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Old Posted Mar 26, 2007, 11:41 AM
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NY Post

CYCLONE SWIRLS AROUND CONEY ISLAND BUILDER

By RICH CALDER
March 26, 2007

City officials have come out swinging against the developer promising a Vegas-glitz makeover for Coney Island's prime real estate - saying he's nothing but a huckster with a history of flipping properties for a fast buck.

Several officials told The Post they're concerned that Joseph Sitt's next selling spree could involve the massive assemblage of beachfront land his Thor Equities has bought up in Coney Island - especially if City Hall doesn't allow his planned $2 billion entertainment complex to include luxury housing.

"The guy has a track record of flipping land for big bucks," said one source close to the project. "He's done it already in Coney Island and other Brooklyn projects like [Downtown Brooklyn's] Albee Square Mall, and who's to say he won't play the city again?"

Chuck Reichenthal, a member of the city's Coney Island Development Corp., is worried Thor will hold up the plan either by selling out or by holding out to see if the next mayor is willing to allow the housing.

"I look out my [Surf Avenue] office window, and what I see now is very sad," he said. "They're beginning to create a ghost town."

The war over Coney Island's future came to a boil last month when City Planning Chairwoman Amanda Burden said at a Crain's breakfast presentation that there was no room for housing in the seaside plan.

"Amusements are incompatible with immediate adjacent residential use," Burden said.


Lynn Kelly, president of the CIDC, was more cautious about criticizing Sitt.

"Is there a concern? Sure. But we're moving forward with our rezoning plan, and we're hopeful that, once it's complete, the developer will create something great for Coney Island," she said.

Other officials were more skeptical.

They note that when Sitt bought the Albee Square Mall on Fulton Street five years ago for $24 million, he talked about giving the gritty site the same type of Vegas-style makeover he's now pitching for Coney Island.

Instead, Sitt spent $10 million rehabbing the mall - which he renamed The Gallery at Fulton Street - but never followed through on his grand plan.

Then after the city rezoned to allow for larger development there, Sitt sat on the mall before finally agreeing last January to sell it for $125 million.

"It's a great deal for him and it's going to bring larger-scale development there by the new buyer, but it's not going to be the 'Bellagio of malls' that Sitt said he was going to turn it into," a source said.

In Coney Island, Sitt last year sold one of the properties he bought for $90 million - a 168,000-square-foot tract known as the Washington Bath House site - after the city said it would allow residential development there.

A spokesman for Thor Equities, Lee Silberstein, insisted that the company isn't planning to back out of Coney Island.

Thor is "confident that working [with the Bloomberg administration], it will be able to rebuild Coney Island as a place worthy of its great legacy," he said.

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