Every time Mayor de Blasio dumps on Michael Bloomberg’s legacy, he trips over an embarrassing, obvious truth: namely, the extraordinary material improvements Bloomberg brought to the city.
They’re accomplishments of which de Blasio and his mostly pygmies-and-eunuchs brain trust are wholly incapable.
Take this weekend’s opening of High Line at the Rail Yards, the third major phase of the great park which will now stretch from Gansevoort to West 34th Street.
The new leg beginning at 30th Street will loop westward around the train yard almost to the Hudson River, affording views that will evolve over time as new towers rise on a platform above the yard.
It will be very interesting to see if de Blasio attends Saturday’s dedication; as a tangible testament to Bloomberg’s vision, it might be too much for the new mayor to stomach.
De Blasio’s people recently released a promotional video meant to lure the Democratic National Convention to the Barclays Center in 2016.
It touts our town as, “Five boroughs, one city” — rather at odds with de Blasio’s “Tale of two cities” rhetoric (a contradiction somehow ignored in media coverage of the film).
The film’s opening image? A streetscape shot taken from the High Line Park — a Bloomberg accomplishment that can only strike Team de Blasio as largesse visited upon the metropolis by a beneficent higher civilization.
The magnificent park — an instant, free-to-all landmark visited by 4.8 million people a year — catalyzed tens of billions of dollars in economic development that reclaimed a vast swath of Manhattan from 100 years of decay.
Although the park’s inspiration and basic conception are legitimately credited to Friends of the High Line founders Robert Hammond and Joshua David, its actual creation is mostly a product of Bloomberg’s muscle.
He saved the crumbling rail trestle from all-but-certain demolition. He rezoned the avenues astride it so that new development would catch the wave of expectations for an improbable landscaped walkway 30 feet above street level.
The city paid for most of the project (with the help of a few well-publicized private donations) and designed the whole thing, which was built entirely by the city’s Economic Development Corp.
Bloomberg also nailed down indispensable corporate cooperation to make the dream real: for example, CSX railroad’s assent to donating the trestle, and Related Cos.’ agreement to chip in $30 million and to integrate its Hudson Yards buildings and plazas with the park’s northernmost third.
Is Bill de Blasio up to the task of achieving such a momentous undertaking?
Bloomberg certainly dropped a few big balls as a city planner, from the mess he made of Tavern on the Green to the failure to rezone East Midtown. But those must be weighed against a larger legacy of economic stimulation, development and (mostly) enlightened preservation.
De Blasio, meanwhile, toys with “affordable housing” goals that likely can’t be achieved with or without help from the Wall Street and real-estate industries he loathes.
Let’s see if he shows his face at the park dedication with its implicit, but unmistakable challenge: Match this!