Off to a Flying Start. A New Park Opens Beneath the Brooklyn Bridge.

Nolan Borowicz, 13, from Brooklyn, tries a trick on the "9 Stair." He said he's been skating since he was 7. "It's been down," he said of the new skate park. "Now that it's back up, it's really sick." Photo: Carl Glassman/Tribeca Trib

After the speeches had ended and the ribbon was cut, it was the skateboards and bodies, hurtling once again off steep granite stairs, that really signaled the inauguration of a new public space beneath the Brooklyn Bridge.

On Wednesday, a portion of the Brooklyn Banks, the brick plaza that was world-renowned to skateboarders and trick bike riders for its rolling embankment and challenging hardscape, reopened to great fanfare. Other features include handball, basketball, pickle ball and shuffleboard courts, plus new landscaping and seating.

The restored space, located near Chinatown, is off of Rose Street, east of Park Row.

Closed by the city in 2010 for Brooklyn Bridge rehabilitation work, the Department of Transportation, which is in charge of the area under and around the site, had projected that the Banks would remain off limits until 2033. But a determined group, led by Community Board 1 member Rosa Chang, worked tirelessly for more than two years to convince the city that it could be done. 

“There is so much potential here and we just don’t have space in our neighborhood for kids to go out and play ball or soccer or bike or skate,” Chang told CB1’s Waterfront, Parks and Cultural Committee in November, 2020, as she began her campaign, with backing from the board. “That spaghetti-ness of on-ramps and off-ramps provides rain cover and snow shelter. I see so many possibilities there for our neighborhood.”

A skateboarder-driven petition campaign to save and reopen the Brooklyn Banks had garnered 53,000 signatures, inspiring Chang to found Brooklyn Bridge Manhattan—now called Gotham Park—with former Brooklyn Banks skateboarder Steve Rodriguez, and Rob Magliaro, a founder and former principal of a nearby high school. Bringing other advocacy groups into the fold, their years of organizing and advocacy paid off.

Chang was all smiles at the ceremony on Wednesday as she stood beside Mayor Eric Adams, whom she and others had convinced to greenlight the project as part of a $375 million city investment in new public spaces that Adams had announced in January.

“Rosa came in with her team and she did a presentation of this landscape,” Adams told the gathering. “Just to realize, wow, I can actually move this forward and make it happen.”

The site, known as The Arches, is just one of nine acres of potential public space near the bridge that advocates want to see become a fully realized Gotham Park. “Every inch is going to be utilized as much as possible for the community,” Adams said.

“This is just the beginning,” noted Deputy Mayor for Operations Meera Joshi. “As bridgework is completed we will quickly continue to turn portions of underneath and adjacent properties to the bridge back to you. Please stay tuned.”

The next phase to be completed, by the end of next year, is a major portion known as the Big Banks, according to a City Hall spokesman. 

In the meantime skaters like Leo Heiner, 31, from Staten Island, were quick to try out the new space, especially taking their turn flying off the famously challenging “9 Stair.” Heiner recalled that for seven years, until The Banks closed in 2010, he took the ferry to Manhattan after school so he could skate there. 

And now that he’s back? “It’s crazy, because most cities are tearing down skate parks and they’re not embracing the culture, while New York City is opening them up,” he said. “So it’s a good feeling.”