Olmsted & Vaux Would Want Prospect Park Skateboard Area: Petition

PROSPECT PARK, BROOKLYN — A group of skaters hoping to drum up support for a skatepark in Prospect Park argue it's what nineteenth century designers Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux would have wanted.

Change.org petitioner Wil FiveForty has garnered nearly 5,000 signatures for the proposed "Life is Beautiful Skatepark" he hopes to convince the Prospect Park Alliance and city Parks Department to build.

"Prospect Park and the people who use it would really benefit from a fun skatepark," the petitioner writes. "If Olmsted and Vaux were alive and designing the park today, they would have included a skatepark."

The petition calls for a concrete skatepark and pump track and proposes hiring Steve Rodriguez, the designer behind the Lower East Side's Coleman Playground and Downtown Brooklyn's Golconda Playground skatepark, and working with the Tony Hawk Foundation, an organization that develops skateparks in low-income areas across the U.S.

Wil FiveForty proposes to memorialize Brooklyn-born daredevil skateboarder Pablo Ramirez, who was fatally struck by a San Francisco dump truck trying out one of his "death-defying" stunts in April.

"Life is Beautiful is a quote and part of a poem by the late Ramirez," wrote the petitioner. " [His] positive outlook and fearless skating inspired many."

Olmsted and Vaux, famed landscape architects from Connecticut and England, collaborated to build Brooklyn's back yard after the Civil War and envisioned Prospect Park as a place where Brooklynites could escape urban life and find pastoral and rustic havens amid its 526 acres, according to their Parks Department biography.

The original park included a zoo, the nation's first urban-area Audubon Center, an ice rink, a band shell and a carousel.

The Prospect Park Alliance, the nonprofit that manages the park, said it would take "strong interest" from the public for the Landmarks Preservation Commission and the Public Design Commission to approve a new skate park.

"When there is strong interest expressed by park users for new amenities in the park, we work with the City and local elected officials to see if and how best the park can accommodate these needs," the PPA spokesperson said.

While the PPA did not specify how strong support would be quantified, Wil FiveForty is hoping 5,000 signatures will get the skateboard rolling.

"Ask any parent with a child on a scooter, they will say they would love a skatepark," writes the petitioner. "Children & adults would thrive in a well designed park, get good exercise and have fun."