NYTimes: In Brooklyn a Fight Over Paving Over Parkland for Skateboarding

[Tear Up a Trick]

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/02/29/nyregion/skatepark-brooklyn-park-tony-hawk.html

A Tony Hawk foundation and the city want to pour concrete over a section of Mount Prospect Park to create one of the biggest skate parks on the East Coast.

The city has construction plans for Mount Prospect Park, once the site of a lookout station for George Washington’s army. About 40,000 square feet of the 7.79-acre park are to be turned into one of the largest skateboarding spots on the East Coast.

Some nearby residents are fighting the plan. Their gripes are not about the potential influx of skateboarders or the ollies, kick flips and tic-tacs. They say the poured-concrete skateboarding facility would take up precious green space in a city that does not have enough of it.

“Pouring concrete is Stone Age,” said Hayley Gorenberg, a co-chair of Friends of Mount Prospect Park, a group formed less than a month ago, after Mayor Eric Adams referred to the project in his State of the City address.

The new skating spot in Mount Prospect Park, to be called the Brooklyn Skate Garden, would be the largest of four in a $24.8 million project that the mayor mentioned. Another skateboarding area will take shape in Brower Park in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, and two more will go up in the Bronx.

The four skating areas will take shape under a public-private partnership between the city and the Skatepark Project, a nonprofit foundation started by the professional skateboarding star Tony Hawk, the first to land a 900, which is to his sport what the four-minute mile is to running. In a high-profile career, he has cracked ribs, survived concussions, lost a handful of teeth and broken a femur (last year, on a 540-degree aerial rotation).

The Skatepark Project has arranged grants for nearly 700 skate parks across the country and would contribute design consultation and “project management support” for the four parks in New York, said Benjamin Anderson Bashein, its executive director. The Skatepark Project says the design costs will probably amount to more than $100,000 per park.

The skateboarding infrastructure
The Skatepark Project said the four new facilities would be fast-tracked so they could open in three years and would “elevate New York City ’s status as the East Coast skateboarding capital.”

The opponents said that city officials had not publicized the project or sought comments. Gorenberg and Benjamin Lowe, the other co-chair of Friends of Mount Prospect Park, are to meet with Crystal Hudson, the City Council member whose district includes the park, this afternoon. They wrote to her on Feb. 5, saying other options needed to be considered, including putting the skateboarding facility somewhere else. The letter suggested Grand Army Plaza, which the city’s Department of Transportation is looking into redesigning.

Their letter raised questions about safety, saying that skateboarders could try their moves outside the park, creating hazards on nearby steps and access ramps. The stone steps from the highest point in the park are only one “tempting skate challenge,” the letter said.

The letter said that the site for the skateboarding facility is already highly vulnerable to flooding and that a skate park would only make that problem worse.

Bashein noted that “the design hasn’t even happened yet.” He said the Skatepark Project would work with the city to see that the four skating areas were “well designed and well constructed.”

He said the installation in Mount Prospect Park would cover only about 12 percent of the park and that the paved area would be only a part of that. And Hudson said that “everything the park is currently used for will remain” once the skate park is built.

“There’s still access to the green lawn,” she said. “There’s a children’s playground. Nothing will happen to that.”

The park was created in the 1940s as the Brooklyn Public Library was being built. The Department of Parks and Recreation says that Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux intended it to be a part of Prospect Park, which they designed in the 19th century. But they eventually redrew the borders, leaving Prospect Park on one side of Flatbush Avenue and Mount Prospect Park on the other. The city operated a reservoir there from the 1850s until the 1930s.

As a place for skateboarding, said Gorenberg, of Friends of Mount Prospect Park, “The site is a problem. Paving green space isn’t acceptable to the community, and it’s not the way for New York City to look forward to a more resilient future. It’s backwards thinking.”

[Mandatory Reload]

all i know is that Brower Park redesign can't come soon enough. one of my least favorite places to skate in nyc, the ground is essentially unskateable. horrid

[ToySanta]

“Pouring concrete is Stone Age,” said Hayley Gorenberg, a co-chair of Friends of Mount Prospect Park

Love it.

[Cool Ceith]

Big gnar for pasting the full article! Fuck a paywall. 

[Tear Up a Trick]

Some NYTimes reader comments:


M. Snow
Brooklyn
24m ago
As a local resident who frequents Mount Prospect Park, I am against the plan to sacrifice scarce open space for a concrete skate park.

Call me a NIMBY if you must.

It just really seems like the overwhelming share of people who use this park - the dog-walkers, parents, runners, children, loungers - oppose this development and have been given the run-around by its proponents. Where is the community engagement, transparency, or democratic input?

Reply1 RecommendShareFlag
Ethan Allen commented 1 hour ago
E
Ethan Allen
Brooklyn
1h ago
This seems like classic municipal laziness. Instead of finding a new space, or building a new space, they just want to take a part of the tiny sliver the public does have.

I also can’t help but notice that since it’s become an Olympic “sport,” there’s been a sudden interest in building skate parks. Poor kids are not going to the Olympics for skateboarding. But rich parents can take over public parks so their kids can!

Reply2 RecommendShareFlag
1 REPLY
Preston commented 24 minutes ago
P
Preston
Brooklyn
24m ago
@Ethan Allen

I basically agree with what you are saying here, but I must point out that children and teens in every income bracket enjoy skateboarding. I have yet to meet a skateboarder in NYC who mentioned the Olympics.

Reply2 RecommendShareFlag
Vanyali commented 2 hours ago
V
Vanyali
Brooklyn/Raleigh
2h ago
With all the already-paved lots around, why attack a park for this?  There really isn’t any other spot in the whole of Brooklyn to put this?

Reply4 RecommendShareFlag
A commented 2 hours ago
A
A
Brooklyn
2h ago
Opponents to this effort are being intentionally obtuse. All they have to say is that they’re concerned about green space when it’s been made clear, repeatedly, that both green space and current park functionality will be uninterrupted before and after construction. This PUBLIC skatepark will be a public good, whether you skate or not.

Reply4 RecommendShareFlag
1 REPLY
Ethan Allen commented 1 hour ago
E
Ethan Allen
Brooklyn
1h ago
@a it’s not “obtuse” to oppose a skatepark. Some people don’t want to pave over green space. Proponents of the park seem don’t really have a solid reason as to why it needs to be there. A PUBLIC squash court isn’t much use to the PUBLIC if they don’t play squash, and I wouldn’t put on on a cemetery

Reply3 RecommendShareFlag
Ethan&Leah commented 3 hours ago
E
Ethan&Leah
Brooklyn
3h ago
This is a very one-sided take, I would say to the point of journalistic irresponsibility. To my eye this is just a twist on the long-standing discrimination that skaters have always faced.

Mount Prospect is a lovely park - but it is also one in need of maintenance. The other unspoken issue here is that it's become an unofficial dog park, where dogs go unleashed well outside of the official hours - the lawn has also become a dust bowl, which I believe is in part due to the volume of dog waste. Not to mention that it makes the park unusable to dog-phobic children.

What this article doesn't say is that there is a large community of people who would make wholesome use of a skate park like this. Many are teenagers, and the skating community is more diverse than ever - their interests should also be considered.

Reply7 RecommendShareFlag
1 REPLY
Preston commented 12 minutes ago
P
Preston
Brooklyn
12m ago
@Ethan&Leah

I agree. I would only ask to hear what other locations nearby were considered.

I know that park well and you are right that it needs TLC. Leash laws also need enforcement by NYC Parks. Those realities do not necessarily call for a skate park at that location. But, again, we'd need to know where the alternatives would be.

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Rebecca G commented 3 hours ago
R
Rebecca G
NYC
3h ago
They paved paradise and put up a…skate park? Mount Prospect Park is a rare, tranquil, green escape in our concrete-filled city, and Eric Adams and Tony Hawk (seriously?) want to destroy it. The flooding and safety concerns are legitimate. Not to mention the noise pollution this will bring to the Brooklyn Botanical Garden, which borders Mount Prospect Park on two sides. There are plenty of other good options in the area for a skate park… Mount Prospect Park should not be on the short list.

Reply8 RecommendShareFlag
Margo Channing commented 3 hours ago
Margo Channing
Margo Channing
NY
3h ago
Come take a look at Eisenhower Park in East Meadow Long Island to see what politicians do. Bruce Blakeman under the cover of night approved a "temporary" cricket stadium to be erected on an enormous field in the once beautiful park. They got rid of 3 baseball fields to do this. I don't see how this will be a temporary thing it's a gigantic eyesore that has no place being in a park. But we are at the mercy of very shortsided politicians who think this is a good idea. It isn't.

Reply5 RecommendShareFlag
Jason commented 5 hours ago
J
Jason
Brooklyn
5h ago
Mount Prospect Park is the best of the city’s small magical parks (I include Fort Greene Park and Owl Head Park), a space that’s almost magical, sun or rain. It is also a great place for pickup soccer matches, birthday parties, and casual jogging, among many many other activities. Sacrificing it to a concrete skate park would be a huge mistake. Off the top of my head, I can think of ten other nearby sites for a skate park. This isn’t needed housing we’re talking about.

Reply16 RecommendShareFlag
1 REPLY
Jack commented 2 hours ago
J
Jack
And Jill
2h ago
@jason We don't have a housing crisis, we have an illegal migrant crisis.  For legal residents, there is a housing surplus.  That surplus is completely eliminated by people with no legal right to be here.

Reply3 RecommendShareFlag
Gale The Grower commented 5 hours ago
G
Gale The Grower
Below Radar
5h ago
We are laughing uncontrollably at the plight of government weed stores run by forgiven felons.  We grow.  And we distribute to a discerning and select clientele.  No taxes, no ads, no cameras, no IDs, no hassles.  Business is booming.

[Ninj2]

NYC needs a giant skatepark. Total lack of street spots  out there.

[GardenSkater77]

Aren’t we as a skate society over large skate parks? They are like the big box stores of the 2000s. I think it would be cooler to designate underutilized areas and allow the skaters to make their own obstacles. Once a mega park is built people get sick of it so fast. The only good parks are the ones that organically grow over time.

[ratking]

540-degree aerial rotation....haha

[jakeumms]

Oh they got NIMBYs in Brooklyn too

[Shrinedescender]

Unfortunately this fits into the longtime effort to parkify NYC skating. You talk to kids in the metro area today about trips they've taken into the city and 9/10 of them will tell you it was to skate some park all day.

[Lhotse’s Pit of Death]

Living in nyc for over 10 years now, and I think Ive been to 3 skateparks. It always seems really weird to skate in an artificial space with really limited obstacles when famous spots, every kind of curb, ledge, rail…etc is just beyond the skatepark gates. Unless it has huge vert sections for those that want are into that or indoor parks for the winter, skateparks don’t make much sense for anyone over the age of 12 in NYC.

[dr.prestige]

As a place for skateboarding, said Gorenberg, of Friends of Mount Prospect Park, “The site is a problem. Paving green space isn’t acceptable to the community, and it’s not the way for New York City to look forward to a more resilient future. It’s backwards thinking.”

bro doesn't really care about the environment he just wants his property value to stay high

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0143622813002427

Oh they got NIMBYs in Brooklyn too

[thehogsniper]

All this bitching about green space, couldn't you just put green dye in the concrete lmao. kill two birds with one stone.

[TheDraught]

Only thing they're really worried about are the prices of their houses. 

[kook1234]

live in the Concrete Jungle, be upset there is concrete

[fuck_that_guy]

fuck that guy

[CossRooper]

Conflicted on this. While I do think those people in the articles are just NIMBYs, honestly I would prefer to keep Prospect as green as possible and use a shittier/already less green public space for a park (there are many around the city).  The strength of Prospect is that it's big and green and dense. I would say the same thing if they were proposing 8 new basketball courts or whatever. Just keep the trees.

And like @Mandatory Reload said... just do Brower first. That place has a huge community of skaters around it that need it so bad.

[headtowall]

Prospect park is fuckign huge get over it, build the fuckign park, we have dog shit parks overall here

[JM]

“ The other unspoken issue here is that it's become an unofficial dog park, where dogs go unleashed well outside of the official hours - the lawn has also become a dust bowl, which I believe is in part due to the volume of dog waste. Not to mention that it makes the park unusable to dog-phobic children. ”

They should know better than to mess with people and their precious shnookums.

But, skateparks can have proper, responsible “green” drainage solutions, and incorporate the natural within it.

A good case study is The Gathering Place in Tulsa.

[Ignatius J Reilly]

just redo the dogshit park at 5th and 5th instead

[JM]

just redo the dogshit park at 5th and 5th instead

Side note: is that Bob Odenkirk in a porno on your icon?

[newspaperparty]

Conflicted on this. While I do think those people in the articles are just NIMBYs, honestly I would prefer to keep Prospect as green as possible and use a shittier/already less green public space for a park (there are many around the city).  The strength of Prospect is that it's big and green and dense. I would say the same thing if they were proposing 8 new basketball courts or whatever. Just keep the trees.

And like @Mandatory Reload said... just do Brower first. That place has a huge community of skaters around it that need it so bad.

Agree with all of this. In a city already suffering from urban heat island effect, we shouldn’t be taking out green space (and should be adding green space in underserved communities). The city has been spending so much money on skateparks, sometimes very close together, when what we really need is more plaza space. If they want to build something in this area, it would make a lot more sense to build a little plaza for both skating and the public at Grand Army Plaza. There’s tons of unused space there and I think the DOT is planning a redesign anyways.

Also adding my support for Brower first. Was my local for a bit and while it has its charm, it is in desperate need of a revamp.

[Meathook]

Expand Quote

Conflicted on this. While I do think those people in the articles are just NIMBYs, honestly I would prefer to keep Prospect as green as possible and use a shittier/already less green public space for a park (there are many around the city).  The strength of Prospect is that it's big and green and dense. I would say the same thing if they were proposing 8 new basketball courts or whatever. Just keep the trees.

And like @Mandatory Reload said... just do Brower first. That place has a huge community of skaters around it that need it so bad.

[close]

Agree with all of this. In a city already suffering from urban heat island effect, we shouldn’t be taking out green space (and should be adding green space in underserved communities). The city has been spending so much money on skateparks, sometimes very close together, when what we really need is more plaza space. If they want to build something in this area, it would make a lot more sense to build a little plaza for both skating and the public at Grand Army Plaza. There’s tons of unused space there and I think the DOT is planning a redesign anyways.

Also adding my support for Brower first. Was my local for a bit and while it has its charm, it is in desperate need of a revamp.

Yeah I agree about Brower Park.  Bedstuy/Crown Heights could use a proper skatepark and the space is already there.  Last summer I skated there and met the kid who pours concrete on the ground and skreets it to make it more skateable. 

There’s no reason to remove what little green space we already have at Prospect Park.

[Ignatius J Reilly]

Expand Quote

just redo the dogshit park at 5th and 5th instead

[close]

Side note: is that Bob Odenkirk in a porno on your icon?

[MareVitals]

all i know is that Brower Park redesign can't come soon enough. one of my least favorite places to skate in nyc, the ground is essentially unskateable. horrid

I don't know when you last went but somebody DIYd it. It's still bad but now it's plaster over cheese grater instead of just cheese grater. Fine to skate with some big wheels but I also like shitty parks.

The comments in this article about mount prospect don't surprise me but are dumb. Mount Prospect Park is not some scenic nature oasis. It's mostly a flat grass lawn. Nobody goes there and it's underutilized space by NYC standards. It's not like the wooded areas of actual prospect park, those are dope.

[ChuckRamone]

I'm gonna be that person and correct everyone's spelling: Brouwer with a 'u.'

[RoaryMcTwang]

One argument I haven’t read here yet is that you shouldn’t seal the ground at all, for reasons of ecological preservation, ground water conservation etc. That’s what killed the skatepark that was briefly on the table in my German suburb in ca 2000. They wanted to build a skatepark but couldnt get a permit to cover up the random field where it was to be. The last suggestion before the project died was to put a pyramid in the middle and have four narrow strips of brick run towards the four sides of it.

Guess every country has their own set of concerns.

[mj23]

i hate to say it but i agree with the NIMBYs on this one. new york needs to hold on to what little green space it has.

there are already plenty of underutilized places where pavement already exists and skaters would love to have a small spot/plaza/park.

in my neighborhood alone there are at least 3 different parks with big ass paved areas that have no clear purpose. throw a few obstacles in and call it a day.

look at american playground, thomas payne, blue park, or k bridge. just put some ledges, curbs, and a quarter pipe on some tennis court that nobody uses and we'll be psyched. those spots all get skated a lot.

let pat smith or alexis sablone design it because they have a proven track record designing spots like that, and they actually understand what makes skating in NYC unique.

but our current mayor eric adams is literally brain damaged and thinks he hears voices telling him to do stupid shit like this

[CossRooper]

in my neighborhood alone there are at least 3 different parks with big ass paved areas that have no clear purpose. throw a few obstacles in and call it a day.

exactly this. these bizarre concrete prairies are all over the place in the outer boroughs. i have no idea who is asking for a giant McPark on a big patch of grass, it's certainly not any skaters i know.

[Mandatory Reload]

Expand Quote

all i know is that Brower Park redesign can't come soon enough. one of my least favorite places to skate in nyc, the ground is essentially unskateable. horrid

[close]

I don't know when you last went but somebody DIYd it. It's still bad but now it's plaster over cheese grater instead of just cheese grater. Fine to skate with some big wheels but I also like shitty parks.

The comments in this article about mount prospect don't surprise me but are dumb. Mount Prospect Park is not some scenic nature oasis. It's mostly a flat grass lawn. Nobody goes there and it's underutilized space by NYC standards. It's not like the wooded areas of actual prospect park, those are dope.

skated it like 3 days ago haha tbf i guess i skate wheels on the smaller side (i think i'm on 54s right now?). i just moved and it's now the closest place to my apartment to skate. the cracks are bad, that's one thing for sure but the fact that it's surrounded by trees that hang over it means that it's basically always littered with twigs/acorns/etc. maybe i'll just go to home depot and grab a push broom to leave there, that would probably improve the situation considerably although I'm sure it would get stolen or destroyed at some point

even just a repave of Brower would do wonders, especially if the city could somehow provide a broom that couldn't be stolen (connected to a rope or something? idk) that people could use to clear the debris from the trees overhead.

when i go there i usually end up getting fed up after getting tossed like 4 times just riding around and go up to skate the ledges by the basketball courts instead lol really nice ground and the ledges slide pretty well although the beveled edges aren't ideal for locking into grind tricks and if it's nice out that area is pretty poppin with people playing basketball and hanging out.

at least the new broadway junction and ocean hill parks are a quick bike ride away. as someone mentioned, it's a little confusing that the city is building so many bigger parks so close together in certain areas. while we're at it, is it really that hard for the city to turn the lights on at Broadway Junction every day when it gets dark? so annoying to be there in the dark just waiting for the lights to turn on and half the time they just don't come on or don't come on for hours after it gets dark