The High Line, which opened in 2009, did this? Or the 2005 rezoning?

"Rezoning portions of the West Chelsea area from M1-5 light manufacturing zoning to allow mixed commercial and residential development; eliminating the existing Special Mixed Use (MX-3) District."

Yes, please let's keep everything the way it was/is the same in perpetuity! Things change, sometimes it sucks, but in this case they turned something awfully ugly into a really cool thing...probably the coolest thing I saw in NYC last October.

Isn't the point of "redevelopment" to change the neighborhood? Otherwise it's just "improvement".

Totally with shotsix @2 here.

I was reading that op-ed a few days ago in the NY Times, and my reaction was, "I guess New York has its John Foxes too." (Did I get that dude's name right? You all know who I mean.)

And to think the folks who designed the High Line are designing our future waterfront. I'm curious though. For all these people who say the waterfront park will become a magnet for the homeless--how does that dynamic work out with the High Line?

Gentrification. Great news if you own; the worst possible news for renters. Which is sad, really, because everybody wants to live in a nice, clean neighborhood. Manhattan seems to be driving everyone out who doesn't own or can't afford five-figure rent. I chuckle when - in old films and such - Greenwich Village was the affordable (maybe even cheap) part of Manhattan. I have a friend who lives there and shares his very small 1-bedroom apartment with 2 other people for about $4200 a month. It ain't anything spectacular, either.

Also, the city government has struck down a lot of rent control laws. People, for instance, who make $200K a year can't be buffered from rent increases on an $800/mo. flat anymore (which sounds fair on the surface). Furthermore, it's true that landlords throughout the city are doing anything legally possible to get rid of anyone in a rent-controlled apartment so that they can double, triple, even quadruple the rent (remember the Faye Dunaway fiasco?).

The High Line is just the latest course in this real estate blood feast. Maybe there was a time when landlords wanted their buildings filled with decent, hard-working folk who paid their rent on time. That era seems too be over. What's paramount now is: How can I squeeze every possible dollar of rent out of every possible "improvement?" The popularity of the High Line sealed the old neighborhood's fate. On a smaller scale it's sort of what happened to Belltown in the 90s when it became a popular destination (and subsequently ruined - IMHO - the neighborhood).

It's not the High Line that did this, it's the overwhelming wave of wealthy young app creators and brand ambassadors and shoe designers and courier bag logo consultants and marketing concept artists and whatever the hell that have done it. Everyone else has to get the hell out. Immigrants can stay in the Bronx.

Seattle's not going to have that problem because there's nothing to displace, and nothing to displace it with. Regardless of planning, the waterfront will gradually be entirely filled in with medium-rise suburban-style mirror-glass offices set in campuses. These people will need places to eat, but the City Council's resolute opposition to commercial uses of any kind will leave them bereft, until the Council realizes their mistake and fills the place with Chipotle, Quiznos, Sbarro, and other riDQlousness. Through an oversight in the regulations the whole thing will eventually be replaced by a 250,000 sq. ft. Fred Meyer store.

None of these businesses will be allowed to have signs.

Any interest out there to salvage a three-block section of the Viaduct, between, say Jackson & Yesler? Elevators at either end. Top level grassy w benches & tables; services (coffee, sandwiches, souvenirs, porta-potties) on the covered lower deck. Get the Ferris Wheel guy to run it.

Sign or no sign, Fnarf, I would love a Dairy Queen within the city limits. (No offense to Full Tilt, Molly Moon or Cupcake Royale for their ice cream efforts, of course.)

We don't always want what's best for us.

Lord, whatever. Look, I miss the glory days of Mother and all of the other awesome underground clubs in the meatpacking district ("West Chelsea" my shiny metal ass), but let's get real: nobody who had a gallery or club or whatever there was suddenly exiled from the city when the zoning changed and the rents went up.

Thirty years ago, the cool clubs and art spaces were all in the Village. Now some of them are in Brooklyn and Queens. Where will they be in 2040? Somewhere else.

Whining about how things used to be more awesome and dangerous (and dangerously awesome) is the #1 hobby of New Yorkers with too much spare time on their hands. It's really best not to pay any attention to it.

@7, you are SO full of crap. ESCALATORS, not elevators! How could you? Guy-ee!

But otherwise, yes.

@4 I actually live not that far from the Highline and I've never seen a homeless person there. I think it's because the park the staircases and elevators leading up to the park are closed at night. Also the place is really heavily patrolled by special park guards that keep people out of the landscaping and whatnot. Every time I've been to the Highline it's been very crowded.

Most of the homeless people in lower Chelsea seem to hang out around the Salvation Army on 14th.

I've lived in Chelsea for twenty years (good old-fashioned tiny, impossible rent-stabilized apartment). I use the High Line all the time: to relax, to read, to draw. I love it.

This neighborhood has lost a lot of sky as the condos have gone up in the last few years: every gas station, vacant lot and two-story building for blocks in every direction has been replaced by brand-new towers for rich people. The High Line has given some of that sky back, and not just to the rich people who made it happen.

Yes, it gets crowded on summer weekends and nice afternoons. But my morning coffee and start-the-day sketching sessions are fine with that.

Gentrification of this and other Manhattan neighborhoods is inevitable and a lot of false nostalgia isn't going to stop it. But since it's inevitable, I say: bring on the dandy new parks.

It'll give us a cheerful place to sit and complain about how the bank branches and Starbucks locations that have taken over all the Eighth Avenue storefronts, and which really have been a blight on the neighborhood.

@13 Anon Troll: Manhattan has plenty of poor people housing? Never saw a rental ad for that when I briefly looked. Or, is poor people the ones who make <$65k?

Though, you're right to a point in that any improvement automatically ties to raised rents. But this becomes a double edged sword. While, we're getting improvements, and making the city more desirable, we're also kicking out the ones who were dedicated to living there originally.

Where it used to be middle class flight out of downtown areas and into the suburbs, now its middle class flight back into the main city. But, the suburbs don't become cheaper. Thus, we're kicking out the poor people PAST the suburbs into the exurbs, and perhaps even into the rural.

I just had a group of friends living on the hill have their rent go up by 33%, and they couldn't find a place to live for what they were paying, so now are living in the exurbs. Gentrification sucks while things are in transition.

I remember fondly one discussion I had with Gloomy Gus, I think it was, when he said that rent's will be coming back in line with salaries, since they were overinflated when compared with the increase in average pay over the past 10 years. I told him that was a load of bullshit. Unless average salaries have skyrocketed in the past couple years, I haven't seen rents go anywhere but up.

What happened to the High Line is a speedy case of what has been happening to Cap Hill. Meanwhile, while rents have been skyrocketing, pay hasn't been (I saw one luxury retailer looking for a full time photographer, blogger, graphic designer, and advertiser all in one person willing to pay $35k, while charging $1000+ for a pair of fugly pants). And, while I sound like a fuddy duddy who doesn't want things to change or improve, really I just don't want traditionally working class or lower neighborhoods to outprice the working class.