December 2, 2006: Vol. 29, No. 47

The news this week that a Coney Island real-estate developer will raze Astroland and build a $1.5-billion, Vegas-like menagerie was greeted with the usual hue and cry from nostalgia-addled Brooklynites who remember the “glory days” of Coney Island.

But anyone who has actually spent time in Coney Island — the one that exists today, not the one in those misty water-color memories, to quote Brooklynite Barbra Streisand — is cheering the move by Thor Equities to purchase the land where Astroland sits and clear it after next summer’s carnival season.

“It’s not going to be the Coney Island the way I know Coney Island,” one longtime resident told the Daily News this week, setting up a great punchline: “They’re going to make it nice.”

Indeed, “nice” is a commodity in limited quantities in today’s Coney Island. The reality on the ground is that the amusement area is dirty, run-down and uninviting. Where other Americans get to enjoy family friendly theme parks, visitors to Coney Island get a garbage dump by the sea.

While beloved by many, Astroland, whose name harkens back to the optimistic days of the Apollo moonshots, shows its age. Even the most charitable visitor can’t help but feel that this rotting playland feels like a placeholder for something better.

Others have certainly rushed in — and failed — where Thor Equities dares to tread. But unlike earlier dreamers, developer Joe Sitt owns far more properties and has made a far-larger financial commitment, spending well over $100 million just on land acquisition so far.

And unlike developers in other parts of Brooklyn, Sitt doesn’t have his hand extended in search of massive public subsidies — at least, not yet.

Sitt says he is committed to keeping what is great about Coney — its honky-tonk spirit, its wacky architecture and, of course, the landmarked 80-year-old Cyclone roller coaster —even while he sweeps away the filth and the 1960s-era kitsch.

And unlike Disney — which scouted land in Coney Island a few years ago — Sitt is a real New Yorker. That’s no small thing in a neighborhood that was terrified by the possibility that a G-rated Mickey Mouse would someday be strutting down the Boardwalk alongside the R-rated Mermaids of Dick Zigun’s “Coney Island USA.”

©2006 The Brooklyn Paper