The Re-Brickening — 2025 Brooklyn Banks Update

If you’ve done a skate through downtown in the past two weeks, you might’ve found yourself getting …bricked up passing the Brooklyn Banks.

You may remember that back during the peak of COVID in spring 2020, the city began removing the bricks from the Big Banks section, leading to many stupid rumors, and a general sense that the spot was done for good. It had otherwise been fenced off since 2010 (!), minus a brief period in 2017 when the fence collapsed and you could sneak in a sesh on an incredibly soot-covered version of an already dirty spot.

At the time, the word from the city was that they had no intentions of demolishing the spot. When they officially reopened the section by the nine in 2023, it coincided with an announcement that the Big Banks would be a later phase of a multi-part reopening of the entire space, with another supposedly being the reopening of the Small Banks.

Well, the Big Banks phase looks like it is nearing completion. You’ll notice that there’s a mixture of new bricks for the flat surfaces, with a lot of the original bricks from the 60s or 70s (Ted can probably tell you for sure) on much of the banks themselves. The thirteen and the ten sets remain intact. The spot is pretty much its O.G. self, minus some planters, plus a new floor. Can’t speak on the integrity of their 2025 masonry, but skaters get acclimated to anything.

As of now, there is no set date for an official reopening. Steve Rodriguez has been the liaison between skaters and the city for this entire saga, and he says “probably this spring,” but does warn that whatever the city says is subject to change based on, well, the city.

For those of us who were most excited about the prospect of the Small Banks being restored — considering that they have been a wrap since 2004 — there’s still no word on when that process will begin. We reported on the bureaucratic technicality that required one contractor to restore it to 2004 non-skateable condition back in the fall, but as it stands, the city is still intent on restoring it to the pre-2004, fully skateable version of the spot you’ll recognize from old videos.

And yes, there’s a security guard posted at the job site restoring the Big Banks seemingly 24/7. Dude was following around while we were taking these photos, so couldn’t get much closer.

P.S. Just noticed the date, and no, we don’t partake in that shit.