Friends of the High Line seeks a Director of Urban Industrial Reuse Network.
Friends of the High Line raises 98% of the High Line’s annual budget. Owned by the City of New York, the High Line is a public park maintained, operated, and programmed by Friends of the High Line, in partnership with the New York City Department of Parks and Recreation.
In the 17 years since Friends of the High Line (FHL) was founded and the six years since the first section of the High Line opened to the public, people across the country and the world have been inspired to look at their own cities and create innovative public spaces. FHL has been approached by hundreds of organizations, community groups, city agencies, and leaders trying to catalyze similar projects. The individuals involved in these new projects reach out to us, informally, to learn from our experience in a number of key areas—project advocacy, community outreach, fundraising, design, operations, and more.
In response, FHL has created a new initiative: Field Building. FHL’s Field Building initiative seeks to create a larger network of similar urban adaptive re-use projects to facilitate broader discussions on the challenges these projects face and how to make them successful.
Reporting to the Vice President for Planning and Design, the Director of Urban Industrial Reuse Network is a full-time, year round position that will coordinate this initiative. The position will leverage FHL’s history and experience to create a larger field of projects and practitioners around which best practices can be collectively developed. This is an evolving initiative that the Director will have a key role in shaping. As a kick start, FHL will host a two-day convening with approximately 30 representatives from projects nationwide. Goals for the initiative include:
- Host a series of convenings with project representatives to help shape the program
- Build a collaborative network of individuals, organizations, city representatives, and thought leaders
- Collect data on projects in various stages of development including location, context, advocacy, governance, funding, value capture, etc. and coordinate the digital infrastructure to manage, process, and share the data
- Map the field to identify challenges, opportunities, and best practices in order to establish resource allocation and planning for the direction of the network
- Commission white papers and case studies that explore in depth key challenges facing these projects
- Establish partnerships with scholars and academic institutions
- Represent the organization in the local and global community
- Facilitate and direct networking, discourse, and conference planning
- Work directly with FHL’s Executive Director, Board and leadership teams (Planning and Design, Development/Fundraising, Programming, Maintenance and Operations) to be an outward facing voice for the initiative
- Establish goals and metrics in order to identify program success
- Evaluate progress using surveys, requests for feedback, and other evaluative methods