Mayor Zohran Mamdani on Monday cut the ribbon on the Shirley Chisholm Recreation Center in East Flatbush, a $141 million project more than a decade in the making.
The roughly 74,000-square-foot facility is the first new city-run recreation center built in 15 years and the first in central Brooklyn, according to the mayor’s office. It includes a competition-size pool, gymnasium, indoor walking track, classrooms, a teaching kitchen and a media lab.
City leaders framed the project as both a long-sought neighborhood investment and a tribute to Shirley Chisholm, the Brooklyn congresswoman who in 1968 became the first Black woman elected to Congress and later the first to seek a major party’s presidential nomination.
“This center will remain low-cost to all New Yorkers and free to anyone under the age of 24,” Mamdani said. “Making New York more affordable also means government investing in spaces like this, where New Yorkers can learn, grow, and simply enjoy their time together.”
The center sits within a 15-minute walk or transit ride of about 41,000 residents. Mamdani called it a long-overdue investment in central Brooklyn and said it will be the first of six new recreation centers planned across the city.
The mayor also tied the project to concerns about population loss among Black families. From 2010 to 2019, he said, the city saw a 19% drop in its population of Black children and teenagers, calling the trend an “exodus” that officials must address by making New York easier to afford and live in.
East Flatbush residents have long sought a recreation center; the nearest Parks Department facilities are in Brownsville and Crown Heights, each about 3.5 miles away.
Plans for a Chisholm-named center in the neighborhood began in 2012 under then-Council Member Jumaane Williams, now the public advocate. The project received official approval in 2017 but was later moved from its original site at Tilden Playground after community objections raised with Williams’ successor, Council Member Farah Louis.
In 2020, then-Mayor Bill de Blasio and the City Council reallocated $141 million from the NYPD capital budget to fund the project, in partnership with Louis and Assembly Member Rodneyse Bichotte Hermelyn.
Local officials on Monday described the center as the result of years of organizing, particularly after the 2013 police shooting of Kimani Gray and a period of heightened gun violence in the neighborhood. Williams said organizers realized they were telling young people to stay off the streets without giving them anywhere else to go.
“We were telling them, ‘Don’t be out here at nighttime,’” Williams said. “And they said, ‘Well, where do you want us to go?’ … There was no new centers, no place we could actually say, ‘Hey, why don’t you go here?’”
Louis called the opening “an answered prayer” and the culmination of years of advocacy.
“For every young person who cried, ‘Don’t shoot, I want to grow up,’ for every senior seeking a place for leisure instead of loneliness, for every resident seeking a place for wellness — this is yours,” she said. “The Shirley Chisholm recreation center stands as a testament to what happens when community members, advocates and public servants work together with purpose.”
The Shirley Chisholm Recreation Center will open fully on Tuesday, Feb. 10. During its first week, residents can enjoy a free day at the facility, and Parks will host guided tours, registration events, and demonstrations to showcase the new amenities.
