A sprawling Brooklyn sports complex that hosts one of the few hockey rinks in the city is shutting down in two weeks — after years of dropping revenue due to the COVID-19 pandemic and a nearby migrant camp that made worried people avoid the facility, sources said.
Aviator Sports and Events Center at Floyd Bennett Field will close when its lease with the National Parks Service expires on April 14 — throwing out thousands of “devastated” young athletes from a hub they call “home.”
“It’s heartbreaking. No aviator — no fun, no family, no home,” said 11-year-old Maddie Gallagher, a young gymnast who trains at Aviator.
Any prospect of the 175,000-square-foot multi-sport facility being saved has been turned into a long shot, as the park service has dragged its feet on finding a new operator.
Gallagher and her Aviator Gymnastics teammates burst into tears when their coaches broke the news Monday that their practices would cease next month unless a new operator is quickly picked, but the process could take as long as a year.
Aviator’s management warned the park service back in October that it would not re-sign its lease, but the federal agency did not start soliciting a replacement until January.
The NPS is “currently reviewing the submissions,” a representative confirmed — but couldn’t provide additional information.
Gallagher and her friends each handwrote emotional letters to Aviator and the parks service begging that they find a replacement expeditiously — before their teammates were forced to fall behind on their valuable training time.
“It’s not fair. How can someone shut down the only sports complex in the neighborhood? Where are we supposed to go?” 10-year-old Sophia Balsamo, wrote in her two-page plea.
Aviator, which has run the site since 2008, said it was forced to close after years of economic hardship that started back in 2012 when Hurricane Sandy walloped the coastal metro area.
The venue continued to teeter through the pandemic, but the shortly-lived 2,000-bed migrant shelter outside Aviator’s front doors was the final straw.
With the uncertainty of the facility just feet away from the front doors, families declined to enroll in last year’s summer camps — Aviator’s big money-maker — costing the facility 75% of its business and roughly half a million dollars.
“It greatly impacted us like nobody’s business,” said Chris Werstine, a hockey instructor who has worked at Aviator for more than 20 years.
“People were very weary about bringing their child here because of not knowing — but I’ll tell you what, we had no issues with them. They were fine. It was well under control. There were thousands of people over there, but as far as I’m concerned the hysteria that that brought us did us in.”
Hockey would immediately suffer from Aviator’s shutdown — the Midwood complex hosts the only year-round hockey rink in the borough, with the nearest others nearly 20 miles away at Flushing Meadows Corona Park in Queens or in Manhattan’s Chelsea Piers.
“Keeping them on the ice is really important because ice skills are something that you have to keep developing,” explained Heather Volik, a mom to kids in both gymnastics and hockey.
For other sports that might more easily find practice space, the question of cost becomes a factor.
Aviator has reliably rented out courts for a reasonable price, allowing coaches to keep their membership prices low, explained coach Marie Raico.
“There’s a lot of clubs in the city that are price gouging athletes. We don’t do that,” said Raico, who has run her 175-strong Rockawave Volleyball Training team out of Aviator for the past five years.
Raico has a “nuclear plan” in her back pocket if she is forced to move to a new facility, but is holding out hope that she can continue practicing at Aviator beyond the April 14 deadline.
“The problem for us is [we] are two weeks away from the tournament where they are competing to go to nationals in June. My ability to rent this space interferes with my ability to prepare them to go to nationals. That’s an immediate problem for me,” Raico said.
The closure could mean breaking up teammates from multiple boroughs who have spent years and countless hours training together.
“Some of these girls, it’s hard to meet up because they live so far away so gymnastics is where we all meet up,” said Emily Nunziata, 10, of Flatbush, adding that her teammates are much more than best friends: “I call them family.”
“I was devastated — for someplace that has been my home for almost my whole life, it was devastating to hear that I’d never walk through the doors again. It’s been my happy place.”
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