Quotes from a lengthy piece on the City's efforts to make Coney Island a year round destination...
http://www.citylimits.org/news/artic...island-succeed
Can a Year-Round Coney Island Succeed?
The Coney Island beachfront could soon look very different from its Astroland heyday.
By Neil deMause
Nov 30, 2010
Quote:
In theory, all sides agree, a year-round Coney Island could have numerous benefits. When city officials presented their initial plans for the rezoning, they talked of the year-round jobs that would be created for Coney Island's largely impoverished West End, and showed off dazzling computer renderings showing new roller coasters swooping amidst glass skyscrapers.
...In 2009 -- after years of public fights with both amusement operators and Joe Sitt, a Brooklyn developer who'd snapped up much of the beachfront and announced plans to erect condo towers right on the beach, against the city's wishes -- the city council finally passed a rezoning to allow more entertainment uses in the amusement area, and residential development elsewhere. Later that year, the city finally bought out much of Sitt's property, and gave Zamperla a ten-year lease to open a new amusement park and rent out the retail space along the boardwalk.
But the mixed-use towers that the city wanted built on the island to attract new residents and businesses won't be built for years, if ever, with massive infrastructure improvements needed before any concrete can be poured.
...the allure of finding something - anything - to provide a tourist draw in place of the amusement parks and bath houses that crowded the beachfront until the 1960s has tempted generations of urban planners. In the late 1970s, historian Charles Denson recounts in his book "Coney Island: Lost and Found," the Coney Island Chamber of Commerce erected a huge billboard near the Belt Parkway reading, "Welcome To Coney Island, the Perfect Resort for Casino Gambling." After then-Mayor Ed Koch endorsed the idea, boardwalk property values briefly soared from $3 to $100 per square foot, before collapsing once it became clear that the state legislature would never allow Atlantic City-style gambling in Brooklyn.
The next vision for Coney Island – articulated by the Coney Island Development Corporation, the entity that the city's Economic Development Corporation created in 2003 to lead the rezoning efforts -- dispensed with the casino dream in favor of an even more ambitious scenario. Their plan called for the rezoning of the amusement district, which once stretched more than a mile along the beachfront but in recent years has shrunk to only a few blocks, to allow for restaurants and "entertainment retail" along the lines of Chuck E. Cheese.
...The promise of rezoning, however, also transformed Coney Island into an attractive target for real estate speculators. By late 2005, Sitt, a Brooklyn-born developer who'd made his fortune by launching the Ashley Stewart line of plus-size clothing stores, had bought up much of the amusement area, including Coney Island's largest amusement park, Astroland.
The following spring, Sitt started bulldozing rides, with the unmistakable message to the city that if it didn't approve his condo plans, Coney would be nothing but vacant lots.
...By then, however, the real estate market had collapsed, putting off much of the city's hoped-for 2,500 units of residential development far into the future. Further complicating matters is the fact that the district's infrastructure is still built for occasional skeeball patrons, not full-time residents. For decades, Coney Island has suffered from flooding every time it rains, the result of antiquated sewers that empty storm water straight into the ocean and back up in anything more than a light shower.
"When they first started talking about the redevelopment of Coney Island, we all thought the shovels were going into the ground next week," says Ida Sanoff, a former member of Community Board 13 who has become a leading environmental champion for Coney Island and neighboring Brighton Beach. "But they have a lot to do underground." Among other difficulties, she says, is that the city's maps for the neighborhood are so out of date that when digging to repair a sewer, "you might find a pipe, or you might not find a pipe."
The city now says it's about to launch a major revamping of Coney Island's drainage system that will include raising the grade of the land at the boardwalk by nine feet and building new sewers to drain storm runoff into Coney Island Creek to the north. The first phase, costing $130 million, is projected for completion by 2014; subsequent phases won't be completed for at least another decade.
...the effort to construct the mixed-use towers remains stalled. After purchasing a $90 million lot, Taconic Properties, the developer that was to have built them now says on its web page for the Coney project that it is "in the process of evaluating the economics of a planned development for some or all of our holdings." (Taconic officials did not respond to repeated requests for comment for this story.) Though city officials say Taconic has discussed erecting a single building on the old Washington Baths site at West 21st Street and the boardwalk, there's no sign of activity anytime soon.
...With the housing towers stalled, the city has turned to Zamperla as the harbinger of a new, year-round Coney. Next year, the company will open its Scream Zone, a new amusement area that will feature two new rollercoasters and a "human slingshot," on land that was home to batting cages and go-cart rides before Sitt put his bulldozers to work. Zamperla is also considered likely to take over operations of the Cyclone roller coaster now that former Astroland owner Carol Hill Albert has opted out of her long-term lease, citing rising insurance costs.
"The goal is ultimately a Coney Island capable of attracting visitors 365 days a year," CAI president Ferrari tells City Limits via email. "It will be challenging, to be sure - but we believe it is possible. And a resurgent Boardwalk is essential to accomplishing this goal."
"Zamperla is putting far more resources into this than we ever anticipated," says EDC vice-president Madelyn Wils, noting that Luna Park plans to open a restaurant on its Surf Avenue frontage next spring. "Even though it's not a permanent amusement park," she says - Zamperla's lease expires after 2019, at which point the city will issue a new RFP for a permanent amusement operator - "it should spur a lot of economic growth."
...to Dick Zigun, the self-proclaimed "mayor of Coney Island" who has operated his Sideshows by the Seashore for nearly three decades, Zamperla's plan to become a year-round anchor looks promising. "Our [Halloween] program, Creepshow at the Freakshow, which lost money and never found an audience for 12 years, was sold out for every performance" this year after Luna Park stayed open for an added month past the traditional September beach closing date, Zigun says. "So Hallelujah, the new Coney Island!" He notes that a handful of new year-round businesses are in the process of opening on Surf Avenue - though they're likely not what the Bloomberg administration had in mind. "There is a biker bar across the street from us, a topless club. There is a tattoo parlor under construction and a karaoke bar under construction directly across the street. So instead of our immediate neighborhood rolling down steel shutters at 5 pm, there's the beginning of a nightclub district that's open evenings."
|
__________________
NEW YORK is Back!
“Office buildings are our factories – whether for tech, creative or traditional industries we must continue to grow our modern factories to create new jobs,” said United States Senator Chuck Schumer.
Last edited by NYguy; Dec 1, 2010 at 1:45 PM.
|
Prev
Linear Mode
