The city’s rejection of a plan to build new residential towers along Coney Island’s fabled Boardwalk has the neighborhood’s biggest freak, Dick Zigun, cheering.
The Bloomberg administration’s commitment to rides, funnel cake and the “Shoot the Freak” booth rather than a developer’s plans for a Vegas-style residential-amusement area came last week at a breakfast sponsored by Crain’s New York.
“Amusements are incompatible with immediate adjacent residential use,” said City Planning Commissioner Amanda Burden — the first time the city publicly said what it had hinted at before, namely that developer Joe Sitt $2-billion plan won’t fly. (See The Paper’s coverage at left).
Sitt needs Burden to rezone part of Coney Island’s amusement zone for luxury condos, which he has said are “necessary” to help underwrite the fantastical complex of rides, games and shops he plans to build on the Astroland site, and adjoining property, that he bought last year.
“I am so pleased that the city understands the conflict between people who want to party on the Boardwalk and people who want to raise families,” said Zigun, founder of the Coney Island Circus Sideshow.
“In Coney Island, we want affluent people who want to get drunk and have fun until 4 am. We want partying, not [condo owners] who will be bothered by the party.”
Sitt declined to comment on Burden’s blow to his plan.
A spokesman said that Sitt’s Coney plan will create a livable, year-round community attractive to fun-seekers, as well as regular old New Yorkers.
