A breach of public trust?

The prominent landscape architecture firm, Nelson Byrd Woltz, appears to be caught in a controversy brewing in midtown Manhattan. According to the NY Times, the latest plans the NYC's Hudson Yards has added a previously unmentioned 20 foot high concrete wall stretching along 720 feet of the High Line. The article includes a site map and some diagrams to help explain the proposal.

For a sense of how dramatic this change might be, the Times offers this perspective:

Corey Johnson, speaker of the City Council, who represents the district, called it a breach of public trust. Luxury buildings that have sprouted beside the High Line have increasingly walled off what was the park’s original charm and fascination — the urban adjacencies and “Rear Window” views into and onto old warehouses and tenements. To wall off the remaining northern- and westernmost stretch of the park, Mr. Johnson said, would betray “what public officials negotiated a decade ago.”

The High Line and the Hudson Yards represent an incredibly complex public-private relationship that has taken decades to develop, but has also seen increased tension in recent years. This could still boil over or blow over. Keep an eye on it.