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Oedipus Recchia! Council panel is not too keen on Bloomy’s Coney rezoney

By Mike McLaughlin
The Brooklyn Paper
Councilman Domenic Recchia (right) was the lead badgerer of city officials at a hearing over Coney Island on Wednesday.

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Mayor Bloomberg’s controversial plan to redevelop Coney Island came under a blistering attack from a hostile City Council committee last week.

It was a theatrical spectacle as members of the Land Use and Franchise Committee badgered Bloomberg administration officials on the details of a plan to rezone a large area between the Cyclone roller coaster and the Keyspan Park minor-league baseball stadium to build a theme park, hotels, and attractions, plus 4,500 apartments.

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The committee, following the lead of Councilman Domenic Recchia (D–Coney Island), who was shouting from the start, aggressively questioned Bloomberg’s emissaries on the possible use of eminent domain to acquire land for the proposed city-owned amusement park and the plan’s need for accompanying legislation in dysfunctional Albany.

Recchia insisted that the city directly say if it would condemn land — specifically, the 10-1/2 acres owned by his friend, Joe Sitt — to pursue its transformation of the shrinking amusement area.

“This is reality. This is not a hypothetical. This is my community,” Recchia yelled at Seth Pinsky, president of the city’s Economic Development Corporation at last Wednesday’s hearing.

“Yes or no?” Recchia insisted.

BoroDeal

Pinsky deflected the question, saying, “We do not intend to use eminent domain.” But later, after several other councilmembers followed the same line of attack, Pinsky said he could not rule out using the city’s condemnation power if a deal could not be negotiated with Sitt and three smaller landowners whose property is inside the nine-acre amusement zone.

Mayor Bloomberg envisions another 18 acres of privately owned attractions and hotels adjacent to the theme park that would create a year-round tourist destination. The ensuing economic influx would allow private developers to build housing on largely vacant land and parking lots to the west and north of this amusement zone.

The plan ran into additional trouble with the committee, which was almost entirely critical of the mayor’s proposal, over a technical issue requiring state legislation.

The portion of the plan, which calls for housing on what is now the Keyspan Stadium parking lot and currently mapped as parkland, would require state approval so it can be used for residential development. But so far, no Albany lawmaker has been willing to introduce a bill to do just that.

“It’s almost as if the entire project is dependent on a body that you have no support in,” Councilwoman Melinda Katz (D–Queens) told Pinsky.

City officials said that state approval is a chicken-and-egg thing. If the Council supports Bloomberg’s rezoning plan, the Assembly and Senate would follow suit, these officials claim.

Another hearing on the mayor’s redevelopment plan for Coney Island is tentatively scheduled for 10 am on Monday, July 13, at City Hall (Broadway at Chambers Street in Manhattan).

©2009 Community Newspaper Group

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Reader Feedback

Deborah Matlack from Bay Ridge says:
Does the left hand ever know what the right hand is doing??? Coney lives on despite the fumbling efforts of the City and big time developers to screw it up.
July 2, 2009, 12:42 pm
jerry from coney island says:
Recchia has ruined Coney Island. Recchia dosen't summer in Coney Island. He summers in Southampton on a waterfront home on Peconic Bay. There aren't going to be any 20-30 story high rises built out in the Hamptons. Recchia couldn't give a s%&t about the residents of Coney Island. He's only out for himself & we are part of the problem. We voted him in office. Anyone who would try to run against him in a Primary, will only be knocked off in the Petitioning Challenges in the courts. He's a BUM & always was a BUM. Sitt & Recchia perfect together !
July 2, 2009, 2:03 pm
Johnny from Coney says:
This is just mind blowing. Coney Island is zoned for amusements. All of these plans are pie in the sky from all sides. Don't change the zoning and we don't have this same old same old with Coney. Just because Sitt bought 10 acres doesn't give him the right to a zoning change. The city should have done this right in the first place and taken Horace the tax cheat slumlord's land and developed it with amusements. Then we would still have Astroland, the amusements on Stilwell, a brand new amusement area where the The Thunderbolt was.

The city if it really cares should develop Coney Island proper and leave the c7 amusement district ALL amusements. It's the city's fault that all of this is happening. Now even if any of these pie in the sky plans on either end ever come to fruition we're looking at 10 years for it to be finished. What happens to Deno's Wonder Wheel Park and the rest of the businesses in the interim? No one is coming now because the perception created is that Coney Island is a big flea market or closed thanks to the city and people like Sitt and Recchia.

What a mess.
July 2, 2009, 2:48 pm
Mike from Coney says:
We need to get the word out to the other city council members, Recchia no longer represents the community, just Joe Sitt. Just wait till Recchia claims the citizens want condos built on the land formerly housed Astroland. He will call it Astroland Towers, you enter it by going under the Recchia Memorial Gate.
July 3, 2009, 1:01 am
Eric McClure from Park Slope says:
Funny how Dominic Recchia cares a lot more about eminent domain when it comes to Joe Sitt's property than when it's Daniel Goldstein's home in the path of the bulldozers.

We need to go back to square one with Coney Island -- neither Sitt's plan nor Mayor Bloomberg's is acceptable.
July 3, 2009, 10:51 am
anonymous says:
Please take note that the Council Committee ONLY stayed for the Pinsky inquisition. They then left the room, for the most poart, never to return to hear the many people present who wanted a YES vote. Considering that this hearing was a responsibility they assumed, it must then be noted that they are no better than the State Senate!!! Who had the muscle? Where did they go? Why did they avoid hearing the calls of YES from the people present? For shame.
July 7, 2009, 2:04 pm
Roslyn Bernsttein from Coney Island says:
I visited the boardwalk at Long Beach, NY recently. I grew up there, enjoying the penny arcade and the kiddie amusement park, and Skeeball. At the Edwards Boulevard Beach, nothing remains of the arcades and the amusements. In either direction, along the boardwalk, one can see condos--replacing the grand hotels, now demolished.

I've written a collection of linked stories about the Long Beach Boardwalk in its heyday
(Boardwalk Stories/Blue Eft Press/Amazon) --to remind myself and my readers of the boardwalk characters that are now lost--the misfits and wannabes, who shared their joys and sorrows in a world where kewpie dolls and prizes were often the only consolations for lost dreams.

I hope that Coney Island resists the pressure of developers--that it holds on to its gritty, colorful identity.
July 21, 2009, 5:59 pm
the king from Coney Island says:
I don't like either of the plans. Being a resident who lives at 601A Brightwater I feel the residents I do talk to are out of touch. I'm in my early 20's and want things in the neighborhood that will be here all year round. Most of the people are delusional, the mid 50's-mid 60's coney island is not coming back people. I would genterificate the neighborhood a bit. Though where I live it's pretty much Moscow. I would like a couple of Restaurants and Bars on Stillwell and Surf. How about a movie theater and supermarket. A nice gym like and LA Fitness. Nathan's is only thing open to midnight and from October-April its not great down there that time of night. Fix the boardwalk and whats the matter with Jones Beach the girls are beautiful compared to 300 lb beach whales I see at coney and brighton who spent the winters eating instead of working out.
Aug. 8, 2009, 10:43 pm

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