Basketball players in Brooklyn have a newly-redesigned blacktop to play pickup, as the Brooklyn Nets and company helped open a newly renovated schoolyard in Williamsburg.
Located at the Juan Morel Campos Secondary School on Heyward Street, the sports facility features basketball courts, soccer fields and running tracks along with a reinvigorated space with benches and trees.
The basketball courts, which feature colorful designs with New York themes, were designed by Nina Chanel Abney, a New York-based artist who hailed the project as a boon for the community.
“I’m super excited about the courts I designed for the new playground at Juan Morel Campos Secondary School,” she posted on social media. “This new playground will serve more than 17,300 neighborhood residents — including 4,600 children.”
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The Nets and the New York Liberty, which are both owned by Taiwanise-born billionaire Joe Tsai who made his fortune with e-commerce giant Alibaba, contributed to the creation of the new recreational spac, along with the Kevin Durant Charity Foundation, which is run by the Nets future Hall of Famer.
“Parks and playgrounds provide tremendous benefits for communities, from mental and physical well-being to improving environmental health,” said Carter Strickland of the Trust for Public Land.
“The Brooklyn Nets & New York Liberty Foundation strives to create equitable access to education and sports,” said Mandy Gutmann of BSE Global, which manages Barclays Center. “We know that the skills learned in basketball can transcend into tools for life and through this partnership, we are helping ensure the surrounding community has a place to play. We hope these beautifully designed courts will inspire the students to play hard, study hard, and have fun.”
For more coverage of the Nets and Liberty, head to amNY.com.
The space was also designed to be environmentally sustainable, as the designers used artificial grass to capture rainfall.
“This new Green Infrastructure playground will absorb all of the rain and snow that falls on it, which will help to reduce any neighborhood flooding and improve the health of nearby Newtown Creek,” said the City’s environmental head Rohit Aggarwala in a statement.
