I can’t believe I am playing catchup with The Times since I have had this sitting in my files since November of 2020, but here we are. And tons has happened since then! So this is a big dump of information on what is now becoming a effort to create a new park under the ramps and in the Manhattan anchorage of Brooklyn Bridge. So, from the beginning:

It’s not every day that you get a couple dozen skateboarders on the line with CB1. But at the end of 2020, the city had started to destroy the Brooklyn Banks, an accidental skateboard park under the shadow of the Brooklyn Bridge. Former riders, current riders, skateboarding advocates, pros — even the principal of a high school inside Murry Bergtraum — pleaded with the members of the board’s Waterfront and Parks Committee to save the park not just for its use as an outlet for skaters and the park’s influence on them and an entire culture, but for its potential as public open space. The city, they said, was dismantling what once was their haven, brick by brick.

The area is hard to imagine unless you wander down that way, but it’s on the north side of the bridge extending west from Pearl up to Gold (my pictures here are from December 2020, but you get the idea). There is just TONS of open space down there, now locked up or used for parking: wooded lots, paved passageways, defunct bridge ramps with private and NYPD cars parked all the way up them. Wander to the top of the ramps and there are some great views of the skyline.

The piece that was called the Brooklyn Banks — two areas called the Little Banks and Big Banks — was a red brick plaza declared as a park in 1972 but never used by the general public. It’s not an inviting spot, shady and noisy. The homeless lived in the anchorages, pulling power from the light poles. But in the ’90s it got cleaned up a bit and skateboarders realized its potential for their uses, especially since the bricks were laid out in ramps; in its heyday, the now well-known skateboard enclave would attract thousands.

But first in 2004 and then for real in 2010, the area was closed by the city for repairs to the bridge that are going on to this day, and bit by bit the area was dismantled. When I checked in with DOT three years ago, a spokesman said that the rehabilitation of the structural arches in Manhattan and Brooklyn, replacement of several bridge systems, and the repair of the suspender system and main cables was scheduled to continue through 2023. Overall work would continue through the next decade, to 2030.

By November of 2020, a student at Pace, Jonathan Becker, had started a petition and some momentum to get the city to reopen at least some sections that had not yet been destroyed.

“It’s a place where many of us figuratively grew up — I met my wife there, and a lot of my friends,” said Steve Rodriguez when I spoke to him back then. Rodriguez had first started talking to the city about the area in 2004, when it was first fenced off, and successfully got it reopened from 2005 till 2010. “It was a very cultural place, not just for skateboarding. For break dancing, parkour, BMX. Everyone was there — from dads teaching their kids to ride bikes to people doing Shakespeare — there was always something going on.”

When CB1 hosted the first meeting, some light bulbs started going off. The board immediately sent a letter to DOT to open discussions about reusing this area. New CB1 member Rosa Chang saw the potential for a public space for all, not just skateboarders. And by October 2021, she and other board members along with Rodriguez created an organization called Brooklyn Bridge Manhattan, which has now morphed into an effort to create “Gotham Park,” a network of park uses using all the pockets there.

Map by Rosa Chang, co-founder of Gotham Park

And while it seems like this could be the making of some odd bedfellows, there’s room for all: there are nine acres of space all told.

“There is so much space down there — it’s usable public space that is just locked up,” said Rodriguez. “There’s a large plaza on the top of the stairs in a dead area between One Police Plaza and the high school. The school could just use it to breath.”

In fact at that first CB1 meeting, that’s just what the principal for the Urban Assembly School for Emergency Management said. “My school has no windows. We are dying to use that space. I greet students outside and look at that area every day.”

The news now is that Mayor Adams has the area on his list too.

Brooklyn Bridge Manhattan has a three-phase plan: the first phase would use $10 million to restore the small banks, add basketball courts and bathrooms and some wayfinding so folks can find the place. Phase two would require $100 million to tackle the big banks, the arches, the vaults and what they are calling Rose Park, on Gold/Rose streets. And Phase three — and now we are getting into 2030 — would use $50 million to create two parks closer to the water. The group has an excellent presentation on their website; some of the plans are below.

I recommend a stroll and you will see just why everyone is so excited.

“It’s so special but it’s just a dump right now — it’s just a parking lot dump,” said pro skateboarder Paul Van Orden, who came to skate as a kid from Jersey City. “And it could be so magical.”

Rendering by Steven Shimamoto