Prospect Park will get a new bike lane along Ocean Avenue

At a May 7 hearing, the Landmarks Preservation Commission approved a Prospect Park Alliance proposal to bring a new bike lane and remove a tree line on Ocean Avenue, the Brooklyn Eagle first reported.

Aside from adding the new protected bike lane on the park’s Ocean Avenue perimeter, the project, led by the Prospect Park Alliance and the Parks Department, will re-pave the entrance at Parkside and Ocean Avenue and re-store light poles and street furnishings.

The project will also involve removing 57 trees to build the bike lane and 13 others because they are in poor condition, Prospect Park Alliance senior landscape architect Justine Heilner said at the LPC hearing. But 21 of those trees will be replanted in the park, and 144 small ones will be planted on the Avenue.

Landmarks Preservation Commission

But some community members have opposed the trees’ uprooting. “I came here to speak for the trees because they can’t speak for themselves—[designers] can figure out how to create change that works without cutting down large trees and removing the many environmental benefits they give us,” activist Lucy Koteen said during the hearing, the Brooklyn Eagle reported.

The restored bike lane will be in the same area as the Shirley Chisholm monument. which will sit at the Parkside Avenue entrance to the Brooklyn Park. The monument will be the “focal point” of the restoration, Sue Donoghue, president of Prospect Park Alliance, said in a recent statement.