Prospect Park boss Sue Donoghue tapped to be the next city parks commissioner

By Brooklyn Magazine Staff

Sue Donoghue, the Prospect Park administrator and president of the Prospect Park Alliance, is being elevated to larger position overseeing the city’s roughly 30,000-acres of green spaces.

Mayor Eric Adams named Donoghue as the next commissioner of the City of New York Parks and Recreation. In her new role, she will manage the city’s parks, playgrounds, beaches and recreational facilities and “ensure that the agency’s mission of preserving and expanding well-maintained parkland is aligned with the mayor’s goal of reducing long-standing disparities in access to green space,” the city said in a press release.

Donoghue, who has been in her Prospect Park Alliance position since 2014, was most recently in charge of overseeing the maintenance and restoration efforts around the 526-acre park.

“My role is not only advocating for Prospect Park, but for parks across the city to get the care and support they need,” Donoghue said in a recent episode of “Brooklyn Magazine: The Podcast,” perhaps hinting at the larger role she is now officially poised to take on.

Adams praised the work she’s done for Prospect Park, designed by the same team behind Central Park (who often described the Brooklyn park as their masterpiece). “The quality is unprecedented. When you look at how Prospect Park was prior to Sue’s arrival, and then you look now at how she is opening the gate, opening the space, and opening the lives of so many people that use the park,” he said.

In the release announcing her new position, she said that she was “extremely honored and humbled.” She added that the “parks and open spaces are critical to the quality of life” of the city’s residents and that they “improve the air we breathe, enhance our physical and mental health, and strengthen our communities.”

It’s unclear who will replace Donoghue at Prospect Park.