Neil deMause

My glass-half-full speculation, it turned out, came to naught: Astroland, the cherished Coney Island amusement park, closed its doors last night for the last time. And before anyone asks: No, the Wonder Wheel (owned by neighboring Deno’s) and Cyclone (owned by the city, operated by Astroland owner Carol Hill Albert) are not going anywhere. (You’d be surprised how many people, even professional journalists, ask that.)

My report, with pictures:

Last year as Astroland’s summer season came to an end, supporters of the fabled Coney Island amusement park rallied outside the gates to demand that it remain open. This year, not so much: When the gates went up for Astroland’s final day yesterday morning, there was just a small crowd of families and curiosity seekers, who quickly fanned out with their cameras and ride tickets in hand.

The mood was very different this year, and for good reason. As park owner Carol Hill Albert announced on Thursday, the 46-year-old amusement park, which opened on the site of the old Feltman’s beer garden back when the Parachute Jump was still in working order, has run out of lives. Next year, in all likelihood, the space between the Cyclone and the Wonder Wheel will be an empty lot… [read more]

I revisit some of the small business operators who were threatened by downtown Brooklyn redevelopment last year, and find that many have now been forced out entirely:

Jeff Gargiulo’s e-mail address still says “BagelGuys,” but he’s no longer a bagel guy. Not since the day last year that he got an unexpected eviction notice from his landlord, who said his nine-year-old store on Willoughby Street in downtown Brooklyn was slated to be demolished to make way for a condo tower.

Thousands of Gargiulo’s customers signed petitions, but all it got him was a three-month stay of execution, after which he sold his equipment — at “10 cents on the dollar,” he says — and is now unemployed… [read more]

Just like last year, Astroland is again weeks away from the end of its season with no lease in place for next summer. Dire headlines to the contrary, though, the fabled Coney Island amusement park may be more likely to stay put than it appeared in the spring:

The headline in today’s amNewYork is grim: Astroland owner Carol Hill Albert says she’s preparing for the 46-year-old Coney Island theme park to close for good next month unless she gets a one-year lease extension from landlord Thor Equities within the next week. Asked by the paper if she was resigned to closing, Albert said, “I kind of am. I’m getting there.”

Before anyone panics in fear of having to go cold turkey on their skeeball jones, remember that this is the same thing Albert said all last summer, when she repeatedly put her rides up for sale, then pulled them off again in hopes of striking a deal with Thor. In fact, the real news here is that Albert says she’ll now settle for a one-year lease extension… [read more]

More on the great Brooklyn supermarket showdown, this time with more thoughts on what the conflict means for hopes of a livable city:

The scene on Fort Greene’s Myrtle Avenue on Thursday was certainly bursting with cheap irony: John Catsimatidis, the billionaire supermarket czar and likely 2009 mayoral candidate, being protested by local residents for taking away their only neighborhood supermarket. Catsimatidis, you see, is also a developer, and had torn down a strip of stores including an Associated (no relation to Catsimatidis’ Gristede’s chain) to make way for condo towers. Two years later, the site is still an empty lot; to add insult to injury, the demonstrators charged, the builder is now backing away from promises that the new buildings would include affordable housing.

If you live in one of the city’s supermarket-enriched zones, this might seem amusing — crying over Penn Station or Yankee Stadium is one thing, but an Associated?… [read more]

I report from downtown Brooklyn on the supermarket king who tore down a neighborhood’s only supermarket to make way for luxury condos. (Also: pictures of cute kids!)

It’s undoubtedly not how John Catsimatidis, the billionaire Gristede’s owner and rumored 2009 mayoral candidate, would have liked his bespectacled, slightly pudgy face get public recognition: aloft on a pole held by a Brooklyn pre-teen, beneath the words “SHAME ON YOU!!”

The occasion was a protest by Families United for Racial and Economic Equality (FUREE), the Brooklyn-based low-income group, over a much-delayed development project that Catsimatidis has in the works on Myrtle Avenue in Fort Greene… [read more]

The rebuilding of the World Trade Center site is hideously behind schedule, but the bigger problem is what the city will end up with when it’s finally done:

Last week’s Port Authority report on progress (or lack thereof) at ground zero was a great moment for fans of political schadenfreude, with news of how virtually every aspect of the rebuilding is a shambles, with the new PATH station and 9/11 memorial massively behind schedule, and the whole project more than a billion dollars over budget. Meanwhile, the Cortlandt Street IRT station turns out to be inconveniently located mere inches from where two new skyscrapers are set to be built — who knew?[read more]

A look ahead to Saturday’s Mermaid Parade, which itself is looking ahead to Tuesday’s public hearing on the future of Coney Island:

Coney Island’s annual Mermaid Parade isn’t usually a place for broad political messages, except when reclaiming pasties as a symbol of women’s empowerment can be considered political. These aren’t normal times, however. Last year, as the battle over Thor Equities’ plan for beachfront condo towers heated up, the “Save Coney Island” section was a small contigent of the festivities; at this year’s parade, stepping off tomorrow at 2 pm, expect it to be the major theme.

First off, it will undoubtedly be the first time that the hundreds of thousands of gawkers there to take in the sights will be handed flyers for a city scoping meeting…

It’s hard to find much to add to a story that begins with a young couple trying to evict 15 families so they can turn their apartment building into a mansion, but I give it the old college try anyway:

The Battle of 47 E. 3rd St. – the five-story East Village tenement whose landlords want to turn it into a private mansion – has everything: a five-year legal battle; architectural plans for remaking entire apartments into a home gym and nanny’s quarters; tenants and landlords duking it out by plastering dueling Web addresses (economakis.com and 47e3.org, for those interested) in their windows… [read more]

A brief item on the Voice site on a Coney Island fixture quitting the local development board in protest of the city’s revised plans for redeveloping the famed amusement strip:

Six weeks after Mayor Bloomberg abruptly revamped his Coney Island rezoning plans to include fewer outdoor amusements and more 30-story hotels, Sideshows by the Seashore director and “mayor of Coney Island” Dick Zigun has quit the board of the Coney Island Development Corporation, the city-spawned agency in charge of the redevelopment plans.

“The [original] CIDC Plan promised a world class tourist attraction with an entertainment core: lots of rides complimented by year round nightclubs and enclosed waterparks,” wrote Zigun in his resignation letter, which he posted to his own Coney Island USA’s message board… [read more]

Another opening day at Coney Island – this time, it was the beach being opened for the summer – and another rainy day. Also this time, protests:

Another sign that the weather gods hate Coney Island this year: Rainclouds and bitter winds met this morning’s official ceremonies marking the reopening of the beach for the summer season. “It’s a beautiful sunny day!” Parks Commissioner Adrian Benape taunted a crowd of schoolchildren shivering under a tent on the boardwalk. “Do you want to go swimming?” (For the record, the weekend is supposed to be much nicer.)

A few yards away, bare to the elements, several dozen protestors from the nascent group Save Coney Island — principal instigators: Coney Island USA’s Dick “Mayor of Coney Island” Zigun, Coney Island History Project’s Charles “Mr. Coney Island” Denson, and the Lola Staar Boutique’s Dianna “Lola Staar” Carlin — carried on a steady stream of songs, chants, and jeers to call attention to what they charge is the city’s sellout of Coney’s traditional amusement district… [read more]