Grand Army Plaza plan would close roadway, create pedestrian link to Prospect Park

At Grand Army Plaza’s Saturday Greenmarket, the city’s plan to shut the southern roadway to cars and turn it into a pedestrian plaza landed as more than an architecture drawing. It proposed a direct walking link from the Soldiers’ and Sailors’ Memorial Arch to Prospect Park, a change that would give pedestrians and cyclists the space they have long lacked at one of Brooklyn’s most crowded civic crossroads.

Mayor Zohran Mamdani and the New York City Department of Transportation unveiled the proposal on April 13, saying the redesign would replace the plaza’s traffic-circle feel with a safer, simpler layout. Vehicles would be rerouted around the arch’s northern side, while the southern segment between the arch and the park would become car-free. Officials said the aim was to create a “world-class public space,” improve pedestrian and cyclist safety, and make service easier for the B41 and B6, two bus routes that together carry about 32,900 riders a day.

The proposal would clearly shift space away from drivers and toward people on foot, on bikes and on buses. That tradeoff is central to the politics of street redesigns across New York: the people who use the plaza as a through-route lose access, while park visitors, market shoppers, transit riders and cyclists gain a more legible, less conflicted entrance to Prospect Park. The city has scheduled public workshops starting April 23, with an online survey open through May 31, as it tests whether that balance can hold.

The case for change rests on years of concern that the plaza is confusing and dangerous. City crash data cited in local coverage shows 135 crashes and 221 injuries on the streets inside Grand Army Plaza over the past decade, including injuries to 26 cyclists, 20 pedestrians and 121 motorists. That record helps explain why this redesign is landing differently than past fights over road space. The city has spent years building a record for change, including a $1.8 million capital study that covered Grand Army Plaza, Vanderbilt Avenue Open Street and the Underhill Avenue Bike Boulevard.

Public engagement has also been substantial. A fall and winter 2022 survey drew 2,077 participants, more than 91% of them Brooklyn residents, and about 73% lived within 1.5 miles of the plaza. A November 2022 virtual workshop brought in about 270 people, 72% from Park Slope or Prospect Heights. City officials later said 85% of 3,600 respondents in a 2024 survey supported connecting the arch with the park entrance.

That support matters because Grand Army Plaza is not just a traffic knot. It is the home of the year-round Saturday Greenmarket, operating since 1989 and drawing shoppers from Park Slope, Prospect Heights, Crown Heights and Prospect Lefferts Gardens. It also frames the Soldiers’ and Sailors’ Memorial Arch, first dedicated in 1892 and restored in 2025 in a separate $8.9 million project, the first major restoration in nearly 50 years. The new plan would turn that restored monument into the front door of Prospect Park.