MOUNT PROSPECT PARK — Brooklyn climate and green space advocates made public today a written demand that NYC Comptroller and mayoral challenger Brad Lander head off not just climate-related harm, but also potential City liability for accidents and serious injuries posed by officials’ plan to construct one of the largest skateboard arenas on the East Coast — on top of historic urban green park space in Brooklyn’s Mount Prospect Park. Friends of Mount Prospect Park delivered the letter, accompanied by more than 2,000 locally gathered signatures opposing paving the facility onto the neighborhood park and urging any new construction take place on nearby already-paved space.
“As more facts have come to light, an official who now protects the public fisc — and who, going forward, seeks to lead New York City — should critically assess the impact of using this site,” the letter says. Studded with photographs from Mount Prospect Park and examples of some nearby large, already-paved potential sites, the letter sets forth how “physical characteristics inherent to the Mount Prospect Park site will foreseeably pose liability for injuries or deaths from accidents, and will also foreseeably trigger encounters with law enforcement, notably with our young people. It’s clearly a dangerous site choice.”
Serious concerns about siting a skateboard complex in Mount Prospect Park were reinforced this spring when, hours after a large, contentious meeting where officials were booed by Brooklynites angered by officials’ failure to consult on site selection, a designer from celebrity skateboarder Tony Hawk’s Skatepark Project foundation toured Mount Prospect Park. As the letter sets forth, the designer acknowledged the sloped ramp entrance to Mount Prospect Park poses an obvious danger of skaters “hill-bombing” downward. He also assessed the park’s second entrance point, a steep bank of several flights of granite stairs, as too challenging for skateboarders to handle and noted that anyone making an unsuccessful attempt could risk “organ-level” impalement on the park’s historic iron-pointed fence, which runs along the foot of the stone steps.
Read the full report from Friends of Mount Prospect Park listing their concerns and solutions.
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