Coney Island: How Much Do You Give a Sitt?
As most readers are probably aware by now, developer Joseph Sitt’s company Thor Equities has spent in the neighborhood of $120 million amassing a large swath of property along the Coney Island waterfront, including the land upon which Astroland currently sits. In addition to a complete makeover of the amusement park, the company’s original plan…
As most readers are probably aware by now, developer Joseph Sitt’s company Thor Equities has spent in the neighborhood of $120 million amassing a large swath of property along the Coney Island waterfront, including the land upon which Astroland currently sits. In addition to a complete makeover of the amusement park, the company’s original plan called for a number of large, presumably pricey condos along the boardwalk. In the face of a broad pushback from community (and city residents in general), Sitt sent his designers back to the drawing board and unveiled a new proposal last week that substituted hotels and time-shares for condos and sought to reduce the density of the project. Thor’s Coney Plan 2.0 did not seem to appease the critics, though, including the city’s Economic Development Corporation. Community Board 13’s Chuck Reichenthal summed it up when he said that, The community and the Coney Island Development Corporation have all indicated that residential and amusements don’t go together.” On Tuesday night, Sitt showed up for a local community meeting to try to rally support for his plan, saying that he didn’t want to build it unless residents were in favor. (He also noted that he wanted the support of the press and the blogs.) When we wrote about the new plan last week, we wondered aloud, “If you’re already going to turn it into Disney World, what’s the big deal is about having some condos in the mix?” An editorial this week in The Brooklyn Paper titled “Let Joe Sitt Build” asked essentially the same question. Anyway, given Sitt’s interest in gauging public opinion, we thought we’d run one of our polls below.
Thor Backs Away from Coney Condo Plan [Brownstoner] GMAP
CI Plan Is Scaled Back, but Critics Are Skeptical [NY Times]
Sitt Speaks in Coney Island [Gowanus Lounge]
Let Joe Sitt Build [Brooklyn Paper]
Come on, what’s this unfounded NIMBY attitude? Coney Island was written off for years and now developers want to build? It’s a gift! Let them build anything,even condos, cause it’s better than blight and honky tonk or nothing at all, something Coney is use to…
Well, here’s my 2 cents worth, prefaced by a few facts: No I don’t live there. No I don’t want to live there. Yes, I love Coney Island.I have a deep respect and appreciation for it’s historic importance and would very much like to see as much of that as possible preserved.
The residents of Coney Island pay the taxes. The residents, for many generations in many cases, know and love their beach and Astroland. Is it not their right to question the efforts of anyone, including city hall, who wishes to trample on what they have known and loved as “home” for so many years? I say it is. Change to Coney Island is inevitable and so the question now is “how much change” and at what cost? Granted, Sitts stands to lose if his ultimate plan fails in some way, but let’s remember that he also stands to gain tremendously if it is even marginally successful. What will the existing residents gain? What will they lose? If the residents overwhelmingly want something, they will overwhelmingly fight to preserve it. Works every time. Otherwise, Mr. Sitts will have it entirely his way and that will be that, win lose or draw.
I personally love Coney Island. Always have. I would like to see it “brightened” but not dramatically changed. Let’s all keep in mind that many meanings dwell within the term: Revitalization. Maybe our world today is over-filled with those who seek only the new and shiney with no regard for the “old” places which can dwell in a persons heart for a lifetime…places which can continue to dwell in the hearts of their offspring even. Well, call me “old fashioned” if you must but I think such places count for something. My hope is that ultimately, the residents will push to preserve as much as possible, that the beach will remain free to enjoy for many generations to come and that the development will move forward, realizing both the goals of Mr. Sitts, while respecting whatever wishes the residents hold as important enough to fight for.
Good Vibes and best wishes…
I lived in Brighton for 12 years, went to the beach every night, even the hurricanes. At the time there was a dissused beach club, the Brighton Beach Baths that had passed its prime. The Muss Corporation bought up the rights and began development. The neighbors fought them tooth and nail for maybe eight years. Ultimately Muss prevailed and built high rise condos overlooking the beach on the site of the baths. The area today is vibrant, fed by lots of legal and illegal dollars and rubles.
Coney Island has the most undreutilized urban beachfront real estate in the world. Even with the projects there are many residential developments that could and would work. Sea Gate sits on the end with their little gated enclave and does pretty well. The Russians are packing tightly into Brighton and will spread out to CI as soon as the development does. Brighton is quickly dumping the (historic?) beach cottages for more upscale and upzoned higher density condo developments. While the rest of Brooklyn thinks downzoning saves the neighborhood Brighton in thriving by packing in more and more people, European style at the end of the Subway lines.
Amusement parks, amusing and nostalgic as they are, belong to another time. A time before air conditioning and video games. Abe Stark arena and the Ball Park were supposed to provide a center for a more modern recreational CI. Little development has been associated with either unless you consider parking lots development.
I’m glad someone is putting some proposals out there instead of just sitting on their property and waiting for it to appreciate. Saving the amusement park as some sort of outdoor museum to the 1940s and 1950s may be a worthy endeavor, after all the Village Vanguard itself needed public and charitable support to make it in the NYC of the Gentry. But that nostalgia shouldn’t keep the owners of that property from providing lots of homes near mass transit and the ocean. It is not the Jersey shore. Trump and Warbasse have been the home to hundreds of thousands of working class new yorkers. They are big buildings walking distance from the beach. But market rate condos work too. Don’t let the NIMBY’s stop development on Coney Island.
Long live Totonnos!
NYC again doesn’t realize when it has something special, and instead of renovating and restoring something historic that a lot of (non-wealthy) people enjoy, it will instead “improve” it by tearing it down and replacing it with a generic “upscale” project.
There’s already been an incredible amount of damage done to CI over the years, but people still go to what’s left of it in droves. However, a lot of the posts here show nothing but a sort of classist disdain for the people who still come here and pack the place every summer weekend. It seems that NYC cannot stand to have even one place anymore for working-class people to enjoy themselves (which is what Coney has always been).
And they certainly couldn’t fund preservation and renovating of the existing honky-tonk atmosphere of C.I., no matter how historic it is as the original amusement areas in the country, and one of the last of the great ocean-front amusement areas on the east coast. No, that would show NYC as a forward-thinking place that respects its history and all of its people, but instead we have to aspire to be Orlando or Vegas or some other white bread-y generic modern American crap. Since the majority of people who go there now are of a different color and/or ethnicity than the folks with the money feel comfortable with (which leads to all the talk of “nobody goes there anymore” – despite the packed subway trains in the summer) it has to be “improved” by putting the final nail in the coffin of the Coney Island so many non-wealthy New Yorkers knew and loved.
It’s interesting to me that all of the people here who decry the encroachment of bland Fedders buildings on their precious historic neighborhoods are so ready to back the Feddersization of one of NYC’s real historic places – especially one that is still so alive and kicking. So goodbye glorious jumble of affordable fun. Hello sanitized upscale safe suburban “fun”.
Iceberg,
Yes, I understand the consequences of not paying my property tax but I’m not sure of the point you are trying to make.
Anon @ 4:33 PM,
Just try not paying your ‘voluntary’ income taxes, or property taxes and see how fast you realize your sad little fuedal role in this world ($750m not withstanding).
Iceberg,
“it more precisely describes the government as the
ultimate owner of all property, and our narrow individual role as fuedal serfs paying quitrent for our small plot of land while eeking out our substinence level existence.”
I think that is a rather dramatic interpretation of eminent domain, particularly when you are talking about it in the context of a devoper who is worth $750 million and is hardly a fuedal serf.
Anon @ 3:08 PM,
People who are anti-property rights will trip over themselves to make any excuse to invade them, including fictitious arguments about possible forthcoming blight, as though that remote possibility exceeds a normative whim of significance. (Urban blight being a subjective term, determing what constitutes blight even ex facto is still only a personal opinion, and should have no influence in policy discourse).
Anon @ 2:39 PM,
You did– if you think a private developer cannot determine the highest and best use of his property, you are thus infering that this decision lays with some other body, in this case the government.
FYI, “Eminent domain” is more than just a catchphrase describing the process by which property is forceably extracted from one party and given to others; it more precisely describes the government as the ultimate owner of all property, and our narrow individual role as fuedal serfs paying quitrent for our small plot of land while eeking out our substinence level existence.
Sasha, are you looking for a new job?