A New York City community board panel this week backed a nearly $10 million plan to rebuild Tompkins Square Park's basketball courts, kids' pool and outdoor fitness area, even as petitioners carrying more than 2,600 signatures pushed to spare the gym equipment from demolition. The East Village Community Board Parks Committee voted Thursday to support the city's recommendation to renovate the entire area, including the outdoor gym, setting up a fight that will now move to the full community board.
A Vote That Didn't Settle Much
The committee's decision came after the Gothamist reported that the Parks Department presented three renovation proposals at the October 15 meeting, one of which left the fitness area undisturbed. The fitness area has long been used by a broad community of parkgoers. The panel also pushed for one change of its own: preserving the half basketball court that the original plan would have eliminated. That resolution now heads to the full community board at its next meeting, meaning the fight over the park's future is far from over.
The broader project, which NYC Parks says carries nearly $10 million in funding from the mayor and governor, would touch nearly every corner of the park's recreation zone. Plans call for a new in-ground miniature pool for children with upgraded infrastructure, plus detention basins built beneath the renovated basketball court to improve storm runoff and keep sewage from flowing into the East River, according to the same Parks Department presentation cited by Gothamist.
Why the Pool and Gym Are Tied Together
The project traces back to the park's aging mini-pool, which the Parks Department wants to demolish and replace with a larger in-ground pool and a wider deck, according to Gothamist's earlier reporting. The new pool would double the capacity of the existing setup, per Time Out New York, with plans that also include replacing the filtration system, expanding the deck, upgrading fencing and gates, and adding outdoor showers and a new lifeguard chair. That mini-pool work is backed by $6.1 million in state funding awarded in 2024 through New York's NY SWIMS initiative, Time Out reported.
The complication is underground: city officials have said key piping and plumbing lines run beneath the basketball courts and fitness area, which is why the pool renovation keeps pulling the adjacent gym into its scope. The current exercise bars at the fitness area date back to 1990, and the department is considering replacing them as part of the broader project. Councilmember Harvey Epstein has said he is asking Parks whether there's a way to replace the underground piping without disturbing the fitness area at all.
Residents Who Built Their Lives Around the Bars
For many regulars, the fitness area is not an amenity but a daily anchor. Jonathan Fodi moved to the East Village from Montreal after visiting his cousin, and Jahmal Kirwan has said Tompkins Square Park helped him get into shape, stop drinking, stay out of trouble and connect with his community. The two are planning a park party to showcase the community the space has fostered, even as its future remains uncertain.
Calisthenics coach Danny Kavadlo has argued the fitness area should remain unchanged because its users love it as it is. Salo Coslovsky has gone further, saying the department is using repairable problems to justify a larger, more disruptive reconstruction; he plans to attend the next community board meeting with specific requests, including improved accessibility paired with minimally disruptive repairs rather than a full teardown.
Parks Department's Case for a Bigger Rebuild
The Parks Department has said new fitness equipment would be safer and more accessible to people with disabilities, and that it is consulting manufacturers about sourcing higher-quality materials for the renovation. Officials maintain the proposed design would retain the park's current features while adding accessible equipment and layout, and that the fitness-area work would replace existing equipment with new materials intended to improve safety and accessibility. The full renovation is expected to take 18 months, according to the Parks Department.
Not everyone is convinced the tradeoffs are worth it. A petition asking the Parks Department to remove the fitness area from the reconstruction plans had collected more than 2,600 signatures, and supporters describe the space on Change.org as a beacon of fitness and community used by people of every gender, age, income level, race and fitness ability. A separate account from the East Village Community Coalition noted that most residents who attended an earlier input meeting asked for as little change as possible to the adjacent courts and exercise area.
Echoes of Past Preservation Fights
Tompkins Square Park has been down this road before. In 2019, skaters organized a petition and rally to save a barren asphalt rectangle from being covered in turf; the city eventually dropped that plan, repaired the asphalt instead, and added new features for skateboarders. A 2023 reconstruction of the park's multipurpose court was designed to preserve that versatility while adding new asphalt, benches and basketball backstops, according to Gothamist's coverage of that project.
Some fitness-area users have pointed to a different precedent as a warning rather than a comfort: changes to fitness equipment during the East River Park reconstruction have left them skeptical that promises of new facilities will actually serve the calisthenics community's needs, a concern reported by evgrieve.com. As of earlier reporting, the current renovation project was only about five percent through its design phase, which began in January and is projected to wrap by March 2027. Procurement and construction timelines have not yet been established, though the Parks Department has said procurement typically takes nine to 12 months and construction another 12 to 18 months once a final design is approved.
