They gave this project a 1080 out of 10!
City parks bigwigs revealed plans for Red Hook’s inaugural skate park to civic gurus at a recent community-board meeting, where members agreed the tubular makeover of Harold Ickes Playground’s current blacktop ball field will be totally radical.
“Right now it’s an under-utilized asphalt patch, and this is going to draw people to it,” said Glenn Kelly, chairman of Community Board 6’s Parks Committee, which got a sneak peak of the designs on Sept. 19.
Last fall, officials moved forward with the gnarly project by installing a temporary BMX bike track inside the Hamilton Avenue play space, after Borough President Adams and Red Hook Councilmen Carlos Menchaca and Brad Lander collectively chipped in just more than $3 million to fund the new shred zone — the first facility of its kind in all of CB6, which also includes Park Slope, Carroll Gardens, Cobble Hill, and parts of Boerum Hill.
New renderings show the heart of the .7–acre, asphalt park will be filled with a cornucopia of skateboarding stuff, including a bowl, two quarter pipes, and grind rails, along with other built-in components including a slappy curb, hubba ledge, manual pad, Euro gap, and twinke roller.
The park will feature amenities for non-skaters, too, including two boulders for youngsters to climb on and game tables, in addition to boasting chairs, benches, water fountains, and a bunch of new trees and shrubs planted around its perimeter.
Parks Committee members unanimously voted to endorse the plan, and CB6’s full board is expected to give it the green light later this month.
And once the panel approves the scheme, Department of Parks and Recreation leaders in November plan to begin the year-long process of choosing a contractor to construct the skate park — which Brooklyn Parks Commissioner Martin Maher previously said must be built without digging below ground as the playground sits above the Battery Tunnel — with the intention of opening it sometime in 2021.
