Facility and Recreation Use Plan for Floyd Bennett Field

National Park Service, Gateway National Recreation Area

Floyd Bennett Field, on the southern edge of Brooklyn at the end of Flatbush Avenue forms and essential part of the Breezy Point/Jamaica Bay Unit of Gateway National Recreation Area. Once serving as New York City's first municipal airport and later as a military base, it has been dedicated since 1972 to providing open space, outdoor recreation opportunities and environmental education to the citizens of the New York City Metropolitan Area. The Congressional intent of the addition to the Gateway proposal was to use a substantial open space within the Brooklyn community to satisfy the critical need for structured and unstructured recreation and open space uses. Rather than allow the site to continue to be subject to institutional uses, Floyd Bennett Field was to be made available to individual citizens and groups for their recreational uses some twenty years later. The intent remains the same. From an abandoned, deteriorating, surplus military installation in 1972, the field has been the object of considerable attention and use. In 1990, some 400,000 people visited Floyd Bennett Field taking advantages of the programs and opportunities provided by Gateway. In 1992 visitation grew to 600,000 users and in 1993, visitation is expected to rise to 750,000. Further growth of visitation and use opportunities is depended upon the availability of usable space and the forging of partnerships with the private sector for the development of facilities and programs that will respond to needs of the visitors. The document includes Gateway's concept for facility and recreation uses of the natural and cultural features on Floyd Bennett Field. Appended to it are items which document the interest of the community and park constituents in such uses, representation of efforts made to realize that concept, and selected documents regarding the termination of existing, non-compatible uses of the Field.