Results tagged “amusement”

With a deal to sell some of his prime Coney Island boardwalk real estate to the city stalled, developer Joe Sitt is moving to snatch up more land in an attempt to build a controversial entertainment-amusement-hotel complex. Kansas Fried Chicken king Horace Bullard tells the Post that he's "leaning toward" selling the former Thunderbolt roller coaster site to Sitt for $91 million. Those three acres would tighten Sitt's grip on most of the land stretching from Keyspan Park to the Cyclone.

It's that time of year again, when, with a regularity that rivals the swallows' return to Capistrano, the operator of the Astroland amusement area on Coney Island stares into her future and beholds a murky void. The tradition, which dates all the way back to 2007, is deeply troubling for Carol Albert, who has no idea whether developer Joe Sitt will renew her lease on the land that Astroland has occupied for 46 years. Sitt's company Thor Equities bought the property two years ago.

Last night’s Coney Island Public Scoping Meeting was the place to be, as activists like political performance artist Reverend Billy turned the meeting into a carnival, leaping up on a chair with repeated cries of “Coney-lujah!” Musician Amos Wengler stood up to croon his anthem “Save Coney Island,” and Savitri D., the Mermaid Parade queen who had been on a hunger strike since Saturday to spotlight the meeting, passionately derided the city’s latest proposal for Coney Island.

A nosy Post reporter may have cost Coney Island “Mayor” Dick Zugin his free apartment in a building he purchased with a 3.6 million grant from the city. Zigun runs his Coney Island USA sideshow and museum out of the Surf Avenue building, which the city helped his group buy last year. But when confronted with documents that report the address as his residence, Zigun admitted that he’s also been illegally living there, albeit humbly on a convertible sofa.

Last month the city announced that the space dedicated to amusements in the latest Coney Island rezoning plan would be cut from 15 acres to 9 acres. City officials explained that the downsizing was necessary to accommodate “local landowners” – the biggest of those is developer Joe Sitt, whose glitzy plans were previously derailed by the city for the express purpose of devoting larger space for the amusement park.