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\n The Mount Prospect Skate Garden will go in the middle of Mount Prospect Park\u2019s Central Lawn.
\n Photo: NYC Parks\n <\/p>\n
It\u2019s been a little more than two years since Mayor Eric Adams announced<\/a> that the city would be partnering with Tony Hawk\u2019s Skatepark Project to build a 40,000-square-foot skate park in Brooklyn\u2019s Mount Prospect Park. It was one of four skate parks being created or revamped as part of a city initiative, and the only one that proposed building an entirely new space rather than replacing an existing skate park or asphalt rink. Intended as the city\u2019s flagship, it was also by far the largest, in the city and regionally, tied with the Lynch Family Skatepark<\/a> in Cambridge, Massachusetts, which is the largest skate park on the East Coast.<\/p>\n \n The Central Lawn is the prime real estate in Mount Prospect Park, a hilly 7.8-acre park where the city\u2019s new flagship skate park is slated to be built. The city\u2019s skateboarding community was understandably thrilled about the prospect of a huge new destination skate park. But many people who live nearby were upset<\/a> about the scale of the project and the loss of green space that would result from paving over part of an existing park\u00a0\u2014 and not a large one at that. Mount Prospect Park, tucked up on one of the highest points in Brooklyn, is just 7.8 acres wedged between the Brooklyn Botanic Garden and the main branch of the Brooklyn Public Library. Its hilly terrain and a playground already limit what open green space there is, primarily a central lawn used by off-leash dogs, picnickers, and soccer players that makes up just under a third of the park\u2019s acreage. Parks Department officials insisted the skate park, which they called a \u201cskate garden,\u201d with trees and landscaping built into the design, wouldn\u2019t take up more than 10 percent of the park or interfere with those other uses. But that claim seemed irreconcilable with the project\u2019s scale within a park that already had such limited open space. Still, without the details of where the new park would go or how it would be laid out, it was hard to say for sure.<\/p>\n Last night, at a packed Community Board 8 meeting in the Brooklyn Children\u2019s Museum\u2019s 180-seat auditorium with nary a free seat, renderings of the project finally offered a clearer picture. Besides Tony Hawk\u2019s foundation, MNLA (Matthews Nielsen\u2019s landscape firm, which also worked on Little Island) and Arcadis<\/a>, a design and engineering firm, also contributed to the design, which showed a wide range of street and transition skating elements winding around a landscape of shrubs and trees (the \u201cskate garden\u201d concept in action). For a number of skate-park supporters who came out for the meeting, including a 9-year-old and a tween, the main question was how soon it would be done (the answer: Construction could start as early as the spring of next year and would take about a year).<\/p>\n \n A rendering of the site layout. \n The concrete hardscape in the new park will be 19,500 square feet, with additional plantings and landscaping surrounding it for a somewhat larger footprint. \n Opponents have objected to the fact that even a skate garden will mean paving over green space. But other attendees were upset by the proposed location of the skate park, which is more or less in the center of Mount Prospect\u2019s open lawn, the park\u2019s most desirable real estate. Someone asked why the skate park couldn\u2019t go to one side of the lawn instead of in the middle, and Brooklyn parks commissioner Marty Maher explained that the siting was intended to preserve the older trees along the eastern side of the field. An area on the western side would remain a lawn, which Parks promised would be sodded and properly maintained, unlike the existing lawn.<\/p>\n Crucially, Parks says that it reduced the size of the paved portion in the design to 19,500 square feet of concrete hardscape, which would take up roughly 22 percent of the existing lawn. The design does introduce 8,500 square feet of additional landscaping, including 19 trees and some new picnic tables and benches, so the overall footprint will be somewhat larger than 19,500 square feet. The project also includes provisions to redo the existing paved paths in the park \u2014 there\u2019s one that rings the lawn \u2014 entirely in Belgian block or with bands of it to discourage skateboarding outside the designated area.<\/p>\n \n The Parks Department says that the park\u2019s placement in the center of the open lawn was done to preserve Mount Prospect\u2019s larger, older trees, which left limited places to put a large skate park. Despite these changes, many of those attending the meeting still felt the project posed an existential threat to the park. Supporters have painted these opponents as NIMBYs, arguing that the area is hardly starved for green space: Locals can always go to nearby Prospect Park. But Prospect Park is separated from Prospect Heights by four intersections and nine lanes of traffic and is less convenient for people who live deeper in Crown Heights. The Parks Department has framed the skate park as a win-win for the park and the neighborhood: an $11.16 million investment, with about $154,000 of that coming from the Skatepark Foundation as in-kind design services and the remainder from various city pots. The park was run-down, it argued, and the money would help fix it up, including what the department referred to in renderings as \u201cthe worn lawn.\u201d At the meeting, several people asked how Parks would ensure that Mount Prospect was well maintained after the skate park was finished, since it hadn\u2019t been before. Maher said that capital projects created a virtuous cycle, that a properly aerated lawn \u2014 something that would be part of the capital improvement plan \u2014 would better support grass even with dogs still allowed on it, and that skateboarders would be eager to help with maintenance. A number of audience members were dubious about such rosy predictions. One pointed out that Parks Department funding is stagnant<\/a>. And the portions of lawn that remain after the skate park is built will no doubt see heavier use, especially with the increased foot traffic that Parks has promised will come with the new skate park.<\/p>\n \n Parks claims that the remaining portion of the lawn will be aerated, sodded, and properly maintained, unlike how it is now. Many people at the meeting expressed doubts, citing stagnant parks funding and Parks\u2019 longtime neglect of the lawn. While many are still clearly upset about the skate park\u2019s location \u2014 the neighboring community board, CB 9, which covers part of Crown Heights and Prospect\u2013Lefferts Gardens, has called on <\/a>Mayor Zohran Mamdani to stop the project \u2014 the chair of Community Board 8 reminded attendees last night that the site itself is not negotiable. The Parks Department selected Mount Prospect Park years before the skate park was announced. The Pablo Ramirez Foundation, the organization that developed the concept, had originally hoped to put it in Prospect Park instead; it saw the bigger, neighboring park as the kind of location where skate parks rightly belong, unlike the out-of-the-way patches under a highway or underpass where most skate parks are located now that expose skaters to air pollution and pigeon poop. \u201cIf you go to Prospect Park on a Saturday morning, there are like 600 kids playing baseball and the skateboarders are under the BQE,\u201d says Loren Michelle, the executive director of the foundation, which is named after her son, a professional skateboarder who was killed in 2019 by a truck <\/a>while skating in San Francisco. But Parks told the foundation that Prospect Park was not an option because it was landmarked. At this point, not only is the Mount Prospect site selection final, but the design itself is also close to final, according to the Skatepark Project, and is not expected to change more than 10 or 20 percent.<\/p>\n The presentation last night was a preliminary one for the Parks Committee, which will be followed by a vote of the full board in April. The Community Board\u2019s vote is also nonbinding; it will then go to the city\u2019s public-design commission for final approval. The Skatepark Project says that the project could potentially be finished as soon as early 2028.<\/p>\n Sign Up for the Curbed Newsletter<\/p>\n A daily mix of stories about cities, city life, and our always evolving neighborhoods and skylines.<\/p>\n Vox Media, LLC Terms and Privacy Notice<\/p>\n![](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/0a9cf61fa5b7ad28e60b99706b5a728f74-mount-prospect-lede.rhorizontal.w700.jpg\")
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\n Photo: Kim Velsey\n <\/p>\n![](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/2558283ea3bf8018503aa182a2d9beb290-prospect-skate-7.rhorizontal.w700.jpg\")
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\n Photo: NYC Parks\n <\/p>\n![](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/7632e128497f9f0adba6e5691921ca9bb6-prospect-skate-2.rhorizontal.w700.jpg\")
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\n Photo: NYC Parks\n <\/p>\n![](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/d27ff592b1967c76f129ae247d8730fdc8-prospect-skate-5.rhorizontal.w700.jpg\")
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\n Photo: NYC Parks\n <\/p>\n![](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/e7799a13f956672dc9c1cebe688367a8e5-parks-3.rhorizontal.w700.png\")
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\n Photo: NYC Parks\n <\/p>\n![](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/92d1d10597a0a4ab1fe1d89b11cbd553e3-prospect-skate-3.rhorizontal.w700.jpg\")
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\n Photo: NYC Parks\n <\/p>\n