Associated Press - July 29, 2009
Verena Dobnik, Associated Press Writer

Visitors from around the world still crowd the boardwalk, scarfing down hot dogs at what was dubbed the People's Playground. But life for some Coney Island residents has become a drug-fueled hell amid soaring unemployment and a crumbling amusement park, site of the landmarked 1920s Cyclone roller coaster.

As the coaster rolls with screams of white-knuckled joy, the future of Coney Island is itself in tumult because of a battle over land between two billionaires, Mayor Michael Bloomberg and developer Joseph Sitt.

The City Council on Wednesday voted overwhelmingly for the mayor's 47-acre rezoning plan, which would turn the waterfront into a year-round destination with high-rise hotels, restaurants, retail stores, movie theaters and the city's first new roller coaster since the Cyclone was built in 1927.

Unless Sitt sells his land, officials acknowledge privately, Bloomberg's vision of a seaside paradise reborn would be seriously damaged. And the city would have to resort to eminent domain, the lengthy legal process to seize private property for public use.

City officials have been negotiating with Sitt to purchase the big chunk of property he owns at the heart of the funky carnival, and he's considering whether to cede his 10.5 acres for the right price.

While saving Coney Island's nostalgic allure, the city also promises to bring thousands of construction jobs and new housing to the economically depressed neighborhood.

About a third of the 65,000 people who live in the area's gritty, declining projects and modest houses are multigenerational black and Hispanic families, others are Asian and Russian immigrants, some are transients. As weeds sprouted in empty lots, "what was once a poor person's Riviera got converted into a ghetto," said Dick Zigun, whose Coney Island USA nonprofit runs a museum and a sideshow.

Looking to a deal with Sitt, Bloomberg said it would be "very tragic if it all fell apart, but I don't anticipate that it will."

Sitt is chief executive officer of Thor Equities, the development corporation that manages its Coney Island property from offices just off Manhattan's Fifth Avenue.

The developer has refused to sell for years. And he says he still wants to play a role in the future of his childhood neighborhood.

"I'm the stakeholder. I'm the guy who controls this - it's my sandbox," the 45-year-old landowner said this month.

On another 20 acres just blocks from the beach, the city's Coney Island Development Corp. foresees 4,500 new housing units and a park for area residents.

Ron Stewart, a 56-year-old parole officer who has lived in the neighborhood since he was a child, says there have always been two Coney Islands: "the amusement area and the residents."

"People would laugh at me when I said I live in Coney Island," he said. "They'd say, 'You live under the Cyclone? You live in the spook house?'"

These days, the amusement area at night is home to prostitutes and drug addicts, residents say.

"They kind of fill the gaps under the boardwalk," says Aida Leon, a former drug dealer who runs the nonprofit Amethyst Women's Project, which helps people she calls "the lost souls of Brooklyn" face domestic violence, addiction and HIV/AIDS.

Leon says HIV infection rates on Coney Island are three times that of the city's, while the neighborhood has one of the nation's highest unemployment rates - 20 percent.

Six people were murdered in six weeks earlier this year.

The city plan would make 35 percent of the new housing affordable, with contractors hiring unionized workers from nearby and paying them living wages. A sorely needed hospital emergency room and a school gym also are to be built.

Sitt purchased property under the old Astroland in 2006 for $93 and leased it to the Albert family, which has operated the rides since the 1930s. After failing to reach a lease agreement with Thor, the family dismantled Astroland last year, leaving behind a desolate swath of land.

Sitt insists the amusement area can be restored to its former glory.

"The goal is to bring the Coney Island brand alive again and polish up this diamond in the rough before it gets lost," he says.

For now, Sitt has set up mobile rides and other spectacles on the scruffy, vacant acre once occupied by Go-Karts and batting cages. On weekends, there's Flea by the Sea, a few tents where vendors hawk everything from purses and CDs to pickles and plants. And the Barnum & Bailey Circus erected its tents on Coney Island for the first time this summer.

The Wonder Wheel ride, built in 1918, has survived, landmarked like the Cyclone and the Parachute Jump.

On a weekday afternoon in July, a salty breeze blew across the boardwalk and endless stretch of sand.

Michael Burns, an ex-Marine, paid $3 to play Shoot the Freak, firing paintballs at a shirtless teenager protected by a helmet and shield, standing in a trash-strewn lot facing rifles.

Burns told his wife, a first-time visitor, that "this used to be the place to come" when in New York. But "it's declined a little bit," he added.

Coney Island fans say modernization could ruin its appeal with a wall of high-rises right where visitors step off the subway to an open view of the rides and Atlantic Ocean.

"They want to make it all beautified there, and we get the bits and pieces," says Pam Harris, who organizes get-togethers for generations of Coney Islanders pushing the city to fix their aging sewer, electricity and drainage systems. "Sitt has his little sandbox, and he leaves us with what, the dirt?"

If there's one man who captures the spirit of the Brooklyn beachfront, it's David Adamovich, a Christian minister dubbed The Great Throwdini, star of a knife-throwing act at the Coney Island Circus Sideshow.

"Every time I think that Harry Houdini performed in a place where I'm performing," says Adamovich, "it's just wonderful. It's keeping that heritage alive."

Coney Island, he said, "is a charm in my heart."

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