Next City has published a big story about the progress of the 11th Street Bridge Park, the proposal to turn old bridge pillars (no longer needed to support a bridge that carries cars) into an elevated, linear park crossing the Anacostia River.
The park calls to mind New York City's
High Line but, as Next City says, they actually have nothing in common besides the fact that they would both be linear parks.
The 11th Street Bridge Park would ... have more active uses than the High Line, which is essentially a planted walkway. “Interestingly,” Katz says of the 170 community meetings he held to hear residents’ desires for the park, “we heard the same things from both sides of the river — whether it’s a Capitol Hill million-dollar house or Barry Farm,” a neighborhood-sized public housing complex east of the river. These include an environmental education center, urban agriculture, performance space and food sales. Kratz also envisions a streetcar stop in the middle of the bridge, on a yet-to-be-funded line that would cross the Anacostia River.
Even the National Park Service, not often the District's best partner in park projects, is on board with the 11th Street Bridge Park, the article says. But here's the rub: the park needs $35 million. That's $25 million to build and $10 million for an endowment for all those active uses. The project has already raised a half-million dollars; $1 million will meet its "pre-capital campaign goal" and allow the project to move forward.
Read more
here.