Brooklyn Bridge Banks Reopens, Heralding a 'Comeback of the Century'

Noah Udakea, 9, tests his skills on the rolling embankment of the newly reopened Brooklyn Bridge Banks, closed since 2015, and now part of Gotham Park. Photo: Carl Glassman/Tribeca Trib

After 15 years, Leo Heinert was back to his old tricks beneath the Brooklyn Bridge. It was the official reopening on Thursday of the legendary skateboarding mecca, Brooklyn Bridge Banks, and Heinert, 33, was zooming up the steep, rolling embankment, spinning in mid-air and landing hard but unscathed on the newly restored brick pavement. Like others taking their turns, he sought perfection, again and again. 

Finally pausing for a break, the skateboarder searched for words to describe what the return of the 2-acre public space, between Rose Street and Water Street, means to him as well as fellow skateboarders and BMX cyclists. 

“For me,” said Heinert, a Staten Islander who skated the “Banks” from 2001 until it closed in 2015, “it’s the comeback of the century. It’s probably the biggest comeback of skateboarding.”

That comeback was celebrated Thursday with a ribbon cutting, punctuated by the returning sound of those clacking boards amid an overhead roar of traffic. 

Such a scene seemed remote back in 2020 when Community Board 1 member Rosa Chang launched her mission to return the Banks—and eventually, she hoped, all of a 9-acre hardscape beneath the bridge—to the public. The Department of Transportation had projected that the Banks would be closed for “security and construction repairs” until 2033. But Chang insisted at a CB1 meeting that “there is so much potential here and we just don’t have space in our neighborhood for kids to go out and play ball or soccer or bike or skate.” 

A skateboarder-driven petition campaign to save and reopen the Brooklyn Bridge Banks had garnered 53,000 signatures, inspiring Chang to found the nonprofit Gotham Park [1] with the unofficial “mayor of New York City skateboarding” Steve Rodriguez [2], and Rob Magliaro [3], a founder and former principal of a nearby high school. 

In May, 2023, the first acre of the brick plaza was opened [4], with Mayor Eric Adams recalling, “Rosa came in with her team and she did a presentation of this landscape. Just to realize, wow, I can actually move this forward and make it happen.”

Adams was back on Thursday, not only to help cut another Gotham Park ribbon, but also to announce $50 million in the city budget to improve and maintain the space.

“Today’s opening and announcement is a monumental achievement, a powerful commitment to the public good,” Chang told the crowd. “It benefits the community of Lower Manhattan. It welcomes people from every walk of life, across the city, the state, the country, and the world.”