Tompkins Square Park Turf War Pits Skateboarders Against City

EAST VILLAGE, NY — New York City's skateboarding community is in a turf war with the city Parks Department over a beloved patch of asphalt in Tompkins Square Park.

Skateboarders have launched a petition to stop the Parks Department from replacing an asphalt lot in the park's northwest corner with synthetic turf next year as the city works on a massive reconstruction of East River Park.

They say it would destroy a centerpiece of the city's skateboarding scene that has served for decades as a gathering place and training ground. The petition had more than 8,000 signatures as of late Tuesday afternoon.

"The skaters have been going there for almost four decades, and if you think about what the neighborhood was like four decades ago," said Ted Barrow, a skateboarder and graduate student who runs a popular skateboarding Instagram account.

"Obviously these skaters have sort of paid their dues and asserted themselves at this place."

While it's not an official skatepark, the lot is affectionately known to skateboarders as the "TF," or training facility. Generations of skaters have brought their own obstacles there and spent the day honing their craft or used it as a meet-up spot before heading to other parts of the city, Barrow said.

Tompkins is one of five sites where the Parks Department plans to add synthetic turf to provide additional recreation space for the neighborhood during the reconstruction of East River Park, which is expected to take about three and a half years.

That $1.45 billion overhaul "responds to the severe threats posed by climate change, and will provide much-needed flood protection for 110,000 New Yorkers in this area," Parks Department spokesperson Crystal Howard said. The area's community boards have expressed support for the project.

"The decision to install turf in the designated location in Tompkins Square Park in 2020 wasn’t made lightly," Howard said in an email. "... While we presented these enhancements publicly at various community board meetings and open houses, we are working to set up a meeting to discuss the matter with the constituency directly."

The Parks Department is planning improvements at several other local sites to account for the East River Park reconstruction. They include new community spaces at the LaGuardia Bathhouse and the Baruch Bathhouse and the planting of 1,000 trees and 40 rain gardens, which will begin this fall, the department said.

The Parks Department says it will talk with skateboarders about their concerns as it finalizes its plan.

But the Tompkins resurfacing would shut skateboarders and others out of a place that has "historical and sacred importance" to their community, says the online petition started by the skateboarder Adam Zhu. The petition was first noted Tuesday by the local blog EV Grieve.

Barrow says he skated at Tompkins every day for about four years. He first happened upon it soon after moving to the city in 2002 on a day when he'd been discouraged by the lack of other skate spots in post-9/11 Lower Manhattan. He encountered a couple of kids skating there and soon found a community.

"All of my friends that I made through skateboarding in those first couple years were people I met at Tompkins," said Barrow, who has written about the park in The New York Times and the skateboarding-focused Thrasher Magazine. "... It rekindled a love of skateboarding and just became a deeply important place to me."

The Parks Department says it aims to accommodate as many of the hundreds of kids who play softball and baseball at East River Park as possible while their usual spot is closed.

But to Barrow, the resurfacing will reserve the lot for certain sports like football or field hockey when it can be used for anything as it is now.

Some skateboarders who have grown up with the lot will be "gutted" if the lot is replaced, Barrow said, but the community would nonetheless move on.

"That’ll be one less place to hang out and skate and meet people, but we’ll find another place. It’s as simple as that," Barrow said. "I’d rather it be that place."