High Line-Style Queens Park Moves Closer to Reality with $117M Federal Grant
A Federal grant totaling $123.6 million from the Reconnecting Communities Program was recently secured by the city administration, of which $117 million will be allocated towards the long-planned construction of an elevated 7-mile park near the Queens neighborhood of Forest Hills dubbed QueensWay. Similar to Manhattan’s High Line Park, the awarded money will help fund a 1.3-mile stretch of the park to be constructed atop a defunct Long Island Rail Road track. Although a construction timeline has yet to be announced, $35 million has been advanced by the city to design an initial phase of the project. However, a rival project dubbed QueensLink that would revive the tracks as a subway line is being pitched by some residents and local officials that say the area is a “transit-starved section of the borough,” but supporters say that the “building of the rail line would not preclude adding a park as well.” It is possible that the New York State Senate’s recommended spending of $10 million for an environmental review of the QueensLink rail line in the recently released proposed budget may conflict with the Adams administration’s push for the park project.