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…
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