‘This is going to be a nightmare’:
‘Skate Garden’ proposed for Brooklyn’s Mount Prospect Park met with public resistance

PROSPECT HEIGHTS — If you build it, they won’t come.

In an exclusive interview with the Brooklyn Eagle, local residents of Prospect Heights expressed collective outrage, vehemently disagreeing with the proposed idea to build a 40,000-square-foot skate park in their backyard.

Slated to be entitled the “Brooklyn Skate Garden,” positioned in the middle of Brooklyn’s Mount Prospect Park, it is expected to be a custom poured-in-place concrete skate park built from the ground up — fitted with security lighting, spectator seating, community gardens, and space for programming to be integrated into the skate park and park setting. 

In a program backed by New York City Mayor Eric Adams’s office, City Council members, the Borough Presidents of Brooklyn and the Bronx and community advocates, professional skater Tony Hawk is building four new skate parks in New York City — including two in Kings County — over the next three years. (The organization will also be renovating Brower Park Skate Park in Crown Heights.)

The $24 million project — funded by the city’s capital budget and City Council dollars — is an effort to bring better skating facilities and recreational spaces to the outer boroughs, officials said.

“This is attempting to solve a problem that this park really doesn’t have,” explained Benjamin Lowe, community member and co-chair of Friends of Mount Prospect Park, a community group focused on preserving and enhancing the green space here for all who visit.

“One of the main arguments in favor of building this is that it’s a place for kids to come and spend time — to exercise, to socialize — but they are already using it,” Lowe said. “It seems as if the people making this proposal are unfamiliar with the park as we know it.”

Isabelle Broyer, president of Cultural Row Block Association, Eastern Parkway (CuRBA), whose mission is to preserve and improve community quality of life and jointly seek solutions to the community’s problems, raised some pertinent questions.

“It’s about green versus concrete; what do we want?” Broyer said. “Do we want this park or commercial construction? Is it a public space or a commercial space?”

As area resident Felipe Pedraza pointed out, “Usually when you have a major capital project, there are hearings that involve the local community — but we’ve had none of that. The community had zero input. I really believe if this happens, it’s going to be a nightmare.”

Jane Comfort, who also resides in the area, said that her main issue is the public safety factor.

“I love skateboarders,” Comfort noted. “But they could not have picked a more dangerous location for this park to be in. It’s up on a hill, and the two exits — one right by the entrance of the Brooklyn Botanic Garden and the stairway exit on the other end near the entrance to the children’s reading room at the Library — they are both always crowded with people. I believe these would be accidents waiting to happen.”

One of the Skate Garden’s main proponents is Councilmember Crystal Hudson (D-35, representing Prospect Heights, Fort Greene, Clinton Hill, and parts of Crown Heights and Bedford Stuyvesant), who said in a release that the project came about because central Brooklyn has insufficient spaces to skate, prompting skaters to utilize unsuitable public areas as a result. 

“This project will not result in the demolition of Mount Prospect Park,” Hudson said. “Rather, it will bring a much-needed revitalization of the park that will keep a majority of the existing open space completely untouched and available for use — even during construction — for community events, pick-up soccer games, dog walking, and all the myriad activities for which our neighbors currently use the park.”

According to a statement from the mayor, “[The Skate Park] is expected to boost tourism and the economy, and, most importantly, they’ll give New Yorkers, particularly our young people, a place to get outside, have fun, and express themselves on four wheels.” 

Broyer countered by saying, “There are already plenty of institutions here that bring tourism — like the museum, the Botanic Garden and Prospect Park. We have world-class attractions and are not an area that people don’t know about.”

Hayley Gorenberg, co-chair of Friends of Mount Prospect Park and a resident of the neighborhood for some 30 years, is against paving the park.

“Taking away green space seems entirely backward to me,” Gorenberg said. “Plus, there are so many other paved and concrete areas in the city where you could build.”

Lowe wholeheartedly agrees.

“There are a lot of different places this Skate Park could go where we would be enhancing green space and not taking it away from our community,” he said, adding that it is a discussion he would really like to have with people like Hudson. 

“I wish Crystal Hudson would be more eager to actually talk to their constituents and figure out what would be best for our community.”

Lowe pointed out that anyone who visits this particular park will see that this is not where the largest skate arena on the East Coast should be built.

“This is a park for community members and visitors to enjoy every day,” he said.