CDOT, along with numerous community partners, is building the Bloomingdale Trail and Park– a multi-use linear park that will be the first of its kind in Chicago.
As a big fan of New York City’s remarkable High Line park, I was pleased to read in the recent Rails to Trails magazine about a similar park under development in Chicago – roughly scheduled to be useable by fall 2014. Like the High Line, the 2.7 mile Bloomingdale Trail – now under construction – will transform an elevated rail into a recreational trail/park. But there are differences – the Bloomingdale Trail will permit biking (it’s designed to be multi-use); it’s twice the length of the High Line and it runs through four still-bustling urban neighborhoods in northwest Chicago – Wicker Park, Bucktown, Humboldt Park and Logan Square (the High Line does this in spots, as I recall.) For more details, visit the “Reframing Ruin” photo exhibit at the Center for Neighborhood Technology (1741 N. Western Avenue) about the Bloomingdale rail – pre-transformation (presumably what the photo above portrays) into a trail. for more details see: http://bloomingdaletrail.org