'Brooklyn - Prospect Park: Audubon Center at the Boathouse' by wallyg is licensed with CC BY-NC-ND 2.0
Prospect Park seeks a cure for its love hangover
After a pandemic year of heavy usage, Brooklyn's backyard is a little worse for the wear. Enter Prospect Park Alliance's 'Re: New' project
Brooklyn’s largest park got a lot of love this past year. Perhaps too much. After a year of heavy pandemic foot traffic, the Prospect Park Alliance is launching a project that aims to recover from “much more love than it can handle.” The new effort, given the codename Re: New Prospect Park, was announced earlier this month and aims “to help serve our community and meet the challenges of the Covid-19 pandemic.”
Funding from community donors will allow The Prospect Park Alliance—the nonprofit group that works to sustain the park in partnership with the city—to improve lawn areas, comfort stations, and barbecue fixtures, while recruiting new volunteers and service staff to repaint benches and fix worn-down fences. Work on these projects has already begun and will continue into the summer as locals will increasingly take refuge from the heat in Prospect Parks’ greenery and shade.
The Alliance is also hiring four additional seasonal groundskeepers to aid maintenance crews during the busiest season of year. Further help will come from Ace New York, a non profit that provides services to individuals experiencing homelessness, who will provide additional maintenance assistance to clean the park.
Sue Donoghue, President of the Prospect Park Alliance, knows “how important the park is to our community and the role it serves in recovering from the challenges of the past year.” Donoghue notes, however, that “Prospect Park is showing serious signs of wear and tear,” but is “so grateful for our community, who over the past year has pitched in to help sustain this cherished green oasis.”
Last year, at the height of the Covid-19 pandemic the city cut $84 million, or 14 percent, from the yearly budget for The Parks Department. These cuts eliminated 50 of the city’s 95 park rangers, dedicated to teaching visitors about the parks they explore, along with 47 seasonal workers, just added in 2019, who plant 30,000 plants, clear out garbage, and restore trails.
These cuts came just as New Yorkers escaped to Parks more than ever, resulting in widespread environmental degradation and pollution in greenspaces across the city. The Alliance itself lost nearly $3 million in the spring and summer of 2020 and was forced to forego hiring seasonal workers, amounting nearly 20 percent of its workforce.
The Prospect Park Alliance is hopeful, however, that their new initiative, coupled with expanded volunteer opportunities, will successfully reinvigorate Brooklyn’s backyard—and ensure that the park remains a serene and clean haven for overheated locals.
