stickjoint
Friday, September 19, 2008 3:04:04 AM
http://www.cnn.com/video...8/irpt.coneywrap.ireport 

this is bullsht, people have no clue what they are doing to this place and n.y.c.
true america, this is sad real sad.
all this so some rich fat snobs can have a condo, this is going to ruin my whole day. wtf
Jagger
  •  Jagger
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  • Operations Foreman
Friday, September 19, 2008 3:39:37 AM
with-it
  •  with-it
  • 59.3% (Neutral)
  • Operations Foreman
Friday, September 19, 2008 5:03:50 AM
Don't worry...They are gonna rebuild it in Vegas....lol
coney girl
Friday, September 19, 2008 6:08:18 AM
Not Vegas, Dubai! The Alberts had an offer to sell the entire park to a prince in the Mideast. But there is still a tiny (ever diminishing) bit of hope that the city will let Astroland move their rides to a city-owned lot. Tough talk from the city, no apparent action. Rumors on the street.

CITY RIDES BIZMAN OVER CONEY CLOSURE
NY POST

By RICH CALDER
September 19, 2008

A controversial developer is now officially Coney Island's public enemy No. 1 -- at least as far as the Bloomberg administration is concerned.

In the strongest public rebuke of Joe Sitt by a city official, Lynn Kelly, the president of the Coney Island Development Corp., accused the developer of buying up prime boardwalk land and clearing out rides to force the mayor's hand -- so he could build luxury condos and retail.

Kelly said Sitt's attempts to replace the rides he's cleared out the past three summers with temporary amusements have been a huge flop -- including a much-maligned "inflatable" water slide he set up on Stillwell Avenue last summer -- and she even suggested he is privately happy over the failure.

"What's his point? Unless it's [a deceptive attempt] to show that amusements don't work and amusement zoning doesn't work," Kelly told The Post.

Kelly's remarks came a day after she revealed during a Municipal Art Society panel discussion on Coney Island how city officials recently tried to cut an 11th-hour deal to save fabled Astroland from closing but were shot down by Sitt.

The park closed its doors for good last week after 46 years when longtime operator Carol Albert couldn't reach a new lease deal with Sitt, who is Astroland's landlord.

Kelly said the city asked Sitt's Thor Equities firm to give Albert a one-year lease extension. This, she said, would allow the park to remain open next summer and provide sufficient time get the necessary approvals to move Astroland's rides to a section of the boardwalk that the city owns.

"We were told Thor had no interest in our offer or extending the lease," she said.

Albert said Thor Equities has refused to negotiate.

A Sitt spokesman did not return messages seeking comment.

But Sitt through a spokesman has previously tried to blame Albert for Astroland's closing by saying he is "extremely disappointed that" Albert "has decided to give up on the future of Coney Island when her current lease isn't even up" until the end of January.

Albert said she needs the extra months to sell off her rides before the lease expires or face hefty penalties from Sitt for failing to vacate the land on time.

Albert said she has received offers but admits failing to pull the trigger to sell the rides because she "had been holding out for the slimmest of hope" that Sitt would come around.

She is now ready to give up.

"It would be a miracle at this point now," said Albert, adding she wants to relocate all her rides to one location rather than piece-meal.

The offers include parks in other states and from "Arab princes" seeking to move Astroland's rides to the tourist destination of Dubai.

Many expected Astroland to return in 2009, since the city is at least a year away from implementing an area-rezoning plan that, in part, would replace the park and other attractions with new amusements.

Sitt has said he plans to replace Astroland with temporary amusements next season.

The 47-acre rezoning plan initially set aside 15 acres for a new amusement park, but the parkland proposal was cut to nine acres in April by the city at the dismay of many Coney Islanders.

This was done, in part, because the city couldn't get Sitt to sell it most of the land needed for the new park, and the hope was he'd be receptive if extended an olive branch to build hotels, indoor amusements and retail on at least some of his land.

But both sides are still far apart, which led many in the audience at the MAS session in Midtown to question why the city won't take Sitt's land through eminent domain as it has with other projects.

Kelly said condemnation is not an option in Coney Island – even though this seems to be a rare case where an affected community would support it.

"With condemnation usually brings lawsuits, and who's to say the rezoning wouldn't be tied up through lawsuits and put the city's plan to revitalize the area at greater risk," she said.

Kelly urged the audience of about 100 to support the rezoning plan because if it doesn't get approved before the mayor leaves office at the end of 2009 the new administration could drop the Coney Island redevelopment efforts – or even worse, cater to Sitt and put the amusement district's future at more risk.

"We all should be scared, we should all be very, very scared," she said.

But Dick Zigun, the "unofficial" Mayor of Coney Island who stepped down from the CIDC board after the rezoning proposal was revised, said he wants the old plan back because the new one caters too much to developers like Sitt and snubs the amusement business.

Borrowing a now infamous phrase from Sen. Barack Obama, Zigun got some laughs by declaring the new plan is like "putting lipstick on a pig."

Albert also said she believed the city is doing a disservice to the seaside area by limiting too few acres for amusements. There are currently about 61 acres along the famous boardwalk that can be used for amusements, although Kelly said only a few acres are guaranteed to have amusements next summer.

Being on the city's bad side is nothing new for Sitt. In 2007, he was accused in the Post by various city officials who wished to remain anonymous of being nothing more than a huckster with a history of flipping properties for a quick buck.

They warned he could be planning the same for Coney Island, even though he had proposed a $1.5 billion Vegas-glitz amusement complex on the 11 acres of land he owns that featured new rides, retail and condos.

Sitt came under fire for the condo proposal and would later substitute the high-rise condos for time-share hotels. But the Bloomberg administration wouldn't back it because the mayor felt the time-shares were still a veiled attempt to bring housing to the amusement area.

http://www.nypost.com/se...losure_129814.htm?page=0 
Amusing the Zillion
A former carny kid casts an insider’s eye on the amusement business, Coney Island, and fun places in between
http://amusingthezillion.com/ 
http://twitter.com/AmusingZillion 
Hula_Honey
Friday, September 19, 2008 12:19:34 PM
Sad, sad, sad. It's a shame that they want to take the "coney island" out of Coney Island. Aren't there enough condos everywhere else. Don't fix something that isn't broken.....
DarkRideArtist
Saturday, September 20, 2008 7:29:13 AM
I guess I'll be the bad guy here but after visiting the park two years in a row to do some painting, I found it to be the comparison of our worst carnival companies with the dingiest and rudest (typical brooklynites)"employees" . We were rushed off the Cyclone ride(very rudely) as soon as we entered the terminal TWO days in a row unless we wanted to give them cash to stay on and ride again. The so called "beauty of a dark ride" ( by Laff in the dark . com) was the biggest piece of crap where you could see everything coming before the "surprise". The real surprise was that this dump hadn't been torn down sooner. With a soaring crime rate (according to the few semi- intelligent ride ops)ridiculously overpriced everything and a very dirty atmosphere many REAL fans of the famed park say adios with a smile on our faces.Please stop living in the past and appreciate the great memories the park offered before the riff raff came along and ruined it more than 50 years ago. They can vandalize condos and crap all over themselves now without surprising tourists to puke at the stench and overpriced ,undersized fartdogs I wasted $ on. Come on guys , get some balls up and join in on celebrating the demise of Crooklyns ghetto embarassment!
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