Quote:
Originally Posted by Rail>Auto
I still like Sitts plan better. I just don't understand why the city had to get so involved in this when they had a private contractor willing to dump $1.5 bil into the area.
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Sitts plan was better than nothing, but it amounted to pretty much eliminating outdoor amusements from Coney Island. Sitt claims his plan is still pretty much as it was, and he still has large portions of Coney Island to develop, though it remains to be seen if he is serious about anything. He's not making any serious efforts to lease the lots he owns now on a temporary basis, and his plans for Coney Island last year were a disaster. If the city
hadn't stepped in, no doubt this year would be the same.
The city did the smart thing by mapping the "outdoor" amusement area as parkland, meaning developers can't come in and change what's on the site on a whim. Decades of that has led to Coney's current state of neglect. For all intents and purposes, the outdoor area is now city owned parkland. The indoor amusement area is intended to make the CI a year round destination, indluding indoor waterparks, while the city envisions outdoor areas, like the land around the Wonder Wheel, as an outdoor skating rink in the winter.
And even with all of that, about 2/3 of the CI redevelpment will consists of new residential towers. A lot of people see that as the "gentrification" of Coney Island, but considering the large amount of public housing that was dumped on Coney years ago, things will become more balance, and that will benefit everybody.