On February 20, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg announced that Tod Williams Billie Tsien Architects will design an expanded ice skating rink and recreation facility in Prospect Park. The Lakeside Center will be open year-round and includes two outdoor skating rinks and a 38,000-square-foot building housing a café, visitors center, and space for education programming. The existing rink on the edge of the lake will be taken down once the center is completed in what is currently a traffic circle nearby.

The center is part of a broader overhaul of the park by Prospect Park Alliance (PPA) in partnership with the city. Landscape architect Christian Zimmerman and PPA’s Design and Construction office are working on a masterplan that involves returning to Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux’s original design for Concert Grove and Music Island while adding a few new elements. When the new rink is built, the area of the shoreline that was filled in with concrete to build the old rink will be restored along with the island where musicians once performed for revelers on the shoreline.