Community Corner
Prospect Park's Lakeside Skating Center Behind Schedule
The biggest major upgrade in Prospect Park in the past 50 years will take a few months longer to open, say officials.
Prospect Park’s Lakeside project, which will bring two new ice rinks to the park, as well as a new café and education center, is behind schedule and will not open until months after originally planned, says the New York Times.
Plans for the $74 million Lakeside project were announced five years ago, with the two ice rinks scheduled to open in January 2013, says the Times. Now, Lakeside plans to open later that fall, when the café and education center are also completed, the article says.
“Our biggest concern is that we really hate to disappoint people who would like to be skating,” Emily Lloyd, the president of the Prospect Park Alliance, told the Times. “Hopefully, when it opens in 2013, all will be forgiven.”
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Funding has been a major issue with the project, the Times says, noting that Lakeside’s cost has increased by $25 million since the first designs were approved in 2007. According to the article, the project now has $65.5 million in funding, and that’s before naming rights for the rinks have been sold.
In December 2010, the half-century-old to make room for the new rinks, which unlike Wollman, will be open year-round.
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This past October, City Parks Department officials, as well as members of the Prospect Park Alliance, , which at the time was claimed to be on track for it’s original opening date.