure that would

25 allow New York to enjoy unprecedented growth

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2 and prosperity.

3 Today, while the Highline\'s

4 original use has been rendered obsolete by

5 dramatic changes in the city\'s and the nation\'s

6 economy, views of the tracks passing directing

7 through massive loft buildings, sometimes

8 referred to as \'beautilitarian\' in their

9 brilliant architectural synthesis of the

10 practical and the poetic, remain thrilling

11 indeed.

12 \"Today, New Yorkers are faced

13 with the opportunity to preserve this

14 pioneering structure and create a marvelous

15 outdoor space at the same time. This

16 preservation and adaptive reuse of the Highline

17 as a public recreational area would allow New

18 Yorkers to understand their city\'s past, while

19 celebrating its 21st Century vitality.

20 Enhancing the quality of life for those who

21 live and work in the adjacent Gansevoort Market

22 area, as well as Chelsea and other nearby

23 districts, the transformation of the Highline

24 could serve as a model of preservation and

25 creative urban place-making for cities

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2 worldwide. This is most certainly an

3 opportunity we cannot afford to miss.\"

4 Finally, Gansevoort Market is

5 still today a vibrant mixed-use commercial

6 center. A core group of meatpackers remain and

7 they give the area a keen and gritty edge. At

8 the same time, there has been a steady influx

9 of high-end retail, restaurant, hotel, gallery

10 and nightlife businesses that are adapting the

11 old market buildings for new uses. The area is

12 rapidly becoming a popular tourist destination

13 for entertainment and shopping.

14 The possibility of outdoor

15 public space on the Highline, right in the

16 middle of this thriving neighborhood, would be

17 a positive force in the redevelopment of

18 Gansevoort Market and the West Side of

19 Manhattan.

20 Thank you.

21 THE CHAIRMAN: Catch your

22 breath.

23 Thank you.

24 We would have given you an extra

25 minute.

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2 MR. CIABOTTI: Good afternoon.

3 My name is Jeffrey Ciabotti. I

4 am director of development for the trail

5 development for the Rails-to-Trails

6 Conservancy.

7 I would like to thank the

8 Surface Transportation Board for affording me

9 and the Conservancy the opportunity to testify

10 at this public hearing on the disposition of

11 the elevated railroad viaduct in lower

12 Manhattan known as the Highline.

13 Rails-to-Trails Conservancy

14 provides these comments in support of the

15 preservation and conversion of the Highline

16 into a multi-use public trail for the citizens

17 of New York City and its many visitors.

18 Rails-to-Trails Conservancy is a

19 national nonprofit conservation organization

20 founded in 1985. The mission of RTC is to

21 enrich America\'s communities and countrysides

22 by creating a nationwide network of public

23 trails and corporate rail lines and connective

24 corridors. Specifically, RTC identifies rail

25 corridors that are not currently needed for

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2 rail transportation and facilitates the

3 preservation and continued public use to

4 conversion to public trails in non-motorized

5 transportation corridors.

6 RTC has more than 100,000

7 members and supporters. We are based in

8 Washington, DC, with field offices in Ohio,

9 California, Pennsylvania, Florida, Michigan and

10 New England. As the leader of the rail trail

11 movement we are proud of the 12,555 miles of

12 open rail trail, with another 16,860 miles of

13 projects.

14 Rail trails positively impact

15 individuals and improve communities by

16 providing not only recreational and

17 transportation opportunities but also by

18 influencing economic and community development.

19 In 1916 America possessed the

20 largest rail system in the world with over

21 270,000 miles of track connecting the smallest

22 towns to the largest cities. The second half

23 of the 20th Century, however, saw a major

24 decline in the railroad industry. Today less

25 than half of America\'s original rail system

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2 remains active. Approximately 500 miles of

3 track are abandoned each year.

4 Rails-to-Trails Conservancy and

5 thousands of citizens, non-profit groups and

6 government entities are extending the original

7 transportation mission of former railroad

8 corridors by converting them into rail trails.

9 Preservation of rail corridors provides an

10 insurance policy, transportation options, in

11 anticipation for future return to rail use.

12 The alternative, hopelessly

13 fragmented railroads\' rights-of-way that can

14 serve no transportation purpose whatsoever, and

15 instead often ends up with unused and neglected

16 havens for garbage blight and even criminal

17 activity.

18 Congress enacted the Federal

19 Rail Banking Law, Section 8 D of the National

20 Trail Systems Act in 1983 as a means of

21 preserving our nation\'s built rail and

22 infrastructure for continued and future use as

23 transportation corridors. The growing number

24 of railroads are rail-banking corridors for

25 non-motorized transportation and recreation

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2 purposes. This allows the railroads to:

3 One, dispose of corridors in one

4 transaction, saving overhead and marketing

5 costs for piecemeal disposal.

6 Two, extract ties, tracks, ties

7 and other track materials that have net asset

8 value.

9 Three, transfer liability for

10 tunnels, trestles, and in some cases elevated

11 viaducts, which often have negative salvage

12 value to trail managers.

13 Four, take a tax deduction,

14 which makes rail banking a benefit for the

15 railroads, a bargain for the taxpayers and

16 trail users and a legacy for communities in the

17 future who may need to restore rail service.

18 The success of the rail banking

19 law is evident.

20 The total number of miles that

21 are rail banked is 4,354, that includes 200

22 corridors.

23 The number of rail-bank

24 corridors developed into open trails in full or

25 in part are 88, equaling 1,696 miles.

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2 The number of current potential

3 rail bankings, these are corridors with rail

4 banking negotiation in process, is 111. That

5 equals 1,037 miles.

6 Regarding the possible rail

7 banking arrangement between the City of New

8 York and CSX Railroad, RTC finds no legal

9 impediment to allowing those negotiations to

10 proceed. RTC understands that the City of New

11 York is progressing towards a rail banking and

12 interim trail use agreement relating to the

13 Highline which will preserve this unique and

14 historic facility for the benefit of future

15 generations.

16 Based on our review of the

17 facts, there is no legal obstacle for this

18 Board\'s issuance of the trail use condition,

19 assuming the consent of both parties.

20 Concerns raised by opponents

21 about the future development proposals that

22 would affect the manner in which the Highline

23 connects to the national rail system have no

24 bearing on whether or not the trail use

25 condition should be issued.

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2 This Board has previously taken

3 the position that its obligation to issue a

4 trail use condition is ministerial and

5 therefore has no authority to deny such request

6 when the statutory conditions are met. It

7 would be inconsistent with this Board\'s

8 ministerial role in implementing the Rail

9 Banking Law to withhold a trail use condition

10 based on speculative concerns about future

11 events that may or may not come to pass.

12 In addition, there is

13 significant precedent for Board flexibility in

14 matters relating to realignment in rail bank

15 rights-of-way in order to accommodate other

16 desired development. In particular, the STB

17 decision of June 11, 1996, Docket No. AB-1

18 (Sub. 192).

19 Americans will use rail trails

20 some 100 million times during the year 2003 for

21 a wide range of non-motorized transportation

22 purposes, including commuting to work, short

23 distance travel within communities, and a full

24 range of fitness and recreation activities.

25 These hard numbers underscore a simple truth.

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2 Rail banking and rail-to-trail conversions are

3 good public policy that has connected people

4 and communities across the country.

5 New York City stands on the

6 threshold of creating one of the world\'s most

7 unique and special places by implementing this

8 policy. We hope the Surface Transportation

9 Board and others will share that vision and

10 allow this project to move forward.

11 Let me also add, that after

12 hearing some of the discussion today, I

13 certainly will go back to our offices and see

14 what type of research we can come up with

15 regarding your CITU adverse question.

16 THE CHAIRMAN: That is a

17 difficult one. I appreciate you\'re doing that.

18 Thank you.

19 MR. NEUMAN: My name is Tom

20 Neuman. I am the executive director of Forty

21 Plus Foundation.

22 Forty Plus has been a

23 cornerstone nonprofit here in New York City

24 since 1939. What we do is we help unemployed

25 New Yorkers get reemployed. We have placed

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2 over 100,000 people in gainful employment. We

3 look forward to having an opportunity to work

4 with the STB in reference to a program that

5 could help the employment needs here in New

6 York.

7 We really have a question in

8 light of the public outcry to save and preserve

9 the Highline. We have been involved with

10 programs since 1986 to look at the

11 reaffirmation or reuse in some fashion. And

12 the impact is not just on the neighborhoods

13 that the Highline goes through currently, but

14 as the Highline was originally designed would

15 impact the entire city.

16 The question here is: What is

17 the Board\'s position on reactivation as opposed

18 to, in the interest that you have in demolition

19 or certificate of interim use.

20 And that could impact the

21 direction that our group intends to move, since

22 there is a huge demand for both freight and

23 mass transit, that in light of the development

24 that that particular area is going to have,

25 there is a calling need that hasn\'t been

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2 addressed or seems to be an opportunity to

3 address it in the future. The Highline could

4 hold a very, very vital link as a historic

5 lifeline and continue to do so.

6 Again, Forty Plus, we have

7 helped many executives who have historically

8 been let go from employment because they felt

9 their usefulness was long gone. We view the

10 Highline the same way. We feel that it still

11 has great use and continues to have a use.

12 We thank you very much for that

13 opportunity.

14 THE CHAIRMAN: I thank all of

15 you.

16 You know, it is, I think you

17 have learned now from the hearing today our

18 agency is not the normal one that folks in New

19 York City deal with. We don\'t often hear from

20 just members of public about matters in the

21 public interest. We usually hear from

22 railroads and shippers or parties and entities

23 who are directly affected by rail service in

24 one way or another by and large. It\'s unusual

25 for us.

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2 It shows just how important this

3 matter is to the public of New York that you

4 have all taken time. Almost every one of you

5 do important things beyond sitting in a hearing

6 room all afternoon to speak to us.

7 I just want to offer my

8 appreciation on behalf of the Board that all of

9 you have taken the time to come here. It\'s not

10 for naught. We do appreciate it. And I am

11 listening to what everybody has to say.

12 I do want to just take a minute,

13 not to ask a question; I want to make a

14 comment.

15 I think people who don\'t deal

16 with us and our doctrines every day may be

17 listening to a lot of the discussion here and

18 may be scratching their heads and saying: What

19 the heck is this agency that we have never

20 heard of. Why can\'t they just grant this?

21 It\'s something that everybody wants. The City

22 wants, most of the parties are for it.

23 And the answer is that we are

24 ultimately governed by the laws that Congress

25 has passed on this subject, and that does limit

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2 just what we can do. And that\'s why I started

3 the hearing by saying what we can do is not

4 unlimited. There is a relatively narrow range

5 of answer of ultimately the things that we can

6 order be done here.

7 And I have to say that there are

8 a lot of requests that have been made of us.

9 And part of the reason that we had this hearing

10 was to listen to the parties and be able to

11 have a give and take and to hear from the

12 public what are the issues the parties face,

13 and what is in the public interest.

14 The reason that we\'re in the

15 place that we are is the Board looked at public

16 interest 15 years ago or 14 years ago and

17 determined that tearing it down was what was in

18 the public interest. Times and circumstances

19 change, and we understand that. And the

20 question is: What do our doctrines mean and

21 how do they affect us here. We have to go back

22 and look at that, look at the options that are

23 there.

24 I can tell you that we certainly

25 have not made up our minds. We\'re here to

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2 listen, to learn and hear what people have to

3 say. Hopefully, we have had a couple of, you

4 know, very pointed, and I understand probably

5 as many of you, somewhat arcane, they are

6 arcane to anybody, legal questions that are out

7 there, but they are unfortunately the things

8 that are governing us.

9 So again, I want to thank

10 everyone for coming today, taking time out of

11 your schedules, doing the things you all do in

12 your life other than sitting in this hearing

13 room.

14 I will take what I think again

15 probably is an unusual step and say: Does

16 anyone have any questions for us?

17 (No response.)

18 THE CHAIRMAN: If not, again,

19 thank you all for coming. Thank you for

20 submitting your testimony.

21 If there are no further

22 witnesses, the hearing stands the adjourned.

23 (At 4:50 o\'clock p.m., the

24 Proceedings were concluded.)

25

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2 C E R T I F I C A T E

3

4 STATE OF NEW YORK )

5 ) SS:

6 COUNTY OF NEW YORK )

7

8 I, MARGARET DEVINE, a Registered

9 Professional (Stenotype) Reporter and Notary

10 Public of the State of New York, do hereby

11 certify that the foregoing transcript of the

12 Proceedings taken at the time and place

13 aforesaid, is a true and correct transcription

14 of my shorthand notes.

15

16 I further certify that I am neither

17 counsel for nor related to any party to this

18 action, nor in any wise interested in the

19 result or outcome thereof.

20

21 IN WITNESS WHEREOF, I have hereunto

22 set my hand this 8th day of August, 2003.

23

24 \_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_

25 Margaret Devine, R.P.R.

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