Brooklyn’s Only Mountain Bike Track Closes—For Now

Two dozen children raced around a clay bike course, doing wheelies off of jumps and diving into half-pipes.

It was the last day (Sep. 28) of the Brooklyn Bike Park in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, and everyone was out for their final ride—in the coming weeks the bike track will be demolished to clear room for rental housing.

The park was part of “Havemeyer Park,” a “pop-up” park built in January. Two Trees Management Company, which is redeveloping the Domino Sugar Factory and nearby lots (Havemeyer Park is at South Third and Kent Avenue), ceded the then-overgrown parking lot to the local community for short term use. Brooklyn Bike Park spouted up, as did a community farm, and a tipi. The park also hosted dawn dance parties organized by Morning Gloyville, a world-wide dance movement with a Brooklyn chapter.

For the New York City Mountain Biking Association (NYCMBA), which runs the Brooklyn Bike Park, the track’s creation was a fairy tale come true. Two Trees financed its construction, a nearby bike shop, Ride Brooklyn, provided bikes, and major bike brands like Cannondale and Bern sponsored the project. Chris Trombley, who runs the NYCMBA, said about the park’s creation, “We were approached by the developer who owns the property here to see how a bike park could be put on the property and managed successfully through community based volunteerism.”

The experiment worked. Chris built a staff, and riders poured in, many of them kids.

“I’m working on wheelie jumps and I’m…I think I got, I got, I think…I’m trying to work on a 360. I’m not really good but I'm catching more and more air every time I go,” said 8-year-old Jack Lapin.

Trombley thinks that the Brooklyn Bike Park can be a model for the city’s other mountain bike tracks, which are currently understaffed and in disrepair.

“If the bike parks can host birthday parties and launch membership programs they can financially sustain themselves,” said Trombley.

In the spring Trombley will have an opportunity to see if that’s true. The track at Havemeyer Park is being torn down, but in a twist that upends the typical narrative of Brooklyn gentrification, the management company will be rebuilding the park. Two Trees has set aside five acres for a park similar to Havemeyer; some of that space has been earmarked for a new Brooklyn Bike Park. The new track will be bigger, have more tricks, and if all goes to plan, more staff and resources.

Jim Dellavalle, of Dellavalle Designs, designed the track at Havemeyer. He was also at the park for its last day.

“You’re seeing it as closure right now. The sunset’s happening, people are gonna come visit, and see the sunset, and close out. Then the twilight of the park happens, it gets dark, the lights come on, and it happens one more time,” Dellavalle said.
 
Chris Trombley says the Brooklyn Bike Park’s lease at the new space is only for five years. The bulldozers might come again. But for at least the next chapter of the Brooklyn Bike Park, riders will still have a place to experience “rubber on dirt” in Williamsburg.

The new track is set to open in May.

Additional reporting for this piece by Yu Vongkiatkajorn