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SlipNOT® Safety Integrated into New York High Line Park

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May 31, 2010

High Line Park, the West Side’s most innovative park built on the old High Line railway opens to the public. This 1.5 mile long park is 30 feet above the busy New York streets and shows a spectacular mixture of aged warehouses, old brick factories, trendy shops, newly constructed and renovated housing and glimpses of the Hudson River amongst the lush grasses and green vegetation strategically planted.

Originally built in the 1930’s to create a safer alternative for freight lines to transport goods through the city, the High Line connected factories and warehouses allowing trains to roll directly inside buildings. Milk, meat, produce, raw and manufactured goods could come and go without causing any traffic or street level safety hazards (www.thehighline.org). The High Line was left vacant during the 1980’s and became overgrown. After years of legislative conflict between city officials and Friends of High Line, a local non-profit organization, the historical landmark was saved from demolition.

The Friends of the High Line launched an open design competition in 2003 for ideas on transforming the High Line into a functional park. The competition was not necessarily held in order to choose a winner and build that design, but instead to pull together many ideas on what the park should be. They received 720 applications from 36 countries! After receiving feedback from the public, the Friends of the High Line accepted proposals to begin selecting a design team that could meet their needs (www.thehighline.org) James Corner Field Operations, Diller Scofidio and Renfro and the Dutch planting designer Piet Oudolf were chosen.

Not only did the design engineers and architects have to take aesthetics into mind when renovating the High Line, they also had to think about public safety. They were looking for a functional yet aesthetic metal flooring material that would provide the utmost protection against slip and fall accidents. They contacted
SlipNOT® Metal Safety Flooring requesting information on their unique stainless steel non slip metal products. SlipNOT® slip resistant stainless steel products maintain their high coefficient of friction in all dry, wet or oily conditions keeping pedestrians safe. SlipNOT® products have a long service life and have extremely high traction no matter which way they are stepped on.

The design and engineering teams decided to specify SlipNOT® slip resistant ¼” stainless steel plate for landing plates and decking along with SlipNOT® non slip stairs into the High Line project. The non slip stair were constructed of grade 2 stainless steel plate and perforated plate, coated with SlipNOT® patented anti slip surface and can be found on the Gansevoort St., the 14th St. and the Southern Spur staircases. The ¼” landing plates and decking were cut into custom shapes and are located at the mid-point and top of the stair cases as well as the decking by the elevators.

Working with engineers on the project, Jeff Baker, SlipNOT® Sales Representative said, “;The motivation behind the original construction of The High Line was the safety of New York citizens; to keep them out of harms way from freight lines which ran at street level. Still today the design group behind the revitalization of the line wants to keep safety at the fore front and is doing so by using SlipNOT®’s stainless steel plates and non slip stairs”

The section of the High Line Park that has opened attracts patrons and tourists to surrounding neighborhood art galleries, retail shops, restaurants and museums. With vast amounts of foot traffic it was crucial that the city use dependable and long lasting anti-slip flooring.

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