Harold Ickes Playground still empty

In the fall of 2017, when Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams and councilmen Carlos Menchaca and Brad Lander agreed (at the behest of teenage activists from the nonprofit Red Hook Initiative) to allocate $3 million to transform Red Hook’s Harold Ickes Playground from an unkempt concrete baseball diamond into a first-class skate park, the Department of Parks and Recreation took immediate steps to improve the disused space.  Little more than a month after the politicians’ announcement, before design had begun for the new facility, Parks set up a “pump track” – a lightweight installation of ramps and curves – for skateboarders’ interim use, and life soon returned to Harold Ickes Playground.

Since then, however, the pump track has vanished, and the cracked, concrete yard above the Brooklyn-Battery Tunnel entrance has become vacant again. Plans are still in the works for an 11,800-square-foot skate area with climbing boulders and seating on the side: design concluded in the summer of 2019, and the “procurement phase” – during which Parks will hire contractors – is expected to last until March 2020. But Parks has not revealed a start date for construction, nor can it declare definitively whether it’ll put the space to use again before construction begins.

Although pump tracks are movable, most Red Hookers assumed that the one in Harold Ickes Playground would stay in place, more or less, until the start of renovations. When the pump track disappeared in the spring of 2019, it wasn’t the first time Parks had temporarily borrowed the equipment for an event at another site, but after it failed to return promptly on the second go-around, local skateboarders grew restive.

“The park was really being used by a lot of people, primarily because that track was a big draw for families and kids. It was really interesting and a positive addition to what is a totally neglected and underused park,” said Joe Ruster, an architect and skateboarding enthusiast who lives in the area. “Now we have a dead zone again.”

When the Star-Revue asked Parks about the missing pump track in June 2019, spokesperson Anessa Hodgson insisted that the void was temporary: “The pump track is coming back! The skate park element was temporarily moved to another park for a skate event. It will be brought back to Harold Ickes in the coming weeks,” she stated.

But Harold Ickes Playground remained empty over the summer, and when we asked again at the end of August, the promised return date had shifted: “We decided to keep the skate elements at Ocean Hill Playground until after Skate Fest 2, an event scheduled at the playground on September 27, where skate enthusiasts and community members can test out the features and provide feedback as we plan to bring skate park elements to that neighborhood.”

The pump track did not reappear over the fall, however, prompting a third inquiry in December. This time, Parks could not confirm that the interim skate feature would come back at all. By now, Parks wasn’t sure that reinstallation would be worth the effort: the possibility would depend on the start date of construction.

“Harold Ickes Playground will soon be home to a brand new skate park that we hope will attract skate enthusiasts and novices from the community to give it a try. We plan to break ground on construction in the new year. In the meantime, we encourage skaters to check out one of the 13 skate parks throughout Brooklyn,” Hodgson offered. “We also plan to continue exploring the feasibility of bringing the temporary pump track back to Harold Ickes Playground before we break ground on construction.”

Parks estimates that construction, once it begins, will last 12 to 18 months. As of December 30, the pump track continues to occupy the blacktop of Ocean Hill Playground in Brownsville.

Brett Yates