Activities Today
In recent years, as the economy of the northern Manhattan has lifted, the status of park has improved and is no longer a haven for petty crime and other unsavory activities. The New York Restoration Project (chaired by Bette Midler) has been working since 1999 to restore the park.
Around the start of the 21st century, the waterfront Speedway was rehabilitated and reopened as the Harlem River portion of the Manhattan Waterfront Greenway.
According to city plans, by 2013 the High Bridge will be rehabilitated and reopened for pedestrians and bicyclists. The 1200–foot–long, 116-foot-tall High Bridge walkway was closed to regular public use around 1970.
May 19, 2007 saw the opening of New York City's first legal mountain bike trails and dirt jumps in Highbridge Park. New York City Mountain Bike Association in association with New York City Parks and the International Mountain Bicycling Association (IMBA) has been working together on the trails and the opening weekend featured a festival and cross country mountain bike.
As of late 2011, despite the efforts of both the New York Restoration Project and the City Parks Dept., the infrastructure of the park has decayed significantly and has not yet been fully restored.
Read more about this topic: Highbridge Park
Famous quotes containing the words activities and/or today:
“I am admonished in many ways that time is pushing me inexorably along. I am approaching the threshold of age; in 1977 I shall be 142. This is no time to be flitting about the earth. I must cease from the activities proper to youth and begin to take on the dignities and gravities and inertia proper to that season of honorable senility which is on its way.”
—Mark Twain [Samuel Langhorne Clemens] (1835–1910)
“These native villages are as unchanging as the woman in one of their stories. When she was called before a local justice he asked her age. “I have 45 years.” “But,” said the justice, “you were forty-five when you appeared before me two years ago.” “Señor Judge,” she replied proudly, drawing herself to her full height, “I am not of those who are one thing today and another tomorrow!””
—State of New Mexico, U.S. public relief program (1935-1943)