Community Corner
Photos: New Prospect Park Entrance Coming To Flatbush Avenue
Park officials and local electeds broke ground on a new Prospect Park entrance set to open next summer.
PROSPECT PARK, BROOKLYN — Work began Thursday on the newest entrance to Prospect Park on Flatbush Avenue.
Park officials and local electeds gathered at the construction site between Grand Army Plaza and the Prospect Park Zoo to share plans for the park's first new entrance in about 70 years.
"This is a public park and I believe so strongly that anything that has the word 'public,' that is for the public, has to be world class," said City Council Majority Leader Laurie Cumbo. "That's why this is so important."
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The new entrance will be funded through the city's $50 million Parks Without Borders initiative to make parks more accessible, and the Flatbush Avenue entrance is one of eight projects chosen in 2016, said Parks Department Commissioner Mitchell J. Silver.
"This one is truly special," said Silver, who said he grew up in the area and used to run with his brother in Prospect Park.
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"I always wondered why was this fence here and why there wasn't an entrance," Silver added. "There's openings all over the place — people wanted to get in."
Cumbo also took a moment to recall visiting the park in her youth, and likened the walk from Grand Army Plaza to Empire Boulevard to a famous Michael Jackson music video "Thriller."
"It just seemed like a haunted strip from here to there," said Cumbo. "You just felt like ghouls and goblins were going to jump out at you from all the different broken spaces in front of the park."
Renderings show the new entrance will feature new park benches, trees, and an elevated curved path that leads deeper into the park.
The Parks Department will also install more lighting, stepping stones, an informal running trail, and a rock scramble for climbing, Silver said.
Cumbo, Silver, and Prospect Park Alliance President Susan M. Donoghue donned hard hats to break ground on the new entrance as New Yorkers who came to the new entrance broke out in applause.
"The ground is officially broken!" Silver called out. Responded an excited attendee, "Yay."
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