On the 140th anniversary of the Brooklyn Bridge opening, New York celebrated the historic opening of its newest public realm initiative, The Arches, a community space for recreation underneath the Brooklyn Bridge in Chinatown. Community advocates Gotham Park and Tony Hawk’s The Skatepark Project joined Mayor Eric Adams, other elected officials, community members and skateboarding icons to announce the opening of The Arches.
Today’s grand opening launched the greatly-anticipated restoration of the iconic Brooklyn Banks skatepark, a beloved mecca of East Coast skating that has been closed to the public for more than a decade. The Skatepark Project and Gotham Park have been working in partnership with City Hall to return the beloved skatepark to the community.
The Arches, a unique and thoroughly New York City destination park, is now a site of accessible, safe play space and community gathering in a neighborhood lacking opportunities for outdoor recreation, featuring pickleball, basketball and shuffleboard courts in addition to the skate space. The historic project will foster community, boost local businesses, and open up access to safe outdoor recreation for the nearly 50,000 diverse local residents
who live within a half-mile radius of the park.
