Scheme would have turned disused railway viadiuct into park and wildlife haven
Plans to bring a version of New York’s High Line park to a disused railway viaduct in north London have been “paused with immediate effect” because of a lack of funds to bankroll the scheme.
James Corner Field Operations’ and vPPR’s Camden Highline scheme was approved in 2023 but the client team said yesterday that it had been unable to raise enough money due to the “series of sustained economic shocks” which the UK has faced over the past five years.
The project would have transformed a 1.3km stretch of the York Way viaduct into a linear park and wildlife corridor.
While the team said the rise in construction costs in recent years had been factored into the scheme’s modelling, it said this year’s emerging energy price rises caused by the Iran conflict had been a “step change”.
Increasing pressure on funders, charities and public bodies had reduced available capital for community projects as support is focused on essential and statutory services, the team said.
The project has been in development for a decade with James Corner Field Operations, which worked on the original 2.3km-long New York High Line with Diller Scofidio & Renfro, appointed to the scheme with vPPR in 2021 after winning a design competition.
The firms beat a high-profile shortlist for the job including Adjaye Associates, Zaha Hadid Architects, AHMM, Hawkins Brown, BIG, LDA Design, AL_A, Weston Williamson and its former New York collaborators Diller Scofidio & Renfro.
The project team also included engineer AKT, garden designer Piet Oudolf, sustainability consultant Atelier Ten, planning consultant Lichfields and artist and curator Hew Locke, with Avondale Construction expected to win the main contractor role.
But it is understood that little or no work on the scheme was ever carried out.
Camden Highline chief executive Simon Pitkeathley said: “To the thousands of people who joined our walking tours, the hundreds who supported our planning application, the 1,200 donors, the 530 schoolchildren who took part in our workshops, and the many members of our team and volunteer squad over the past decade, we are truly grateful and deeply sorry.
“Despite your support, and the outstanding advice and commitment of experts across many fields, this extraordinarily ambitious challenge has, for now, proved a stretch too far.
“Green infrastructure in cities matters. Finding space for it is rare. And battling through the treacle to make projects like this happen is difficult, lengthy and expensive. Which is why today’s announcement is so painful to make.”
Richard Terry, chair of the Camden Highline Trustees, added: “The work is not lost. The planning, creativity and imagination that brought the Camden Highline this far will be carefully preserved by the trustees, so that whether it is us or others who one day pick up the mantle again, the project’s achievements can be carried forward for the future.
“It is, in that sense, a time capsule: a record of what has been imagined, designed and built in partnership with the community, waiting to be reawakened when the time and conditions are right once more.”
The project team argued that despite the decision to pause the scheme it had created “long-lasting value” by creating a community support network that had brought together residents, businesses, volunteers, funders, landowners and designers.
No comments yet