‘Boston’s High Line’: Can a new waterfront park live up to the hype?

Expectations keep building for the waterfront park that the Trustees of Reservations wants to build in Boston.

Recall that the nonprofit, which owns some 27,000 acres of parkland and beaches in Massachusetts, wants to build what its president, Barbara Erickson, has described as a “jaw-dropping” park along the city’s waterfront.

A July 17 piece in the Globe quotes the Trustees comparing what they’re trying to do with Manhattan’s High Line, the hugely popular conversion of an unused elevated rail line that helped transform the area around it.

Jaw-dropping. High Line 2.0—can the Boston park live up to such hype?

There are challenges, to be sure. The biggest perhaps is navigating Boston’s development processes (the Trustees normally operates outside of the city). Then there’s the competition for the increasingly valuable waterfront property itself.

The Trustees are for now moving forward. Per the Globe’s Megan Woolhouse, the nonprofit has hired planners from the Rose Kennedy Greenway as well as attorneys “with reputations for understanding the sharp nuances of city and state processes.”

Photo via Boston Children’s Museum

And the group has also brought on the landscape architect behind the Smith Family Waterfront Park outside of the Boston Children’s Museum and the Brooklyn Bridge Park along that New York borough’s waterfront.

All this before the group has selected a site. Stay tuned.

• Trustees group looks to Boston for next project [Globe]
• New Boston waterfront park will be ‘jaw-dropping,’ group says [Curbed Boston]