Council Caves on Coney; Sitt-to-City Deal Still in Works? (Village Voice news blog)

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]