Will Cutting Down 78 Trees Ruin Fort Greene Park—or Save It?

Fort Greene Park is the oldest park in Brooklyn, and according to the conservancy that works with New York City's parks department to maintain it, while it's still a beautiful park, its age has been showing for a while. Many of its walkways and adjacent sidewalks are cracked, it's not as well-lit as it could be, and water pools at the park's low points after it rains. 

And for the past eight years, it's also been the site of a seemingly intractable battle, with a small group of local activists wielding multiple lawsuits on one side and the City's Parks Department, plus the local nonprofit tasked with park maintenance, on the other. 

It all began when NYC Parks announced in 2015 that Fort Greene Park, along with a handful of others in the city, would receive a makeover—including the removal of dozens of trees. According to the Friends of Fort Greene Park, a Fort Greene organization with just a handful of active members (one of its founders told Hell Gate that a rotating cast of around nine people at a time have led the organizing since FFGP was founded in 2017), the City has neglected to consider the impact of its capital improvement plans—specifically, its intention to remove 78 trees from the park. To block the removal of the trees, FFGP has sued New York City and NYC Parks three times, and the latest suit, filed in 2023, remains ongoing. 

FFGP claims that changing the park will shortchange its neighbors, particularly the residents of the Walt Whitman and Raymond V. Ingersoll Houses, a NYCHA development across the street from the park's north side. But to the Fort Greene Park Conservancy, a nonprofit organization that employs local young people in park maintenance; raises money for the park; and runs events like tours, movie nights, and poetry workshops, FFGP and its series of lawsuits are the ones to blame for the park's disrepair.