Queens' Own High Line-Like Park Lands $117M Boost

QUEENS, NY — A $117 million pile of green is going to help complete the High Line-like Queens greenway.

The coming park — dubbed, naturally, the Queensway — along an abandoned rail line received a coveted and competitive federal grant, Mayor Eric Adams announced Wednesday.

The grant — which is the largest received by Adams' administration — will help complete the project's second phase, a 1.3-mile greenway extension into Forest Park, officials said.

"With over a mile of new greenway paths for pedestrians and cyclists, the QueensWay will provide new connections between neighborhoods and give New Yorkers a safe way to get around and enjoy the fresh air," said Sue Donoghue, the city's parks commissioner, in a statement.

The long-awaited Queensway has been compared to Manhattan's High Line in that it's a park project transforming a vacant rail line.

But the park proposal has been controversial as many advocates instead wanted to use the Long Island Rail Road's abandoned Rockaway Beach Branch line as the backbone for the QueensLink, a subway rail connection.

The rivalry between the projects even extended to this week, as state senators added $10 million for a QueensLink environmental review to their budget proposal.

QueensLink representatives, in a statement, argued both parks and transit should go together along the line.

"If the city saves space alongside the paths for future transit, it will one day be a corridor for subway riders as well," their statement reads. "It is imperative that Mayor Eric Adams and the MTA stand by their previous commitment to not allow park development to block future transit restoration.

"If the city fails to design both transit and parks together, Queens will forever remain a divided borough and forfeit the economic growth that a new subway line would bring."

The QueensWay, however, so far has received more support from Adams, who kicked off the project in 2022 with a $35 million investment for its first phase, a 5-acre park with nearly a mile of greenway in Forest Hills.

The final QueensWay would run through Rego Park, Forest Hills, Glendale, Forest Park, Woodhaven, Richmond Hill and Ozone Park officials said.