Mario Bautista
PROSPECT HEIGHTS — The needle has moved very little since last June, when the Brooklyn Eagle reported on the $11,165,000 skate garden facility slated to be built in Brooklyn’s Mount Prospect Park.
According to Hayley Gorenberg, co-chair of the Friends of Mount Prospect Park, “The process going forward has not been very clear at all, and that’s very disturbing. We simply want transparency.”
On Oct. 2, Gorenberg received an email from a NYC Parks and Recreation representative telling her that they “would have a revised concept of a [park] design later this year.” NYC Parks declined to comment.
It’s not easy being green
The skate park, which has also been backed by New York City Mayor Eric Adams’s office, 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.
With Adams’ recent federal indictment debacle and his fate hanging in the balance, Gorenberg was asked where she sees the future of the skate garden without the mayor’s backing.
“There’d be a much greater chance of it not happening,” Gorenberg said. “Other officials have to stand up and course correct; they have to show that they are not under the mayor’s thumb and that they are not just followers in [his] destructive plans.”
Gorenberg continued, “I hope that all of these officials, with their professed green climate commitments, actually live up to what they say they stand for.”.
Gorenberg pointed out that several Brooklyn electeds who advertise commitments to being green, climate-minded and resiliency focused contributed money to the multimillion-dollar, publicly-funded plan.
“Their behavior is absolutely contrary to everything that they’ve pledged that they would do,” Gorenberg said.
Continuing to fight the fight
Many locals have expressed their collective outrage regarding the Mount Prospect Park Skate Garden, vehemently disagreeing with the proposed idea to build a 40,000 square foot skate park in their backyard, citing noise and safety issues as two of their primary concerns.
“There are so many other skate spaces languishing all around,” Gorenberg said. “If you want to do a snazzy new skate space with green features, why not make everybody happy? It doesn’t have to be a fight.”
CEO of The Skatepark Project Benjamin Anderson Bashein told the Eagle in March that “[the Skate Park] is definitely happening.” Gorenberg and the Friends of Mount Prospect Park are refusing to give up the fight.
“Well over 2,000 neighbors have signed our petition saying not to pave this park and to save urban green space,” Gorenberg said. “Our elected officials should really be serving us, doing what we need and planning for the future, not implementing backward last century ideas about destroying urban green space.”
