Joint Venture

For anyone who’s ever wondered why it takes so much time and schleppery to build high-quality infrastructure in New York City, the new High Line Connector answers with an emphatic Ya gotta have clout! The one-block-wide, one-block-long, leaf- and CLT-laden appendix to the popular Manhattan skyway park appeared on the West Side practically overnight by local standards—eighteen months from start to finish. The quick and skillful execution is certainly a credit to the project’s designers, Skidmore, Owings & Merrill and James Corner Field Operations, though it likely has as much or more to do with the influence of its backers: Brookfield Properties, owner of the Manhattan West commercial complex that marks the Connector’s eastern terminus; Friends of the High Line, the juiced-up nonprofit that transformed the former Chelsea elevated railway with help from Barry Diller, the Ford Foundation, Estée Lauder, and others; and the Empire State Development Corporation, the 800-pound bureaucratic gorilla whose bond-issuing and eminent-domain powers surely came in handy. While the …