“It’s the best skate park in the world, because it wasn’t supposed to be a skate park,” the professional skateboarder Mike Vallely said near the end of a popular YouTube video posted earlier this year to pay homage to the threatened Brooklyn Banks.

Image Steve Rodriguez is a well-known rider and founder of a New York skateboard company called 5Boro. He’s also considered the leader of the local skateboarding community. Credit... Julie Glassberg for The New York Times

It is about to become little more than a construction zone during a four-year renovation of the Brooklyn Bridge. Any day now, a new fence will slice the Brooklyn Banks roughly in half, giving construction crews a staging area for trucks and equipment until 2014. Sometime this summer, the entire area will be closed off for about six months while an overhead ramp is painted, the city said.

Skateboarders are used to being displaced from public spaces. But the Brooklyn Banks has a decades-long history and a cultivated status as a sort of skating mecca. Besides, it was already saved once, with help from the city, only five years ago.

That was the last time Steve Rodriguez rode to the rescue. He has spent the past few months trying to do it again, making headway, thanks to city officials who see value in the Brooklyn Banks for skaters and bikers, but he is running out of time to keep them whole.

“I’m fine to close the Banks for six months to paint the overpass,” Rodriguez said. “But four years for staging? Come on.”