NEW YORK, NY May 08, 2003 —

Click here for a slide show about the High LineNeighborhood activists and the Bloomberg administration are sparring over the future of the far west side of Manhattan. Probably the only thing the sides agree on, is that something constructive and creative should be done with The High Line -- an abandoned overpass, once used to transport meat, produce and goods. WNYC's Fred Mogul reports on a competition to imagine - and eventually develop - plans for the High Line.

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Eli Rios has refinished furniture in a century-old industrial shop in Hell's Kitchen for 16 years. And much of that time he's looked out his windows at the Highline. When he began working here

Rios: this was completely full of garbage, that area down there. And before all this interest, we actually had to go down and clean some of that stuff off, because people would throw things down and they would use some of the items they found there to break open windows, and so on and so forth.

Rios discourages people from trespassing on the Highline, which is owned by the CSX railroad. The structure is thought to be completely sound, but CSX is concerned about liability, among other issues. Rios, however, has hiked on the Highline, with his family, down to the Meatpacking District and back. He's even toured it with a horticulturist.

Rios: You have particular wild roses there, blackberry trees, cherry trees, all kinds of plants. We even found in the corner a certain type of orchid growing there -- in that corner by the barbed wire. Of course someone came later and actually took the remnants of that little orchid, but it grew and there it was.

Now, Rios wants to shape the future of the Highline. He and more than a thousand people from 38 countries have registered for a design competition, sponsored by a group called The Friends of the Highline. One of its leaders, Robert Hammond, says the main point is to generate ideas.

Hammond: We're not looking to anoint one winner that will ultimately be built, but because of the city's support sometime around the end of this year we will be starting to look at what a final design will be, so we think that some of the ideas that come out of the competition will have a high likelihood of being built.

The Highline was built in the early 1930's to get the New York Central line off what came to be known as Death Alley -- where accidents were frequent and fatal. The two-track viaduct ran 37 blocks and connected lower Manhattan with midtown's Hudson Yards. Rail shipping declined after World War II, and in 1980 the last train traversed the Highline -- bearing a shipment of frozen turkeys. Some local property-owners have wanted to demolish it ever since, tangling the Highline in litigation. Unlike Mayor Giuliani, Mayor Bloomberg wants to redevelop it, though probably no time soon. Hammond says the Highline offers the city a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.

Hammond: Where else do you have a chance - a mile and a half running through three of the most interesting neighborhoods - the meat market, Gansevoort market, far west Chelsea, the heart of the Gallery District, and the south of Hell's Kitchen - and you have an opportunity to turn it into seven acres of open space.

Up in his furniture repair studio, Eli Rios is not thinking small. He and a friend produced a plan that includes, well, lots of things he won't talk about, while the competition is on. But one thing he will share is a drawing of his vision for a massive, linear sculpture park.

Rios: The only thing you can see from the street, from the air, from anywhere will be monumental art -- big pieces

Rios points to a model of one sculpture by a fellow artist, out on his porch.

Rios: Imagine this thing 70 feet tall. And part of it looks like when the Twin Towers went down - that part that stayed up? And then it twists, like a helix, like DNA. And at the same time, it's a staircase. You can walk up that. You can climb up that. So it has a lot of things - stairways to heaven, the Twin Towers and DNA - all current topics.

It's easy to pass the Highline and assume it's just another el' - except that it's lower than most elevated tracks and mainly runs up the middle of the block, between buildings, rather than above a major road. Depending on where you are on the West Side, you generally only see little snippets of it. The Highline even burrows right through a few old warehouse-type buildings and brushes up against others. These junctures are ripe with possibility, says landscape architect Cindy Sanders.

Sanders: It's very narrow when you have buildings on both sides. Public uses are most appropriate. I think you'd have a hard time selling an apartment, with people looking in your ground-floor windows or highline-level windows.

Sanders, one of the main designers of Battery Park City, won't disclose any details about her plans for the Highline - other than to say she believes it has to change with the neighborhood, linking the industrial past and the wild present to the evolving future. That's a common theme. Architects from Polshek Partnership, the firm responsible for the Hayden Planetarium addition and many high-profile projects, gathered to discuss how to preserve the organic, overgrown beauty, while making it more accessible. Senior partner Jim Polshek begins

Polshek: The one in Paris has these really gross stores underneath it, almost universally in bad taste. And I hope that whatever comes out of this thing, I hope it's kept as wild in terms of activity, as it is in terms of nature. It should be a place for improvisation.

Todd Schliemann: The idea that it's an elevated garden in the city is magnificent, it's going to have to have a pretty intense use. It can't just be a pretty place to walk, cause you have to make an effort to climb to it

Polshek: If I were doing this, I would make a large part of it into a linear zoo, and create something where butterflies are free, and birds and small mammals and with a little water, a frog or two. And the whole thing would be alive, and periodically, there'd be a curator that would open up the gate, and all the things would run into the city, and there'd be mice and all sorts of rats seagulls there'd be the works.

Before the discussion ends, Polshek, tongue-in-cheek, will also suggest a trolley line and a linear golf course - to the groans of his colleagues. The Friends of the Highline say both professionals and amateurs are submitting entries, and as many as possible will be exhibited in Grand Central Station in July. Furniture refinisher Eli Rios is ready.

Rios: If you have a piece of furniture, and it has a broken leg, try to fix that leg, while you have other people who'd cut that leg right off and make a new one. Taking a piece away devalues. So you try to fix what you have, so that's what I think should be done with the tracks. So monumental art goes on it, and everything else on the bottom just exists. All this, all that - it just exists. The plants - you try to preserve that, because the hardest thing, I think, to preserve, is going to be the plants that are up there right now.

For WNYC, I'm Fred Mogul.