Prospect Park

The Daily Plant : Tuesday, February 27, 2007

Double Your Fun At The Lakeside Center

Photo by Daniel Avila

Last Tuesday, with school out and temperatures in the high 30s, it was the perfect scene for ice-skating. While New Yorkers were enjoying the skating in Prospect Park, Mayor Bloomberg was on hand to announce the upcoming construction of not one but two brand new ice-skating rinks.

The architectural firm Tod Williams Billie Tsien Architects LLP was selected to design a new 38,000-square-foot building and the ice rinks that will total 35,000-square-feet. The new building will be located adjacent to Prospect Park’s existing rink on a site that is currently a parking lot. The landscape for the new facility will be designed by landscape architect Christian Zimmerman of the Prospect Park Alliance. Upon completion of the new building, the old rink will be demolished and the area restored to reflect Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux’s original landscape designs for the site.

Mayor Bloomberg, Speaker Christine Quinn with the City Council, and Brooklyn Borough President Marty Markowitz each committed $7.5 million toward the Prospect Park Alliance’s $39 million fundraising campaign. Close to $1 million in federal funding was secured for the project by Congressman Anthony Weiner and former Congressman Major Owens.

The new Lakeside Center will be open year-round and offer visitors a café, gift shop, lockers, space for skate rental facilities, and space for educational programming. In warm weather months the two skating rinks will also be used for other seasonal outdoor activities with an area for pedal boat rentals on the nearby lake.

Currently the rink is open each year from November to March. Even though operation of the present ice rink (built in 1961) and its 15,000 square foot building is hampered by outdated equipment, it still serves more than 100,000 visitors each winter season and is the only outdoor ice skating rink in Brooklyn. The architects and their firm have won numerous awards and accolades for a growing list of projects around the world including the American Folk Art Museum in Manhattan. Among the projects they are currently designing are the Lincoln Center Harmony Atrium, a corporate campus in Mumbai, and a museum in Hong Kong.

Construction of the Lakeside Center is expected to begin in 2008 and continue through 2010. The new building will conform to the Silver Certificate LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) standards of the U.S. Green Building Council.

The Mayor was joined at the announcement by Speaker Quinn; Borough President Markowitz; City Council Members Letitia James and David Yassky; Parks Commissioner Adrian Benepe; Prospect Park Alliance Chairman Henry Christensen III; Prospect Park Alliance President Tupper Thomas; 1936 U.S. National Ice Dancing Champion Marjorie Parker Smith and children from Brooklyn Ice, a free after school skating program.

QUOTATION FOR THE DAY

“I can't really envision a time when I'm not shooting something.”

Martin Scorsese
(1942 - )