Underground park created with natural light

Manhattan, New York (My9NJ) - Picture an underground park, a safe haven from New York City's frigid winters. It's a possibility!

Innovators at Lowlines Labs are experimenting with new technology, which brings natural light to underground areas.

According to the companies co-founder, Dan Barasch, the "potential of this technology to do lots of different things is really there." 

The core initiatives of their project is to, "produce a beautiful environment for people to spend time in, but it is also possible to grow all sorts of plants including edible plants."

Barasch says the ultimate goal is, "to build the real full-scale Park, which is about 50 times larger than where we are right now, hopefully by 2020."

The project is broken up into two phases. 

The first phase, which is currently open to public, is a small-scale lab where engineers, botanists, and landscapers experiment with the best way to grow plants underground using natural light.

“This is our effort at really describing in layman's terms how the science functions, which essentially is attracting sunlight above the surface of the street directing it down to a distribution system situated just above the sidewalk and then distributing the light underground,” Barasch said.

So far, they have 3,500 different plant species growing underground.

The second phase of this project would be to move it into one of the unused and abandon underground spaces. Currently, Lowline Labs has identified a perfect spot, which is an old trolley terminal. 

You can check out the park Saturdays and Sundays from noon to 6 p.m. through March 2016.