Planned High Line-Style Park Over I-95 Gets $12M Cash Infusion

NEW ROCHELLE, NY — Describing the award of a $12 million federal grant as "huge news," New Rochelle Mayor Noam Bramson announced that the city's ambitious planned Linc project is getting a boost just as billions in new federal infrastructure spending is set to become available in the coming decades.

The LINC project will repurpose a portion of Memorial Highway (and the overpass extension to I-95) into a linear, High Line-style park. The LINC is intended to bind together the Lincoln Avenue neighborhood with downtown. It is hoped that the reimagining of the traffic corridor will allow for better, safer access to transit and employment and, at the same time, create new open space and recreation areas for tens of thousands.

Officials said that by adding the new federal award to state money already allocated to the LINC through the DRI (Downtown Revitalization Initiative), New Rochelle is now closer than ever to seeing a the unique city park becoming a reality.

Moving the park form the drawing board to ground-breaking will not only improve the quality of life for New Rochelle residents, but Bramson said, but will also have important social justice ramifications .

"Memorial Highway in its current form is a classic example of a car-centric planning disaster — a six-lane overbuilt thoroughfare, originally intended to connect the New England Thruway with the Hutchinson River and Cross County Parkways, but instead simply dumping excess traffic into local roads never designed to accept it," Bramson wrote in a social media post. "Even worse, it is emblematic of the injustice visited upon many Black and Brown neighborhoods around the country that were either bulldozed or severed from their surroundings by acres of concrete. The LINC presents a rare opportunity to heal a historic wound and build a better, more equitable future for everyone in New Rochelle."

The source of the funds was the federal RAISE program. Bramson credited the success of the bid for the highly-competitive grant to New Rochelle’s planning and development team. He also thanked President Biden, Secretary Buttigieg, Senator Schumer, Senator Gillibrand and Congressman Bowman for helping to champion the project at the federal level.

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