Something in Coney Finally Getting Landmarked
Coney Island preservationists haven’t had the best luck in landmarking historic buildings as Thor Equities eyes to tear them down. But here’s good news: Kinetic Carnival reports that the Shore Theater, built on Shore and Stillwell Avenues in 1925, will be seen by the LPC today and is expected to be landmarked. The building is…
Coney Island preservationists haven’t had the best luck in landmarking historic buildings as Thor Equities eyes to tear them down. But here’s good news: Kinetic Carnival reports that the Shore Theater, built on Shore and Stillwell Avenues in 1925, will be seen by the LPC today and is expected to be landmarked. The building is currently in disuse but was a vaudeville theater and movie house in its heyday. (It then screened pornography in the 70s.) With 2,400 seats, the theater now has a ton of potential to being put back to good use. Nice to finally see a win for old-time Coney.
Photo by vanz
(it’s also an uninteresting-looking exterior, which is probably all that will remain in the end.)
Wait, what’s the ‘great potential’ for this building? I wish they would landmark something that was actually useful fabric, not a giant empty theatre in the middle of nowhere.
Seriously: What are they going to do with it? Screen Bergman for 2000 people? Do opera? It’s disused because there’s no purpose for it. It isn’t even part of the boardwalk, or the interesting ‘coney island’ vending/carny bits.
I love coney island, but I find this sort of stupid. The only potential it will have is as something gutted and turned into something else, which is lame, considering there are plenty of real bits of coney island that could have stayed as their occupied, revenue-generating selves with the same damn program they had before, but got the boot.
The building is at Stillwell and Surf Avenues (not Shore Avenue).
If anything wackamole, it’s landmark neglect. Coney has been on several endangerment lists, including the Trust for Historic Preservation. The building can be easily converted into modern offices and a new theatre. Knocking it down so something costly and bland can replace it does not help anyone but developers seeking easy profit.
Then again, you seem to be intent on killing NYC history for Houston-style development, so please. Move. The city will be better off without you.
The building is
a) obsolete
b) ugly
c) economically useless.
This is landmarks abuse — our entire city is losing the benefit of city planning by piecemeal landmarking, which is totally unfair to the rest of us.
that is great news if it is landmarked
This is a great building, but they will have to get creative to fill 2400 seats on a regular basis.
Perhaps if Coney Island keeps drawing in renewed crowds, a mix of live events, movies, and rentals could fill it enough to pay for the renovation an upkeep.
The whole idea in general is to turn Coney Island’s boardwalk into 42nd Street. Though I wouldn’t mind that kind of investment, the way Thor is going about it has left many longtime shops in the cold and in turn, knocked down historic buildings that could have been adapted for reuse.
The best development style would be to take a nod from the Jersey Shore’s boardwalks, which oddly enough retain plenty of old businesses alongside newer development. Morey’s Piers in the Wildwoods are a great example of newer entertainment complexes fitting in alongside the older establishments. The new Luna Park does this fairly well in Coney Island but Thor’s proposed ‘strip mall’ is something wholly unwarranted for the area.
The theatre has a lot of potential. Could there be a Disney Times Square effect where a major entertainment company takes it over to bring in crowds or should it be geared towards more high brow audiences?