Neil deMause: The Website

Four years in the making, the Coney Island rezoning plan got its final approval from the city council today — and yet still it’s not over. I have the live play-by-play on the Village Voice site:

Against all odds, there’s actually working (sort of) WiFi in the city council chamber, so I’m going to attempt to liveblog today’s final vote on the city’s Coney Island rezoning plan. The council’s land use committee gave its preliminary blessing last week, so the last step needed for approval is a vote of the full council — which, barring a last-second freakout by Coney council rep Domenic Recchia, is expected to proceed as planned… [read more]

With the city council set to vote on the rezoning of Coney Island this week, I try to boil the issue down to 350 words:

On Wednesday, after a five-year battle that’s included everything from “giant rat” exhibits to protesters dressed as Norse gods carrying mermaid tails, the City Council will finally vote on a redevelopment plan for Coney Island. Since rezoning proposals don’t generally top most people’s summer reading lists, here are answers to some questions about the Battle of Coney… [read more]

The New York city council finally got around to holding a vote on the future of Coney Island, but in the end they mostly waved the city’s plan on through:

The way things are going, the never-ending Coney Island rezoning process is going to have more “final hearings” than Astroland had last days. Originally scheduled to meet last week to weigh in on the shape of Coney’s future, the city council’s land use committee instead repeatedly delayed its vote, even meeting on Monday and then immediately adjourning, like they were the state senate or something.

While the committee finally got together for a vote yesterday, those hoping for some sort of resolution were disappointed: The only major edits made to the city’s much-criticized compromise plan were to exclude Deno’s Wonder Wheel Park from the area to be taken over as city-owned parkland (meaning Coney’s last remaining major amusement park seems safe from eviction, at least for the next decade or so) and to bump up the number of union jobs and the amount of affordable housing to be built west of the Cyclones ballpark… [read more]

Four years and change in the making, the rezoning plan for Coney Island is finally about to be voted up or down, and you can’t tell all the competing factions without a scorecard:

The battle over Coney Island’s future is finally coming down to the wire: The city council is expected to vote on the city’s rezoning plan by the end of the month, finally deciding which of the competing visions of Coney Future is likely to materialize.

First, though, the council has one last chance to ask for revisions to the plan, something that’s expected to happen this week. (Earlier reports that the council had to act by today turned out to be mistaken, once council staffers re-checked the ULURP land-use rules.) And you know what that means: Everybody and their sister is lobbying for their own favored changes. A scorecard of some of the main players in a free-for-all that has more factions than an Italian election and the NL East race put together… [read more]

Some historical perspective on why the time may be right to cut bait on some big New York development projects:

When the state Senate — back when we had a functioning state Senate — held hearings on Brooklyn’s beleaguered Atlantic Yards project last month, angry construction workers packed the hall to decry the delays that have plagued the plan since developer Bruce Ratner first floated it nearly six years ago. “Build it now!” they chanted. “No more hearings!”

After a week in which more bits continued to flake off of Ratner’s mega project — architect Frank Gehry was ignominiously axed as too expensive, and the initial “Jobs, Housing and Hoops” plan has now been whittled down to, I believe, an $800 million Nets arena and a pair of souvlaki carts — some folks are moaning that we’re seeing a return to the Dark Ages when nothing could get built in the city… [read more]

I sit through the first state legislative hearing on the Atlantic Yards project, so you don’t have to:

Today was the long-awaited — like, six years long — first state legislative hearing on Bruce Ratner’s Atlantic Yards project, with State Senator Bill Perkins convening his Corporations, Authorities, and Commissions Committee (think of him as the Senate version of Richard Brodsky) at Pratt Institute.

While there were lots of questions that could have been raised, the one most everyone is wondering was: Is it still happening, and if so, does it bear the slightest resemblance to the vision that Ratner and then-architect Frank Gehry unveiled back in the Friends era?

Or will it now be a stripped-down arena surrounded by what the Municipal Art Society has dubbed Atlantic Lots?… [read more]

Back to Coney Island again this weekend, to see if the “Festival By The Sea” finally got off the ground:

After last weekend’s false start, Joe Sitt’s Festival By The Sea finally kicked off this weekend, giving Coney Island visitors a chance to see what $2.5 million buys.

And the answer is: Lots of balloons and “Welcome!” banners, but not so much in the way of festivities… [read more]

The opening of Joe Sitt’s “Festival By The Sea” in Coney Island was postponed this weekend, but there’s plenty of signs what will be in store (or not) on the developer’s land this summer:

Joe Sitt’s much-hyped Festival By The Sea, famed of story and subway ads, was supposed to have its grand opening this weekend, but it was called on account of rain. Or alleged rain: Total precipitation for Friday and Saturday was less than a tenth of an inch, so skeptics will be forgiven for wondering if the real reason was more along the lines of tent issues.

That said, enough was on hand to get a glimpse of what will be in store next weekend, when — barring drizzle — the Festival is now scheduled to get off the ground… [read more]

The Coney Island community board voted on the controversial neighborhood rezoning plan last night, and the result gave herding cats a bad name:

It took four years, but the fate of Coney Island’s future finally began the deliberative phase tonight, with a meeting of Brooklyn’s Community Board 13 in the packed, sweltering auditorium of Coney Island Hospital to vote on the rezoning plan put forward last April by the Bloomberg administration, which would turn the beachfront into amusement-covered public parkland while allowing 30-story hotels along Surf Avenue. Given the city land use process’s Wonderlandesque requirement that the board vote first, then hear public comments afterwards, one might have expected fewer fireworks than at some previous public hearings in Coney. One would have been wrong… [read more]

Bonus multimedia content: audio of city councilmember Domenic Recchia screaming like a madman!

I couldn’t make it out to Coney Island today for the city’s big redevelopment announcement, and given the despicable weather, boy, am I glad I didn’t:

There hasn’t been much good news coming out of Coney Island of late, unless you count the news that Nathan’s is staying put even if its building doesn’t. So this morning’s announcement by the city of a major press conference on “Coney Island redevelopment” at noon, featuring everyone from deputy mayor Robert Lieber to Rep. Jerry Nadler, provided a rare jolt of excitement. Had Thor Equities agreed to sell out to the city at last? Was Astroland moving to the old Thunderbolt site? The Parachute Jump reopening with federal stimulus money? What, what?

The answer, it can now be revealed: Carol Hill Albert is donating the Astroland rocket to the city, which will put it in storage. And then do something with it. Someday. Maybe… [read more]