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Flashback: Last Brownstone Standing
Controversial plans for high-rise luxury condos at Coney Island have now been scrapped, with developer Thor revising its plans to instead include a glass enclosed water park and hotel space. The city's planning department was very concerned with condominiums being included in the plan, but Thor had argued condos would be critical in keeping the project profitable. Now Thor CEO Joseph Sitt explained, "This is our way of being responsible and putting out an olive branch to the community and city administration."
Sitt said that a new "amusement-park hotel" would be built near where Astroland currently sits; the hotel will have indoor and outdoor rides. He told the Post, "If you have kids, what better hotel to stay at than one with its own amusement park and that is next to the historic Wonder Wheel on one end and has the landmark Cyclone on the other?" It sounds like Sitt has taken Astroland owner Carol Albert's advice; back in March, she told the Sun, "You could make money year-round in the amusement business in Coney Island by building a hotel or hotels instead of condos."
However, the NY Times notes that this change doesn't satisfy all the critics.
Robert Lieber, president of the city’s Economic Development Corporation, described Mr. Sitt’s new plan as a “wolf dressed up as a sheep.”...Mr. Lieber and others say that the time-share units look an awful lot like apartments and that the complex looks more like a mall than Coney Island.It's true - the rendering at top does show buildings much taller than the Parachute Jump. Coney Island blog Kinetic Carnival writes that the new rendering looks similar to the old one (the new hotel/time share buildings are "Donald Trump style boxes with windows"), which doesn't seem to adhere to "Coney Island character," as city agencies hope for.“[Sitt] came in last week and presented a plan that had essentially the same density, but dressed it up with hotels and time shares,” Mr. Lieber said on Friday. “The building heights still exceed the 271-foot Parachute Jump,” a Coney Island landmark. “And he’s looking for a huge subsidy from the city. North of $100 million.”
Here's the strategic plan for Coney Island's Development.
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There is only one man who could do justice to a Coney Island redesign. Oh, Antoni Gaudi we miss you so.
that image is disturbing. Wait a minute, where did the wonder wheel go in that image? Or is my orientation off?
something tells me that due to all the goddamm naysaying, CI will remain a dump for years to come...enjoy
I'm sorry, Coney Island should always be a little dumpy. You can go to Disneyland if you want sterility.
I don't think it's going to remain a dump, but isn't input from the community important, too? Thor spent a lot of money on this, believe me, they are going to get something out of it, and pretty soon, too.
like i said, gregoire...enjoy
Or just dump any Community Board naysayers like for Yankee Stadium and Atlantic Yards... that might do the trick, too.
hey kids lets take a vacation in - brooklyn! mmboy fun times
You can have "profitability" without twenty story boxes whose idea of "character" is just having a differently colored building. The Trump assessment is right, there's an awful, gut-level resemblance to Atlantic City, particularly the newer casinos (nothing against AC, but CI is a different place, with it's own history and identity). Also, actual hotels aren't necessarily a bad idea, but I'm getting rather sick of these developers calling apartment buildings hotels.
but isn't input from the community important, too
Except that community boards are run by those that scream the loudest. They tend to be dominated by oldtimers that think every year they have lived in a particular neighborhood makes their opinion ever more the correct one. They are not interested in listening to developers or even their neighbors that disagree with them.
Like I said... just kick 'em off. (and yes, the CBers can be quite annoying.)
"like i said, gregoire...enjoy"
I dont know if youre being sarcastic. I like Coney Island as is. A little sprucing up here or there wont hurt, but Im not sure why the place needs to be completely reconstructed and sanitized.
what "character" are you trying to preserve????
all i see right now are fugly subsidized housing buildings & projects..this is already a hi-rise neighborhood
Look at that picture... Dear God...
metropolisist, have you even BEEN to Coney Island?
There currently stand no subsidized housing projects in the area of land subject to this renewal plan. The revisions depicted in the illustration above take place in the public area, which currently house restaurants, amusements and shops.
You must be thinking about a different area of New York.
barf.
yes i know there are no projects on the site, they are across the street and give the whole area a depressing feel & probably contributed to the area's decline.
The projects came after the decline started, and Robert Moses hated amusements, and did little to revitalize Coney Island once the decline started. Air conditioning was also a major factor in its decline as well as the general decline in American amusements in general and 1950s gangs, too. Oh, let's not forget that combined with everything else, CI never bounced back from the 1970s. See Wikipedia for more. There's a lot more to the story then the projects.
Whatever Thor has planned, it cant be as bad as what the city has done to the area of the past 50 years. Can you say Ghetto?
Thank you Mr. Sitt please rid us of the nastiness that even rappers refer to as "the worst place you can grow up"..
a terrible idea.
these developers are going buck wild in Brooklyn, they are all out of their minds.
20: if you like nasty dumps that look like WW3 just happened go and live in Newark, and let Brooklyn rise up from the ashes...dumb $%$%@$
wow yeah
let's spend vac time near polluted waters and dillapidated projects
woo hoo!
wtf is up with surf avenue. is it going to become surf parkway?
ridiculous waste of taxpayer's money, especially considering that this bozo is probably just bluffing the city in order to get the zoning changes he wants...then he'll flip the property for an easy profit.
it's too bad this place is no longer going to be affordable but it's inevitable. the whole area will be improved but the price of everything will go up as well. i'm not sure how i feel about this.
June 18, 2006
nytimes.com
In Coney Island, Marbury Has Message but No News
"My message to the kids of Coney Island is: 'Don't want to live here. Don't want to be in Coney Island all your life,' " Marbury said. "And if somebody tells you different, don't deal with them people, because they want you to stay here. So what I'm doing is trying to give kids hope, and allow them to understand that with hard work and dedication, preparation, all of those different things, they'll be able to succeed."
Marbury spoke of creating jobs and other avenues out of poverty. He said he would pay barbers in his former neighborhood to give residents free haircuts.
My guess is the new crap will get knocked down by the first hurricane that comes its way.
21?
I grew up in Brooklyn. I've lived there all my life.
IN central Brooklyn, not Park Slope, Brooklyn Heights or Williamsburg.
Where are you from, hmmmmmmmmm?