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The fight for the soul of Coney Island begins for real next week when supporters of independent amusement operators and the neighborhood’s private developers battle a city plan to buy up land and create a new and expanded amusement area that the mayor believes will save the faded “People’s Playground.”

The city plan would transform Coney Island’s amusement core — bounded by the Boardwalk, Keyspan Park, the Cyclone roller coaster and Surf Avenue — into a year-round tourist destination with a new city-owned theme park, privately developed hotels and a multitude of entertainment attractions like movie theaters, arcades and an enclosed water park.

And adjacent to the amusement area, the city plans 4,000 to 5,000 new apartments.

It’ll enter the first phase of public debate on Tuesday with a hearing at Lincoln HS.

The plan involves a lot of heavy lifting for city officials who will have to:

• Buy land from resistant private owners, notably Joe Sitt of Thor Equities, a critic of the city’s plan to build nine acres of rides around existing attractions like the landmark Cyclone roller coaster and Deno’s Wonder Wheel.

• Win over critics, like former ally and Sideshow operator Dick Zigun, who have trashed the notion of a glitzy area of towering hotels and so-called “entertainment retail” outlets.

• Find hundreds of millions of dollars for its sprawling vision of a Vegas-style, 24-7 attraction on the Atlantic as government budgets are declining and the economy is in crisis.

Thor Equities has tempered its criticism since the mayor abandoned his original Coney Island proposal from November which called for the city obtaining 15 acres from area landowners instead of the current nine, but is still far from mollified.

“We’re cautiously optimistic,” said Stefan Friedman, a spokesman for Thor.

The same revision the made Sitt “optimistic,” also enlarged the adjacent section of privately run entertainment retail — a change that turned Zigun, the founder of the Coney Island USA sideshow, from a supporter to a foe.

“The city worked for four years building consensus with a plan that had something for everybody,” he said, calling the new plan “a capitulation to Joe Sitt that won’t wash.”

Zigun will, no doubt, be front and center at Tuesday’s hearing, where anyone can speak.

©2008 The Brooklyn Paper

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