I forgot to mention this in passing last week, but in conversations with people its obvious that uncertainty still surrounds the future of Coney Island. For the time being, however, the Astroland park and all of its attractions will be kept open another year (MetroNY article). Plans originally called for development to start right about… now!

I visited Coney Island about a month ago and you knew something was up when cloth banners appeared on the heretofore unmarked facade of the Childs Building:

Child Building

Obviously the thought of developing Coney Island and exploding its real estate value at the cost of losing carnival attractions and boardwalk shops and canteens makes me less-than-happy. But what is one to do and how is one to fight this process, really? If it’s another year it’s another year, and I’ll have to enjoy what I can while I still can, and call it quits. Sure I’ll still go there for a Cyclones game or Nathan’s hot dogs (garlic fries that is), but if the park is gone it’s gone.

There are the Coney Island and Coney Island Documentation Project Flickr groups, which hopefully will keep track of any development works and reveal a real-time changing landscape. After all, development of Coney Island is still as much a fabric of Coney Island as any skeeball game or funnel cake.

For now, god bless Thor Equities which bought the park last year for suspending their development projects and thus maintaining employment of the mere 300 people who make Coney Island’s Astroland park world-famous. That’s one more year that we can live without seeing this or this.

Related websites:
Follow development news (with RSS) on PlanNYC’s Planning Information Portal
NewYork magazine real estate article (circa 2005)
Coney Island Development Corporation strategic plan (PDF)
Save Coney Island MySpace profile

local, news