The city’s plan to pave over part of a Brooklyn park to build a skateboarding complex could lead to injuries from falling acorns and twigs — not to mention “organ-level impalement” on a nearby fence, critics claim.
The local civic group Friends of Mount Prospect Park says it brought its serious concerns about the 40,000-square-foot, taxpayer-funded Brooklyn Skate Garden project — slated for Mount Prospect Park in Prospect Heights — to city officials, only to be ignored.
“We can see the danger of the injuries or worse,” group co-Chair Hayley Gorenberg told The Post. “Why would [the city] do such a thing?”
The project, announced by Mayor Eric Adams last year, is set to trade about 12% of the 7.8 acre park for the concrete facility, billed as the next largest skateboarding park in the Northeast and the biggest of four such planned city sites costing a total of $24.8 million.
“By bringing four new skateparks to the Bronx and Brooklyn, we’re ensuring New Yorkers of all ages have access to safe spaces to perfect their ollies and kickflips, free from the distraction of car traffic and enhanced with new greenery that the entire community can enjoy,” NYC Parks Commissioner Sue Donoghue said at the time.
But the local civic group said the project sorely lacks consideration for the skateboarders’ and other visitors’ safety.
The green space is already littered with skating hazards such as falling twigs and acorns from local trees — and it currently touts “tempting” stairs that spill onto four lanes of traffic along busy Eastern Parkway, the group said.
“To set this up as a skate facility on Eastern Parkway, which would lure more skateboarders into multi-lane traffic, creates an entirely foreseeable dangerous situation in our community,” Gorenberg said.
The skateboarding park also wouldn’t be visible from street-level – contrary to safety guidelines from the skateboarding nonprofit that the city is working with to erect the park, the critics note.
The Skatepark Project even acknowledges on its own web site that the hidden complex could attract bad actors and may “lead to problems the skaters don’t create but may be blamed for.”
Gorenberg said a skate facility design expert she consulted also warned that if skaterboarders were to wipe out on the park’s granite stairs and hit the nearby iron-pointed fence, they could suffer “organ-level impalement.” They also might otherwise hit a crowded sidewalk next to the Central Library’s children’s wing, she said.
The irony of such potential injuries isn’t lost on Gorenberg, who noted the skate facility is in part honoring Pablo Ramirez, a Brooklyn-raised pro skater killed by skating in traffic in 2019.
Earlier this year, the local civic group sent New York City Comptroller Brad Lander a 2,000-person strong petition against paving part of the park but said it hasn’t heard a peep.
The group said some of the park’s neighbors and local skaters also fired off letters of concern to the Brooklyn borough president’s office, City Council member Crystal Hudson, NYC Parks and City Hall but have yet to feel as if they’ve actually been heard.
“We’re tried to meet with officials, we’ve written letters … but it’s just, ‘We hear you, and [there is] no follow-up,’ ” local resident and Friends of Mount Prospect Park member Helen Koh told The Post.
A request for comment from NYC Parks and Hudson’s office were not returned.
A City Hall rep told The Post in a statement, “A new Brooklyn Skate Garden will deliver a better public space at Mount Prospect Park and in the center of a Brooklyn cultural hub which includes Prospect Park across the street, Brooklyn Public Library, the Brooklyn Museum and the farmer’s market.
“Of course safety is our priority as we work to design a skate garden that meets everyone’s needs. …. When we have a proposed design, we will present all the safety features alongside, and look forward to being able to have this conversation based on a design proposal.”
Art historian and skateboarder Dr. Ted Barrow told The Post he supports the plan, calling the project “the natural evolution” of a city park given an estimated 50,000 skateboarders in Brooklyn – many of whom are young people.
“It’s New York City, you’re not going to get cars going much faster than 30 to 40 miles per hour [on Eastern Parkway],” Barrow said. “People cross that parkway all the time.
“The other thing is that most skate parks are located near public staircases and busy thoroughfares – the Lower East Side skatepark underneath the Manhattan Bridge is by FDR [Drive], and there have never been any issues,” he said.
Barrow insisted that since New York City has become a “mecca” for skateboarding, there’s “absolutely a need for more skateable surfaces” and free spaces to accommodate young skaters.
“To use an example, baseball wasn’t allowed in Prospect Park until the 1930s – and now it’s like a completely harmonious activity,” Barrow said.
“It’s not this bad thing that derelicts are doing,” he said of skateboarding. “It’s probably gaining more popularity among young people … because it’s so accessible, there’s a really low bar to entry, and it’s fairly affordable.”
But the safety argument is only one in a flurry of reasons that Friends of Mount Prospect Park says makes the site wrong for a skateboarding park.
The group argues that the park’s green space is needed more for sports teams, senior residents and a nearby preschool for recess, as well as a refuge during the sweltering summer months.
While City Hall said park-goers “will be able to continue to use it exactly as they do today,” some residents fear the complex will permanently change the respite.
“My grandfather would always take my brother and I to the park in the summertime,” local Sasha Robertson, 30, told The Post. “When I got older, my friends and I would grab books [at the Brooklyn Library], sit on the grass and read or paint. I also come here to exercise and run laps.
“This green space is really needed, especially next to all these wonderful landmarks,” Robertson said.
In June, Community Board 9 passed a resolution dubbing the skateboard-park plan “bad public policy” and recommending that the city “seriously consider alternative locations for this ambitious project right here in Prospect Heights and Crown Heights.
“There are plenty of paved-over spaces in which money has been poured in and which skate boarders would like to use but have not been taken care of,” said Friends of Mount Prospect Park member Helen Koh, pointing to sites such as the Paved Crescent at Grand Army Plaza.
A City Hall rep has told The Post that Grand Army Plaza of Prospect Park can’t be developed for skateboarders because both are landmarked, a source with City Hall previously told The Post.
Meanwhile, at least one already-developed skateboarding site, the $17.8 million state-funded Maspeth Park in Queens, has been a virtual ghost town since opening under the Kosciuszko Bridge in 2023. Some residents have complained that the park is too difficult to access in a desolate manufacturing zone.
Other skate parks, including Brooklyn’s Thomas Greene Park, were completely empty when The Post visited Monday afternoon.
“This is horrendous decision making, steamrolling over any community input when we could clearly make better choices for now and for the future,” Gorenberg said.
