A piece of the rock
Posted Under: Business, Culture, Jersey City, Personal, Politics
Robert Hammond (Friends of the High Line) left, and Steve Gucciardo, Embankment Preservation Coaliton
More and more to me, the 6th Street Embankment is becoming that symbolic line in the sand in the battle to save our city’s soul. I ain’t kiddin’. The Embankment Preservation Coalition has been fighting to save this hulking vestige of our broad shouldered, sweaty, smelly, toxic past for more than a decade. This week they held their annual members and supporters meeting at Grace Church, Downtown, and got what I thought was a great pep talk from Friends of the High Line Co-Founder Robert Hammond.
The High Line is the linear park in NYC that rises ten feet above the city’s west side and will run for a mile-and-a-half through several neighborhoods. Though different than the embankment in structure and length, the High Line is similar in its historic significance. The two projects are examples of what a handful of people can do with some guts and good graphics.
“Never underestimate the power of a great logo,” Hammond told the full house at Grace. “People will look at a flier or an ad and say: Hey, they have a cool logo, they must have something going on.”
The EPC website ain’t as flashy as the FOH’s, but in many ways, the EPC’s job has been way harder. Hammond had Manhattan’s West Side and $100 million from the city of New York, not to mention all the celebs who ultimately jumped on the bandwagon. The EPC has had to fight a single-minded, wacko developer and city administration(s) that seemed to lack a clue about how to help. (You can read about the group and their work, including the latest on the status of the embankment here.)
“You have to show people what this means to them,” said Hammond during his upbeat Power Point presentation, showing some of the earliest efforts of the FOH, including work by professional photographers they’d invited to see the High Line. “This picture has done as much for the High Line as anything else. It showed people what it was and what we wanted to save.” (Hear my August radio interview with Hammond here.)
A lot of us old timers have lived with the embankment – which we always called “the tracks” while they were active (as in “Yo, let’s hit the tracks!”), or “the trestle” after Conrail ceased operations there – for all our lives. We’ve taken it for granted. But a lot of the people who are involved with the EPC don’t have that same connection. That’s not a knock on them. It’s a compliment. They don’t need to have heard the “moo” from the cars full of live freight on their way to the waterfront to appreciate that the embankment is a six-long super block of our history.
These are critical days in the effort to save the embankment from being torn down and turned into ugly apartment buildings. The developer is playing hard ball and he has a lot more money for a lot more lawyers than the EPC. For too many years, we have watched as our city’s cultural and historical legacy has been bulldozed in the name of economic development, our political “leaders” waving the biggest banners. Our frequent indifference to preservation efforts is a bit embarrassing, but it’s not too late to join the chorus.
“Make Our Park!”
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Reader Comments
Just to keep score, the EPC should be applauded for fighting the good fight, but the Friends of the Loew’s should step aside because they have (for now) succeeded in saving a piece of our City’s history from the wrecking ball. Gotcha.
Um, I’m a complicated guy? I’m not sure the EPC would automatically be the group to manage an embankment park, either. As for FOL, I don’t know how else to give them credit for their great work. I thought I made that clear in the initial piece. (I am again bowing in their direction right now.) But this is comparing bananas to papayas. I appreciate your passion, though.
I grew up half a block from the High Line, and when I moved to JC ten years ago, one of the appeals to me was the great collection of industrial “ruins” like the Embankment and the Powerhouse. It has been dismaying to watch politicians pay lip service to this great resource and then turn around to let the developers knock down these treasures and build an incredibly banal modern city without soul. I agree that the Embankment is becoming that line in the sand, that last straw. Having watched the Friends of the High Line take a lost cause and succeed beyond their wildest dreams, I do hope some of that will rub off on the EPC. I’m sorry I missed the presentation, and I wonder how much Mr. Hammond spoke about how they were able to turn around the property owners from seeing the High Line as an ugly eyesore to being an incredible asset that would increase their property values. I think this is the crucial step that saved the High Line. Like it or not, the fact that this park became the cause celebré for the ultra chic is why it succeeded. And yes, to old-timers like myself, there is something lost. But I would rather have the park along with the starchitecture high rises than for them to have torn it all down and just built a few more banal blocks of LeFrak City.
Titling the piece “Free the Loew’s Theater” makes your admiration level for the FOL pretty clear. The word that’s coming to mind isn’t really “complicated”.
So I’m still pondering your analogy (that ‘passion’ I guess), and here’s where it doesn’t hold water imho: I wouldn’t expect the EPC to manage the park, and the management of it wouldn’t become an issue until the work to create the park is COMPLETE. I think the same holds true for the Loew’s – the restoration of the theater, both aesthetically and operationally, is still very much a work in progress, requiring a lot more blood, sweat, and tears, let alone fund-raising and grant-writing. It is years away, and the FOL have had to claw their way toward getting the project as far as they have because of abysmal leadership from the city and absurd battles over the lease and budgets. If/when the building becomes operational 12 months a year, if/when the building is brought up to fire/safety code so as to allow the venue to become fully usable upstairs and down, and if/when the numerous aesthetic restoration projects get completed, and THEN the FOL are holding the utilization of the space back from achieving its potential, maybe THEN i can take calls for them to step aside and “free” the theater to be controlled by groups whose interests and experience lie exclusively in presentation. (holy run-on sentence).
Where does the latino community stand on the issue? Seems to me if they realized that instead of looking out their window at a benevolent sleeping Giant they would have light, privacy, and community encroached upon they might feel inclined to give their
support the EPC. Perhaps, if they haven’t already, apply political pressure on the right people.
By the way, don’t WE have any celebs?
Susan. You may remember the little garden and gathering spot that the Latino families from 6th Street maintained for years in the shadow of the embankment between Grove and Erie. It really showed an appreciation of the structure as a centerpiece of the neighborhood. But those families are mostly gone now. The general sense from the Latino community, I think, is ambivalence. Councilman Mariano Vega has expressed support for it. I don’t know if he represents any constituency anymore, though.
As for celebrities in/from JC. This list suggests not really. I think I recall a hip hop artist or two, and Flip Wilson. Robert “Kool” Bell? Nathan Lane? Martha Stewart?