First underground park in the world planned

NEW YORK: Visitors from around the world are drawn to New York’s High Line, the elevated park built on defunct railway tracks that have been turned into an oasis of flowers, grasses and trees.

Private planners are now looking deep under Manhattan to create what is billed as the world’s first underground park – the Lowline. The project will be set in a 116-year-old abandoned trolley terminal below the Lower East Side.

Once filled with struggling immigrants, the neighbourhood is a hip location with bars, boutiques and renovated flats in old tenement buildings.

Street-level solar collectors would be used to filter sunshine about 6m down to bedrock.

The team developing the Lowline hopes to start construction in five years. It will cost about $60 million. (R657m) – Sapa-AP