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Gospel On Sundays
May 28, 2008 11:46 AM Subscribe

The man who's remaking Coney Island, in his own words. Joe Sitt is a developer "who has spent 20 years trying to lure the nation's top retail chains into inner cities and yuppie downtowns."
posted by [NOT HERMITOSIS-IST] (101 comments total) 5 users marked this as a favorite

I'm happy that people get jobs where none were before but damn this fucker and his homogenizing influence on one of the few interesting places in north america left.
posted by lalochezia at 11:54 AM on May 28 [2 favorites]

Sigh. I'm glad I knew it as it was because it's all over now.
posted by notjustfoxybrown at 11:57 AM on May 28

Why Coney Island: "After 150 years, it's been able to establish an immeasurable brand name."

So he's tearing most of it down to build a high-end mall that could exist anywhere on planet moeny.

Fuck that dirty stupid fucking fuck all to fuck.
posted by dirtdirt at 11:58 AM on May 28 [3 favorites]

"After 150 years, it's been able to establish an immeasurable brand name."

Coming soon: The Westminster Abbey Adidas, and the Harkin's Cinema Petrified Forest National Park 25.
posted by [NOT HERMITOSIS-IST] at 12:05 PM on May 28 [1 favorite]

I grew up on/around Coney Island. I even spent a few summers living with my grandmother in the projects on the boardwalk, hanging out on the beach and in Astroland, etc.

Fuck this guy.

But hey, at least we've got this one summer left.
posted by griphus at 12:06 PM on May 28

A bit more: The projects around Coney Island can be shut down with a fucking glance from a building inspector. They're not all terrible, but I'm more than sure there's enough building code violations in every single one to appease Thor and guys like this with complete building shutdowns. Artist gentrification might be a shitty situation, but corporate gentrification like this is a fucking plague.

As you can tell, I'm a little pissed about my grandparents possibly losing their Section 8 (the only kind they can afford) housing in exchange for living three stops away from Atlantic City Redux.
posted by griphus at 12:13 PM on May 28

There needs to be a PSA to save Coney Island. I'm envisioning a shell game hustler looking at a mall parking lot with a single tear running down his cheek.
posted by DU at 12:14 PM on May 28 [4 favorites]

A couple summers ago, I worked at a law firm and noticed some of the work I did was on accounts for Thor and Joe Sitt. I didn't know who he was at the time. My heartfelt apologies.

My father and brother just went to Coney Island. My father, for the first time since he was a teenager and my brother for the first time ever. My father was the one that got me the interview at that law firm.

I just spoke with my father over IM. He seemed to think it was a community project until now. I feel horrible.

Me: I just found out the guy who is tearing down Coney Island is Joe Sitt and his company is Thor Equities (and other Thors). [the law firm at which I worked] does a lot of work for him.
Dad: yes i know they are syrians [there is a large Syrian community in the area]
its a community thing
Me: It's a shopping mall
the only "community" part is that he's syrian
Dad: you mean they are going to build a mall
Me: right
Dad: more malls
Me: I can't stand it
One more reason to go into public interest [law]
Dad: yes
posted by Grimp0teuthis at 12:36 PM on May 28 [1 favorite]

When I look around the landscape today, one of Home Depot's highest-volume stores is in Brooklyn.

So clearly, whatever they're doing is absolutely hated by the locals. Or not.

There needs to be a PSA to save Coney Island.

Or vigorous, engaged local politicians and leaders that will hold developers up to whatever high standards the locals desire. And those locals should hold their leaders accountable. Otherwise, they'll get whatever it is the developers think they want for the cheapest price.

corporate gentrification like this is a fucking plague.

I wouldn't go to out to Coney Island if you paid me. I can make shitty funnel cake at home. But if someone can come in and restore a little luster to the place, I'd go, and bring my wallet with me, which is kind of the point of development in the first place.
posted by Cool Papa Bell at 12:41 PM on May 28

To be fair: it won't just be a mall - it'll be a huge, ostentatious mall, with juuuust enough required-by-law housing and parkland to sneak past the city's feeble but good-intentioned intentioned legislation.

But community is not a word that would come up in conversation about it.
posted by dirtdirt at 12:45 PM on May 28

But if someone can come in and restore a little luster to the place, I'd go, and bring my wallet with me, which is kind of the point of development in the first place.

But why does that development have to be the exact same fucking development you can find everywhere else in the country? Why can't the developers create something that honors the unique history (that's much more than bad funnel cakes) that is Coney Island? And even in places where there is an organized, monied citizenry, it is all but impossible to stop the machine that is the Home Depot, Wal-Mart, etc. Coney Island unfortunately does not have such a citizenry.

And you know, luster ain't everything. I live near Scottsdale, where they create the shine and there's nothing interesting about it.
posted by notjustfoxybrown at 12:50 PM on May 28 [1 favorite]

Scumbag pig.
posted by Liquidwolf at 12:58 PM on May 28

"You know, it was a cheesy, profit-oriented development 100 years ago ..."

No, actually it was an accessible and affordable beach that was open to people of all classes. Sure, it's had its problems over the years but I think your characterization of the place is well, dead wrong.
posted by notjustfoxybrown at 1:00 PM on May 28

.
posted by dersins at 1:05 PM on May 28

"We live in a monoculture.

"What does that mean? Well, go out to your street corner. You'll probably see a Long Pig stand, SPKF on a screen somwhere, an Angry Boy Dylan's Gun Store. You'll go into a record store and see new recordings by the usual suspects, maybe a special Space Culture display rack.

"Go out on a streetcorner in London and you'll see the same thing. Same in Prague. Same in Silo Paulo. Same in Osaka, and Grozny, and Tehran, and Jo'burg, and Hobart.

"That's what a monoculture is. It's everywhere, and it's all the same. And it takes up alien cultures and digests them and shits them out in a homogenous building-block shape that fits seamlessly into the vast blank wall of the monoculture.

"This is the future. This is what we built. This is what we wanted. It must have been. Because we all had the fucking choice, didn't we? It is only our money that allows commercial culture to flower. If we didn't want to live like this, we could have changed it at any time, by not fucking paying for it.

"So let's celebrate by all going out and buying the same burger."

-Transmetropolitan by Warren Ellis

We aren't there yet. But we're fast approaching. After all, it's what people want, isn't it? We want to be able to shop at the upscale stores. Or at least their outlets. We want a brand name, not something local. We want this year's or month's fashion, not last week's.

As much as I think it's a shame that there is some unique history that seems about to be plowed over, Coney Island never struck me as a national treasure. And I do have some trouble opposing this if it helps out those who live nearby. If it causes their rent to go up to the point that they can't afford it, burn the fucker. But if that can be avoided, if it say, brings a bank into an area that previously only had check cashing stores and payday loan ~~sharks~~ shops, that's not a bad thing.
posted by Hactar at 1:07 PM on May 28

Man, what a weird sense of the sacred. You know, it was a cheesy, profit-oriented development 100 years ago, it fell apart, and now it's going to be a cheesy, profit-oriented development again. Turn, turn, turn. The cyclone ain't the fucking Taj Mahal.

A weird sense of the sacred? It's a sense of American history and culture, regional specificity. Once locations like this are so rare as to be endangered, they're no longer "cheesy profit-oriented developments," they're monuments. The ahistoricity of our culture is depressing.

I saw incredible Beaux-Arts architecture and a wonderful public amusement area for families both rich and poor destroyed out from under us at Asbury Park in the late 70s. Then Long Branch. The development that's replaced it makes a lot fewer people happy, offers no connection to the past, sucks profits out of the local community, and costs much more to enjoy (effectively barring the poor from the beach). Not progress in my view.
posted by Miko at 1:08 PM on May 28

Interesting article, unsavory character.
I did find the part about how he decided to name the chain "Ashley Stewart" fascinating. I wonder how many other store names are blatant rip-offs of stores they wish to evoke.

Reminds me of that new young male actor who seemingly made his name from other famous actors, crap. I don't think my brain made it back from the long weekend yet.
posted by rmless at 1:10 PM on May 28

"I grew up on/around Coney Island. I even spent a few summers living with my grandmother in the projects on the boardwalk, hanging out on the beach and in Astroland, etc.

Fuck this guy.

But hey, at least we've got this one summer left.
posted by griphus at 3:06 PM on May 28 [+] [!],

I agree completely. The thing is, Coney Island is way too isolated (reachable by chronically traffic jammed parkway and medicre subway) to ever attract an affluent public.

Which means, WATCH OUT for this guy. He will take government funds, and get out of town with a failed project. At least the other promised Hell, Atlantic Yards, has the fig leaf of legitimacy of being within a short distance from Manhattan.

Politicians SUCK. And screw you, Marty!
posted by BrooklynCouch at 1:13 PM on May 28

I wouldn't go to out to Coney Island if you paid me. I can make shitty funnel cake at home. But if someone can come in and restore a little luster to the place, I'd go, and bring my wallet with me, which is kind of the point of development in the first place.

I don't give a damn about the lost grandeur of Coney Island; honestly, I love it the way it is (although nostalgia doesn't play a small role in that.)

The problem with that plan is that people with the dough to go out there to make it worth remodeling are not necessarily the people who want to see projects housing and the people who reside in them. It's a shithole of an area around some parts, something unfortunately inherent w/ government housing, but the people that will be pushed out by these projects can't exactly pick up their stuff, grab the kids, and go rent an apartment. You have to wait for, literally, years to get Section 8 housing in NYC.
posted by griphus at 1:13 PM on May 28

You know, it was a cheesy, profit-oriented development 100 years ago(...)

Profit oriented, sure, but cheesy? I think you're mistaken. 100 years ago Coney Island was the most spectacular, technologically advanced place on earth. Disney World plus Las Vegas plus the moon. Dreamland had 1 million lightbulbs in 1903, when the vast majority of the world did not even have electricity.

"With the advent of night a fantastic city of fire suddenly rises from the ocean into the sky. Thousands of ruddy sparks glimmer in the darkness, limning in fine, sensitive outline on the black background of the sky, shapely towers of miraculous castles, palaces and temples. Golden gossamer threads tremble in the air. They intertwine in transparent, flaming patterns, which flutter and melt away in love with their own beauty mirrored in the waters. Fabulous beyond conceiving, ineffably beautiful, is this fiery scintillation." -Maxim Gorky

For me, the spectre of these long ago lost glories, superimposed on the run-down present, creates a place that has a very specific flavor. The seedy Coney Island of the past 25 years or so was peculiar to itself, and New York City. This new thing coming in, shit. Might as well be in Minnesota.

Nathan's and the Cyclone and the Wonder Wheel will still be there, but they will basically be like a tree in a parking lot.
posted by dirtdirt at 1:13 PM on May 28 [3 favorites]

Specifically: The blight and waste is poetic, but I'd happily see it go for the right development. Something magnificent, and visionary and imaginitive. Something that people WILL ride the W for an hour and a half for. Something that will be talked about in a hundred years.

But for a fucking mall? The most patently mediocre thing in the world? Come on.
posted by dirtdirt at 1:25 PM on May 28 [1 favorite]

Build this bullshit at Ground Zero. Leave Coney Island alone.
posted by gum at 1:26 PM on May 28

What drew us to Coney Island? History.

Ouch, the cutting irony.
posted by Miko at 1:28 PM on May 28

They don't sleep anymore on the beach.
posted by anifinder at 1:39 PM on May 28 [1 favorite]

the lost grandeur of Coney Island

The whole point of Coney Island, the inside joke, is just how bad it does suck -- the bruegelesque epic adventure promised by the phantasmagoric facade of the Hell Hole, that turns out to be a rickety wooden barrel once your ticket is snatched away (that is, until it killed someone,) or the Fun House Terror Ride or whatever that thing was called, where the cars emerged into a weedy cement lot left after a fire destroyed the bulk of the ride, and then returned to the dusty "fun house" where empty mechanical armatures swung some fragment of a mostly missing skeleton at you, the con, the gyp, the old time carny cynicism.

I guess a generic shopping mall sucks as much as anything, but what's missing is the inventive deception that it's going to be something more. We already know how much and in exactly what way that will suck, and that takes all the fun out of it.
posted by StickyCarpet at 1:42 PM on May 28 [1 favorite]

I wouldn't go to out to Coney Island if you paid me. I can make shitty funnel cake at home. But if someone can come in and restore a little luster to the place, I'd go, and bring my wallet with me, which is kind of the point of development in the first place.

What sucks is that there are millions of places for people like you, places that are filled with the same huge, impersonal and expensive stores and restaurants you can find in every other mall and commercial center in this country and where's there's not a bit of grime to offend your sensibilities, but there aren't a whole lot of places left for people who enjoy places like Coney Island.

Ultimately, it's a difference of subjective values (though I personally must say I'd hate to live in a world determined entirely by yours), but it seems like the Coney Island camp can't exist without having another one of their haunts paved over and converted into something "developed" every few years. The dollars you've got to throw around, and the values that come attached to them, make up one giant steamroller in the eyes of Joe Sitt and the people who sold Astroland.
posted by invitapriore at 1:44 PM on May 28 [2 favorites]

Coney Island is the exact opposite of a shopping mall--especially during the offseason. It represents a truly unique blend of beer in paper sacks, dirt, grime, fried food, cheap sugar, being outdoors, poor folk, and somehow still thrills you---and people LIKE IT THAT WAY. I don't even know what an equivalent would be. Maybe converting the St. Patrick's Cathedral into a Hooters Hotel & Casino. Except that would be funny.
How much can you really gentrify? How bout the russian restaurants on the boardwalk up in Brighton Beach?
Seriously, fuck this guy.

.
posted by mattbucher at 1:44 PM on May 28 [2 favorites]

They called Coney Island the playground of the world. There was no place like it, in the whole world, like Coney Island when I was a youngster. No place in the world like it, and it was so fabulous.

Now it's shrunk down to almost nothing...you see.

(on preview... jinx)
posted by anthill at 1:46 PM on May 28 [1 favorite]

Nostalgic amusement park, gentrified?

Not sure what the plans are exactly for Coney Island, but maybe it's not as bad as it sounds. I'm all for nostalgia, but I'm not much of a sentimentalist when it comes to things like this.
posted by jabberjaw at 1:47 PM on May 28

Yes, the problem is, the current state of CI isn't the product of planning, or any intentional set of acts. It's decay, in a flavor both of us like. It's naive to think the CI we love can endure; at least Roman ruins are made of stone and don't rust.

PS: I'm sure if you could travel back in time, you would find CI in its heyday to be as painful as the proposed plans are: are you a big Six Flags/Great Adventure kind of guy? That's, pretty much, what CI was in its day.

The moral of the story: enjoy your decay before it decays away and is replaced. And take lots of photos so that you can grumble as an old man; THE IS NO SOLUTION THAT WILL MAKE YOU HAPPY.
posted by BrooklynCouch at 1:50 PM on May 28 [1 favorite]

(oops...THERE IS NO SOLUTION...)
posted by BrooklynCouch at 1:51 PM on May 28

Not sure what the plans are exactly for Coney Island...

Sadly, I doubt they'll be electricuting any elephants.
posted by StickyCarpet at 1:56 PM on May 28

CI in its heyday
posted by anthill at 1:56 PM on May 28

That's, pretty much, what CI was in its day

Which day is that? It has been amusements, to some degree or another, for 125 years. An argaubly it has never been like Six Flags. Part of what is interesting about Coeny is that it's just right there on city streets. There's no real plan to it, there are 3 or 4 (or more) competing park/attractions of various sizes and flavors. Not much at all like Six Flags.
posted by dirtdirt at 1:59 PM on May 28

Man, I miss Steel Pier. That diving horse was cool. Yep, replaced by a mall.
posted by fixedgear at 2:06 PM on May 28

My point is that it existed to please the Six Flags audience. You would have found it unbearable.
posted by BrooklynCouch at 2:14 PM on May 28

I thought Ferlinghetti already remade Coney Island in his own words.
posted by ioesf at 2:15 PM on May 28

Actually, I misread you Dave Faris, and I agree with your comment.
posted by dirtdirt at 2:20 PM on May 28

My point is that it existed to please the Six Flags audience. You would have found it unbearable.

I find that pretty condescending.
posted by [NOT HERMITOSIS-IST] at 2:37 PM on May 28

Well, in 30 years, when they're tearing down all the malls, you can sure as hell bet somebody'll miss 'em. I'm not saying I like that they're tearing down CI, but it's not nearly as heartbreaking as hearing that the mall in the town I grew up in was shut down. It was the only spark of life in that prairie shithole. And I'm probably the only one who mourned it. History's personal, is it not? Go unto the mall and make it yourn.
posted by saysthis at 2:51 PM on May 28

This is a travesty. CI is so shockingly tawdry, it really needs to remain as is. Is nothing sacred? My favorite memories in NYC are of visits to Coney Island. Ever go in winter? It's like the twilight zone. Packs of wild dogs rule the area. They run by you, take a collective sniff, and then move on because it's obvious that you not only don't belong there but you don't have any leftover hotdogs either. Where can you get that kind of edge? Brooklyn Heights? I think not. Even Red Hook is gentrifying these days.

Akashic needs to put out a book: "Coney Island Noir." Somebody please forward this post to them before it's too late.

Can we get Scorsesi to film one last bit of New York history there? Somebody that knows somebody please forward this post to somebody that knows him.
posted by suelange at 3:00 PM on May 28

FWIW, I meant tp say BrooklynCouch up there a piece. Brain fart, posting from my phone on the bus.
posted by dirtdirt at 3:08 PM on May 28

> Ever go in winter? It's like the twilight zone.

I've never been to CI, but there was a creepy scene in Angel Heart filmed there that I think probably captured that "twilight zone" feel you're talking about.
posted by The Card Cheat at 3:16 PM on May 28

Without reading the article, I should mention that the people of Coney Island/Brighton Beach, at least the Russians anyway, are REALLY REALLY resistant to seeing their neighborhood turn into Williamsburg or the (modern-day) Lower East Side.

If you want to see this in action, just casually mention to one of the residents that you've "heard that the hipsters are moving in." Watch the physical recoil. Hear the involuntary gasp. See the almost-comical look of panic on their face. This all happens in the space of a split second, before they inevitably say "It will never happen. It's too far. Nobody would want a commute like that."

They have a strong neighborhood. And for their sake, I hope that the hipsters don't move in. However, every time I hear about people living in Philly and commuting to NYC for work, I fear for Olga and her neighbors, that they'll someday have to compete with the hipsters or yuppies or whatever for their living space. If that happens, I know for a fact that they won't leave without a fight. They really, really like their neighborhood.
posted by Afroblanco at 3:18 PM on May 28 [1 favorite]

The thing is, Coney Island is way too isolated (reachable by chronically traffic jammed parkway and medicre subway) to ever attract an affluent public.

I spent most of my childhood in Bensonhurst and we managed by train just fine, and when I took my husband to see it a few years ago before we married the bus got us there just fine too. You'll laugh I'm sure, but it's one of the places I wanted to spend my honeymoon. I'm glad I didn't know I was saying goodbye.

My family regularly visited Coney Island nearly from the time they landed in Ellis Island from Russia in the early 20th century. We certainly weren't affluent, though -- and that is my point. Coney Island was our resort, our playground, our promenade. I would have never known what an amusement park was without it. It's where I learned to swim and to love the ocean. Decayed as it was even then, it was beautiful to me as a child, just as it had been to my mother, and hers. Certainly, it was far lovelier than the overblown nightmare currently on the drafting table.

Life is unremittingly hostile to poor people, especially the urban poor. One vanishingly small corner of Brooklyn is not much to ask to preserve for a little cheap magic for them. The entire world is a resort for an "affluent public." Such people can and will amuse themselves elsewhere. A lot of poor little kids just lost their playground. I mourn for them.
posted by melissa may at 3:24 PM on May 28 [7 favorites]

Am I missing something that says he's closing the beach off to poor people?

I'm no fan of shopping malls, but take a look at NYC in the last 15 years, folks. This was inevitable. Your whole city has become an urban Disneyworld and a bedroom community for millionaires.

The sky isn't falling, though, and I'm sure some of those poor people wouldn't mind having a look around a mall or two. Sheesh.
posted by jeff-o-matic at 4:16 PM on May 28 [1 favorite]

I'm sure some of those poor people wouldn't mind having a look around a mall or two. Sheesh.

If you could have only seen the look on my face as I read that.
posted by notjustfoxybrown at 4:23 PM on May 28 [2 favorites]

notjustfoxybrown: What kind of a look was that?

Also, things change folks. New York wasn't always the fantasy place of authentic Americana yesteryear you all hold near and dear. Want to put fence posts and chains around a 'vanishingly small corner of Brooklyn' and declare it a No-Change Zone? Good luck.

New York became the 'center of the universe' because people came to make money. Period. That's what's happening here. Again. And it'll happen again. Then again after that.
posted by jeff-o-matic at 4:36 PM on May 28

notjustfoxybrown: What kind of a look was that?

I can't speak for her, but my lip curled in disgust a little bit at the smug condescension embodied in the statement "I'm sure some of those poor people wouldn't mind having a look around a mall or two."
posted by dersins at 4:46 PM on May 28

Bah- I wasn't being condescending to POOR PEOPLE. I'm reacting to the claims here that somehow poor people are being excluded, or somehow won't enjoy a new shopping mall. As though this development is NOT FOR CERTAIN PEOPLE, i.e, poor people.

I guess the only correct position here is to think poor people can only appreciate a run-down amusement park full of stray dogs, rats and pigeons. Maybe I should assume that poor people are somehow more real, and appreciate GRITTY URBAN REALITY in a way others can't.

Again, the beach will still be open folks, unless they left out the part about excluding folks under a certain income level with razor wire and security guards. Not sure that was part of this article.
posted by jeff-o-matic at 4:53 PM on May 28

New York became the 'center of the universe' because people came to make money. Period. That's what's happening here. Again. And it'll happen again. Then again after that.

I can't even manage a lip curl, because if I recoiled in disgust every time someone voiced such a sentiment my face would be stuck that way like Billy Idol's.

Plenty of people were immensely wealthy or striving to be that way for the 150 years Coney Island has endured. Yet New York has always managed to provide some happiness for the children of the people who toted its garbage and cleaned its sidewalks and kept the damn place running. You seem to know very little about the New York of "yesteryear" but your grasp of its tone today is pitch perfect, even though you don't seem to know what your own words imply.

I guess the only correct position here is to think poor people can only appreciate a run-down amusement park full of stray dogs, rats and pigeons.

As I mentioned before, my husband and I were in Coney Island quite recently and saw none of these things, but I saw a rat the size of a cocker spaniel rooting around in garbage where I was staying in Park Slope. Perhaps all the people living there should move so that a new Epcot Center can be built.

I wasn't being condescending to POOR PEOPLE. I'm reacting to the claims here that somehow poor people are being excluded, or somehow won't enjoy a new shopping mall. As though this development is NOT FOR CERTAIN PEOPLE, i.e, poor people.

No, you aren't at all being condescending by suggesting that people will enjoy spending time ogling things that they can't afford. After all, that's an experience not to be had for them in all the rest of New York. Marie Antoinette also meant that she wished she could buy everyone in Paris a Ding-Dong to help them forget their troubles. It must be hard to be so often misunderstood.
posted by melissa may at 5:20 PM on May 28 [1 favorite]

Jeff,
Did anyone bother to ask the poor people who live there what they wanted or did they simply assume that all they were missing in their poverty-stricken lives was a little Old Navy?

And for me, New York in my youth was this sort of fantasy place. We didn't have money and we didn't need it. The city was my playground (and this was the '70s no less, when the place was really shitty.)

But oooohhhh the day the lights went out and the Mr. Softee man gave all the kids in the neighborhood free ice cream. And the day my aunt picked me up from school early and we took the nasty, pigeon-filled ferry to Staten Island. And the day the Son of Sam was caught and I wasn't afraid anymore to jump double-dutch on those dirty, sticky streets. And yes, the days when I was old enough to ride the train alone with my friends to Coney Island and flirt with the boys at the arcade and watch old Jewish couples who you knew had been together longer than your imagination sit on a splintery bench and look at that filthy ocean.

You can keep your goddamn mall.
posted by notjustfoxybrown at 5:27 PM on May 28 [5 favorites]

Not sure that was part of this article.

Maybe you should have read it more carefully. It's not about excluding poor people at all, and that's not what people are angry about. It's about re-envisioning an environment to anticipate (or better, instill) the desires of "poor" people and then aggressively market to them. You do this by taking away what is a natural expression of the community and replace it with the things that you'd like for the community to value instead.

Sitt's plan is well outlined: you try to make the poor feel like they're getting something shiny and new to enjoy, hoping that they will feel flattered and grateful to be be included in the big Name-Brand Experience™, while affluent people from other neighborhoods will get the message: "This place is now officially an annex of your already-in-progress Experience™, different only in its local flavor... but what a flavor!" Voila, everyone gets to feel like it's theirs, everyone gets to play.

You don't need the razor-wire; after a while, the poor will get the hint that they're not included, and they'll go somewhere else. Or the rich will realize that it's not as gentrified as they thought, and they'll stop coming. Either way the endeavor will languish and fail. And in the best case scenario, if everyone mingles and enjoys the area evenly, you're still dealing with monocultural blight instead of anything that ever meant anything to anyone.

Perhaps the allure of Coney Island is more in how we imagine it or remember it than in its reality. Perhaps even its "history" is magnified in importance. But what little genuine allure and history it has amounts to far more than anything a beachfront Cheesecake Factory and Filene's Basement will generate in 150 years.
posted by [NOT HERMITOSIS-IST] at 5:36 PM on May 28 [5 favorites]

Or ferchrissakes. There's so much sanctimony here it's hard to breathe.

I'm no fan of malls. I wrote that upthread, in case you need to see it twice to believe it. I'm a lefty liberal double income no kids guy who lives in the downtown of a city in the US that's not NYC.

Your entire alice in wonderland vision of a city has already become Disneyworld for adults. You can read that again upthread incase you need to. You all voted for Giuliani, and then for Bloomberg. They WON! NYC is wealthier than ever. Mission accomplished.

Having an idyllic misty-watercolored memory of the way things were is fine and dandy. Enjoy! I'm sure your kids and their kids will hear it all so many times their ears will bleed. But Coney Island amusement park was built to take peoples' money. In a different era. It's old and outdated, and there's more efficient ways of taking money from rubes these days. Your shining NYC is the brightest beacon in the world standing for taking money from rubes!

Imagine, people of lower income than the people who can afford NYC are growing up living lives full of interesting childhood experiences they will treasure for their lifetimes. But it won't be in Coney Island. Big deal! Life moves on.

Move out of NYC if the existential pain of living among wealthy yuppies is too much to bear. Not so much the Big Apple as the Nexus of Narcissistic Whiners.
posted by jeff-o-matic at 5:50 PM on May 28 [1 favorite]

Move out of NYC if the existential pain of living among wealthy yuppies is too much to bear.

Already did. Smelled it coming when Starbucks came to Harlem.
posted by notjustfoxybrown at 5:54 PM on May 28

It's about re-envisioning an environment to anticipate (or better, instill) the desires of "poor" people and then aggressively market to them. You do this by taking away what is a natural expression of the community and replace it with the things that you'd like for the community to value instead.

If I could favorite this comment a hundered times, I would.
posted by lalochezia at 6:05 PM on May 28

lalochezia: You think the rides at Coney Island were there when it was bought from the Native Americans?

They were built as a way to anticipate the desires of "poor" people and then aggressively market to them. Think all that stuff is free?

Roller coasters are a "natural EXPRESSION of a community"? What the hell are people smoking around here?
posted by jeff-o-matic at 6:10 PM on May 28

Roller coasters are a "natural EXPRESSION of a community"?

The desire to keep THAT particular roller-coaster for so long, no matter how antiquated it became, and to embrace it as a symbol of their local pride, is most definitely a natural expression of a community.

If, for example, they do put in a beachfront Cheesecake Factory, and it winds up remaining in business long after most of the development has been torn down or replaced, then it too will become a natural expression of the community. As lame as that may be.
posted by [NOT HERMITOSIS-IST] at 6:32 PM on May 28

StickyCarpet writes "or the Fun House Terror Ride or whatever that thing was called, where the cars emerged into a weedy cement lot left after a fire destroyed the bulk of the ride, and then returned to the dusty 'fun house' where empty mechanical armatures swung some fragment of a mostly missing skeleton at you"

Hey, malaise can be terrifying.
posted by krinklyfig at 6:35 PM on May 28

The cyclone ain't the fucking Taj Mahal.

True, but it is officially both a NYC Historic Landmark and on the Register of National Historic Places. So that much is staying.

Look, it's obvious Coney Island has seen better times, is very much blighted, and needs to be developed--preferably in a sensible way that is not just another shopping mall. The Cyclones (the baseball team) understood this when they built their stadium: it manages to bring out the Coney Island theme in a way that is respectful but also adds to it. It's a great ballpark.

This does not have to be an either/or argument. There is a way to develop C.I. in a way that retains some of its funky charm. There will still be, or still should be, Nathan's, the Siren Music Festival, the Mermaid Parade, Ruby's, etc.
posted by ornate insect at 6:43 PM on May 28 [1 favorite]

Move out of NYC if the existential pain of living among wealthy yuppies is too much to bear.

I've had the same thoughts about metafilter, recently. You just really don't get it, huh? You seem like the kind of person who whips out their dick in a crowded restaurant and yells, "What's everyone staring at?"

Anyway, I love Coney Island. This story made me really sad, not in some sort of misty-eyed nostalgic way, but because that was Dreamland. That's where The Warriors are trying to make it to all night. It was Ferlinghetti's place. It was always a dilapidated, screwed-up place in the images and stories I heard. And when I finally made it to Coney Island (and I had been to NYC before, but never made it there), it was as dilapidated, screwed-up, and wonderful as I hoped it might be. It's one of the few places in that city that I have ever really felt connected to in some way, and I say that as a person who did go to Six Flags growing up as well as Branson, MO, before Andy Williams had even heard of it. But Branson and Six Flags have been created without Nathan's. Branson and Six Flags may have funnel cakes, but they don't have 150 years worth of history.

The whole thing makes me a bit sad for New Yorkers and the nation.

on preview: You think the rides at Coney Island were there when it was bought from the Native Americans?

Oh man. Holy balls are you a trollin' assmunch. Next thing you know, Hitler will show up to be in the mermaid parade.
posted by sleepy pete at 6:48 PM on May 28 [1 favorite]

jeff-o-matic writes "Roller coasters are a 'natural EXPRESSION of a community'? What the hell are people smoking around here?"

You ever read the comic strip "Zippy the Pinhead"? Bill Griffith has a thing for old advertising icons, particularly ones used as road signs. These strange, non-homogenized figures become landmarks and people start associating them with certain locations or neighborhoods, not because they are purposely made to be great architectural achievements, but because they are sort of quirky and reveal a side to advertising that isn't so slick and monolithic. And people really do think of them nostalgically after having lived among them for a long time, and will sometimes make efforts to preserve them as historic landmarks.
posted by krinklyfig at 6:52 PM on May 28

Whatever. I guess a dilapidated amusement park getting renovated and having a mall built on Coney Island is truly the Sweeping and Grand End of Innocence in the US, and somehow, real America is dying in this generation. Where is Pete Seeger to sing of the injustice??

sleepy pete: Yeah, so it's Dreamland. That means it doesn't exist except in your Peter Pan head. Get over yourself. The Warriors was a work of fiction, just like the imaginary paradise Coney Island is in your head. Close your eyes and click your heels, and it'll still be there little buddy.

Fine, preserve it as an historical landmark. That's fine and probably a good thing. What's appalling to me is the moaning and whining and gnashing of teeth over someone renovating part of New York City. How is this a surprise, or anything even new, or different from what's happened over the entire history of that city?

Someone's transgressing on your cherished (imagined or not) childhood memory? That's pretty much the history of mankind.
posted by jeff-o-matic at 7:06 PM on May 28

You know, I bet we could make a better bridge than the Brooklyn Bridge these days. Tear out the old one. Make a new one out of stainless steel (a-la Frank Ghery), put condos in the support structures, add an extra lane or two of roadway. Probably even sell naming rights ("Chips Ahoy Cookies presents the Heinekin Bridge"). I can't see any reason why we shouldn't. That's progress, stop whining about the past, you babies.

Also, did you see that someone fell through the floor at Ruby's today?
posted by dirtdirt at 7:17 PM on May 28

Coney Island: Keyspan Park - Parachute Drop at Night

jeff-o-matic: you may be pushing your "nothing to see here, move along" argument a little too hard, even though I'm not entirely unsympathetic with it. After all, while the creulty of life is predictable, so too is the will to overcome it.

Perhaps we should all stop projecting our pet ideologies onto Coney Island and start talking about the pragmatics of re-developing it in a way that retains some of its uniqueness and does not make it bland.
posted by ornate insect at 7:21 PM on May 28 [1 favorite]

kneejerk reaction to comments far up in the thread:

@dirtdirt - as a minnesota resident who also spent much time living in NY, I have to say that NYC currently is turning itself into the most abominable city-sized mall I've ever seen. my little city up here in the north might sport an ugly fucking cancerous sore - shaped like a giant mall - but thankfully it doesn't extend into every corner of the city itself.

that said, along with all the commenters here: WTF is it with our country turning into one giant Hot Pocket, bland-white-sauce-flavored piece of shit? Is it really just us few being sanctimonious assholes to sit back and say "What the hell are you people thinking?"

One must put your money where your mouth is, and I'm doing so right now with my living and consumption choices - but it seems like an endless tide, doesn't it? I feel like I'm going to drown in Nascar and Budweiser some days, and be smothered to death by Willams and Sonoma the next. Count me out.

(apologies for the drunken rant.)
posted by EricGjerde at 7:51 PM on May 28

How reasonable, ornate insect. However, who gives a shit? It's a done deal. If a few people who actually experienced life there want to feel sad about it, why must they be mocked as sanctimonious rubes by the likes of jeff-o-matic, or accused of projecting pet ideologies by you? It's yet another irreplaceable piece of America being destroyed to line some douchebag's pockets and when it's your place, your history, it hurts. So at this point can't we at least be spared bloodless phrases like "funky charm" and "retained uniqueness" which is exactly what Bill in Accounts Receivable is going to say he's up for when he talks about going down to Coney Island with the family once this piece of shit is up and running? It's like listening to someone read the tax code during a funeral march.
posted by melissa may at 7:52 PM on May 28

EricGjerde, let the record state that I used Minnesota in my example above only for its NOT-New York-ness. The North Star State has many fine features and a sterling reputation, and hope that this unfortunate incident will in no way affect my diplomatic standing with Minnesota or Minnesotans.

The cancerous mall-culture has made us all frogs in nearly boiling water.
posted by dirtdirt at 8:01 PM on May 28

Glad dirtdirt made that clarification ... because I, too, love myself some Minneapolis. It's a wonderfully charming, eclectic city that stole my heart long ago when I was living across the river in St. Paul in a beautiful one-bedroom on Cathedral Hill that cost me $345 a month. Sigh.
posted by notjustfoxybrown at 8:34 PM on May 28

Close your eyes and click your heels, and it'll still be there little buddy.

OK, Skipper. Or Glenda, whichever one you want to be.
posted by sleepy pete at 8:43 PM on May 28

The message board at Coney Island USA has been going crazy ever since last summer when Joe Sitt started buying up all his land, demolishing what was on it and placing high high high plywood fences all over with "THE FUTURE OF CONEY ISLAND" written on them all around, announcing he was buying and closing Astroland, and putting up an inflatable waterslide that only worked when someone wanted to ride and an attendant turned on a hose at the top (it cost something like $10 if memory serves, maybe less.)

Needless to say, this man is not very popular among the locals, nor several vocal opponents in some positions of city authority. He's a flipper and he doesn't even do that well.

And in terms of Stepping Boldly Towards Bland Gentrification, he's only a step below the corporate developers who took over the Hotel Chelsea, ousted the beloved long-time manager Stanley Bard, and began a campaign to turn it into Yet Another Boutique Hotel. (Actually things are looking slightly up for the Chelsea as the hotel management company itself has been given the heave-ho, but the owner isn't ready to hand the operation back to the traditionalists just yet.)
posted by Spatch at 10:22 PM on May 28

You know, even though I don't really like the prospect of a mall being built in Coney Island, I do find some of the comments in this thread to be a bit sanctimonious.

You all need to take a step back and look at the kind of city that NYC really is. It's a city as old as Philadelphia, but where is it's Olde City? Where's all the colonial-era architecture? Outside of a few blocks down at the South Street Seaport, it was all knocked down (or burned down) and replaced with newer buildings. NYC doesn't really value it's physical history all that much, but I think that's because the NYC mindset is more fast-paced and pragmatic. You may say that it's too-much-so, but there's no denying that the city has that nature.

Back in college, I took a class in 20th-Century America, where we read this book about Coney Island. Its central point is that Coney Island was basically a victim of its own success. Back when it had the largest installation of lightbulbs in the country, it really was something fresh and new. But you have to remember what it always stood for - consumerism. You pay your nickel and you get on the ride, or you get that piece of funnel cake, or you watch at the 30-second moving picture at the nickelodeon. It was also a place of relaxed morals; a place where you and your sweetie could escape the Victorian code of the day and sneak off for a bit of a make-out session. It was all bright lights and fast rides and titillation. In other words, Coney Island was every damn cultural touchstone that we now take for granted. It was fresh and revolutionary at the time, but as soon as the entire country became Coney Island, Coney Island as a place was no longer special. That's why it eventually slipped into disrepair and irrelevance.

Really, this whole conversation dovetails into the larger conversation about NYC gentrification (and gentrification in general), a subject which is surrounded by no small amount of sanctimony. And the fact is that gentrification is as good as it is bad. It is true that much of Manhattan is now off-limits except to high-income earners and people who are willing to make certain sacrifices in their lifestyles. It is true that once-novel neighborhoods are now home to a bunch of boring white people (and there's nothing that us boring white people hate more than other boring white people). However, you only need to look at the rest of the city to see the upshot of this. Back in the 80s, Brooklyn was, quite simply, a Place That You Didn't Go. And now? Hell, nearly all of my friends live in Brooklyn. It still has its rough spots, but there are whole swathes of the city that were once dangerous as all fuck, but are now quite habitable to middle-class families.

And the projects at Coney Island? A mistake to begin with. Read your Jane Jacobs. Housing project superblocks were a bad, bad, bad idea. They breed crime, poverty, and social dysfunction. If the buildings are damaged beyond repair, then they should go, and be replaced with more modern low-income housing of the type that you see all over the city. (Think 6-story apartment buildings separated by actual streets, preferably in areas with mixed zoning)

And the beach? And the amusement park? And the childhood memories? I'm sure that Coney Island will still be good (and possibly even better) for these things. Think about it - in its present state, would *YOU* take your young children and aged grandparents to Coney Island for a wholesome day out? How could a renovation *not* be an improvement in this area?

Besides, if the new Coney Island doesn't suit your fancy as a beach destination, I suggest Long Beach. That's where my friends and I go. It's no further by LIRR than Coney Island is by subway. And it's nice. And it's clean. And there's room enough for everybody. Whenever we go out there, I see families of all ethnicities and income levels enjoying the kind of fun that many of you associate Coney Island, and that I associate with Ocean City and Long Beach Island.
posted by Afroblanco at 10:44 PM on May 28 [1 favorite]

Ack! The Jane Jacobs link should go here.
posted by Afroblanco at 10:47 PM on May 28

If the "poor people" cherish the park so much, then why is the place in the dilapidated state it's in? When I went to Coney Island a few years ago it was deserted and depressing. It's more enjoyable in "Annie Hall" and the countless other movies it's starred in than in real life. I'd say the "poor people" don't really care that much about it, it only really seems to mean something to sanctimonious hipsters who like to look down on people like Bill in Accounts Receivable (LOLSQUAREZ!!) who doesn't know the cool lingo on the street. If the poor really gave a damn about it they'd be there all the time, but they're not. They'd probably prefer a mall, too.
posted by Kraftmatic Adjustable Cheese at 11:15 PM on May 28 [1 favorite]

Good grief. Coney Island was a shithole 20 years ago. I'm surprised any of it has survived to this day. It was either gentrification or fire.

I like preservation, but you can't preserve decay. What people like about Coney Island is tied in with the what-used-to-be inherent in decay, but also the inevitable disappearance. Otherwise it would be meaningless.

You can look at the Parachute Tower and admire the rust, or you can rehab it, but you can't keep it looking tawdry forever -- it'll eventually fall over. The Cyclone has to stay profitable or it will start killing people. And so on. All these little amusement parks have hung on by the skin of their teeth for years. The hotels where people used to honeymoon became day-rate hangouts for the destitute. The place has been dying.

Tell me, how do you keep a place on the edge of dying forever?
posted by dhartung at 11:29 PM on May 28

I think you could avoid turning it into a cookie-cutter facsimile of every mallified place and retain some its original feel by listening to all that nostalgia and taking it into account and making the place a. profitable and b. unique.

(Gentrification is everywhere, as are franchises, and ogluvusall, it's so boring. I just really don't understand why developers don't understand that and don't leave room for things that are interesting. It's not all about the bottom line, people!)
posted by h00py at 3:03 AM on May 29

Shoot the freak.
posted by swift at 7:35 AM on May 29

It's this kind of asshole who's destroying places like my town (Madison, WI). I've only lived here 10 years, but it's changed so much and lost all it's "flavor".

These guys piss me off.
posted by symbioid at 9:35 AM on May 29

I'd say the "poor people" don't really care that much about it, it only really seems to mean something to sanctimonious hipsters who like to look down on people like Bill in Accounts Receivable (LOLSQUAREZ!!) who doesn't know the cool lingo on the street.

Meh. Enjoy PF Chang's Cheesecake-O-Rama. I like Bill, he's a good guy, but I think he has horrible taste in restaurants.
posted by sleepy pete at 11:16 AM on May 29 [1 favorite]

Where will the Warriors live now?
posted by drezdn at 12:28 PM on May 29

I don't really have a stake in this; I don't know much about Coney Island or like big cities.

The article and this thread have a totally different tone, and I was really expecting this to be a business thread. While preserving old attractions and buildings is usually a practical matter; their value isn't really appreciated until they are gone. I've seen this in my city.

People getting pushed out of their houses sucks, and one of the reasons I travel less than I ever though I would is because the GAP in Regina, SK is pretty much the same as the GAP in a more glamourous locale. I've more or less given up on the concept of most profit-making insitutions generating worthwhile attractions, or at least the type of attractions which cut through the surface of a place and really say something about a people or culture.

When it comes down to it, if you want culture these days you are prettty much going to have to get it at the level of the community: the little dance groups, the ethnic societies, the places where local people eat their lunches, or the local pubs The new place built at Coney Island probably won't generate the kind of memories people in this thread are sharing and that is sad, because the more mature or jaded you get with happy, quirky tourist attractions - the more you need them.
posted by Deep Dish at 12:45 PM on May 29

Afroblanco, in the 80s Brooklyn was not "a place you didn't go," it was where I lived. Plenty of middle class people did then too, and so did working class and poor people.

I seem to be cast in the role of sanctimonious hipster but I am not lecturing from my reading -- these are my personal and familial roots. You and everyone else falling over themselves to call Coney Island a depressing and derelict shithole are extraordinarily presumptuous to suppose that just because you wouldn't go there with your families that it must be true for everyone else participating here. I would happily take my young nephews there. Last I was there, so were plenty of families, and old people from the neighborhood still sat on the benches and watched the ocean. It's not even dimly as frightening as it's been painted to be here.

I spent time in the Coney Island projects in the 80s (I was bussed to school in the neighborhood and had a friend living there) and I do agree that they were and likely still are vile. But where's the affordable housing to replace them? I don't see that in Sitt's master plan, just a lot of hotels/condos that no poor person or working class person could ever afford.

I don't think it's sanctimony to care about your own people and to not want to see what little of their history and culture remains wiped off the face of the earth, even in a city as fast-paced and pragmatic as New York. The city's wealthy and middle-class have countless public and private spaces to enjoy. Wishing Coney Island could remain affordable and accessible to poor and working class people is not exactly asking for the moon and stars. Who cares if you and your friends don't want to go there? Not the people still living there and using it, faded though it might be, and not me. When it's gone, it won't be your loss.
posted by melissa may at 1:54 PM on May 29 [5 favorites]

You guys all know Yankee Stadium is going to be demolished, right?

And CBGB closed down a while ago.

Some day university students will look back at this era in their environmental analysis classes, and their professors will nostalgically wax on about the great gentrification boom of the early 2000's.

Artsy photos will be taken of places like the Americana at Brand (and the impending new Coney Island) because the place looks so outdated, retro-chic.

Perhaps we'll be shaking our fists at those emails that tell us "The average graduating high school senior has never know life without Youtube or National ID Cards ... and has never enjoyed a hot dog at a Coney Island without a gaudy mall attached to it."

Time doesn't simply move on; it bulldozes over us in the name of "change" and "future." Sometimes for the better, sometimes for the worse, but most of the time for the better.

You don't have to embrace it, but let's face it: sometimes, resistance is futile.
posted by jabberjaw at 2:15 PM on May 29

Fine, preserve it as an historical landmark. That's fine and probably a good thing. What's appalling to me is the moaning and whining and gnashing of teeth over someone renovating part of New York City. How is this a surprise, or anything even new, or different from what's happened over the entire history of that city?

The moaning and gnashing is a necessary part of the fight. We fight to preserve what we can because we can sometimes win.

It doesn't have to be a mall. We can save it. We can save it like we did Washington Square Park, the West Village, the brownstones of Brooklyn, the Highline—like we did the parks, the green corners, the empty lot parks, the farmers' markets, the cast iron buildings of Soho. We know we failed to save the brownstones of Manhattan's Fifth Avenue, the theatres of 14th Street, Fulton Fish Market, and too much more.

But this? We think we can save it. We fight to save it. We do not give in without battles, without taking our weapons of speech and assembly, and hammering on the doors of the craven and the corrupt, and yelling in the faces of those who are empowered beyond their abilities and emboldened beyond their needs.

We can win.
posted by Mo Nickels at 2:26 PM on May 29 [2 favorites]

We know we failed to save the brownstones of Manhattan's Fifth Avenue, the theatres of 14th Street, Fulton Fish Market, and too much more.

Like for instance: Penn Station, maybe?

But then we got hip (if I'm allowed to use that word) and threw ourselves into saving Grand Central Station.

Yes, change happens. Yes, development of New York has been on top of the bodies and culture of whoever came before, just like in Rome and every other ancient city. But, you still try to save whatever has meaning for you. Unless, of course, nothing has meaning for you and then you just accept whatever comes along in the name of progress.

We're just having a hard time believing that another mall has any meaning for anybody, in the name of progress or otherwise.

Here's another thing to think about: People are still bemoaning the loss of the Dodgers. Brooklyn is not Manhattan.
posted by suelange at 2:57 PM on May 29

I seem to be cast in the role of sanctimonious hipster

[....]

You and everyone else falling over themselves to call Coney Island a depressing and derelict shithole

That's really what I was doing? Really? I feel like you're projecting here. Perhaps we should take this to email.

I'm certainly not arguing in favor of building a mall in CI. Also, as you can see from my previous comment upthread, I've acknowledged that parts of CI aren't shitty at all, and, in fact, the residents of the non-shitty parts are VERY resistant to parting with the neighborhood that they love.

I'm just trying to give the conversation some context beyond "mean evil shitty developers must die die die die die!" I understand that you're upset and that you see yourself as having a stake in the matter. But yours is not the only perspective, and just because you're louder about it doesn't make you more right.

I would happily take my young nephews there.

Hah! That reminds me of when I was a kid and my parents took my brother and I to Atlantic City for the day. They had all these lovely memories of going there as kids. But by the mid-1980s when they took us there, it was FUCKING SCARY. And I don't mean modern-day-Coney-Island-scary. I mean cars-on-fucking-fire scary. I'm suprised that we didn't get killed. Without a doubt, it was my first real look at urban blight. I'm not saying that it wasn't a valuable experience, but we sure as hell didn't have to drive the 90mins to AC to see that.

Ocean City, on the other hand, was quite a different story.
posted by Afroblanco at 4:59 PM on May 29

it was FUCKING SCARY. And I don't mean modern-day-Coney-Island-scary. I mean cars-on-fucking-fire scary. I'm suprised that we didn't get killed.

And because it was not destroyed, it lived to form the basis for another generation of development which has enriched a handful of private developers, drawn tourist/gaming dollars to the casinos and then outward to their parent companies, and kept the city fairly bankrupt.

Ocean City, on the other hand, was quite a different story.

Ocean City is a fantastic example of historic preservation, adaptive re-use, and a community developing its historic assets rather than paving them over.

Cities and towns go through cycles. I'm not against development in and of itself, and neither is historic preservation as a movement. The question is: who develops? Why, and for whom? What changes are allowed and what changes disallowed? Will we insist on the preservation, rehabilitation, and/or reuse of unique, endangered, or rare assets?

A binary discussion of DEVELOPMENT GOOD/DEVELOPMENT BAD is bound to fail. Preservation is often the key to a city's survival and economic revitalization, not a hindrance. Redevelopment of historic assets can be an absolutely fantastic thing. But when the citizens let developers run roughshod over historic fabric, public access, markets served, and original intent, they lose.
posted by Miko at 6:12 PM on May 29

Afroblanco, please. There's no need to take anything to email. I've posted little more than you, and if you think I'm loud, you have good reason to be frightened of one of the few remnants of ungentrified Brooklyn that are left.

I'm just trying to give the conversation some context beyond "mean evil shitty developers must die die die die die!"

That's a rather patronizing characterization of much of the conversation. I would have had no problem with your attempt at providing context were it not larded with insulting stereotypes. You called the Brooklyn of my childhood terra incognita for people like you (in all caps, no less) and loftily assumed no one here would dream of going to scary Coney Island with their families. I grew up there, was recently there, and I couldn't disagree more.

I'm just glad Mo Nickels showed up with a reminder that the fight isn't over yet; it was wrong for me to suppose so.
posted by melissa may at 12:57 AM on May 30

melissa may - you very clearly took my comments as some sort of an attack on you and your hometown, when in fact I meant nothing of the sort. You're just lumping me in with all the other people in this thread who disagree with you (some of whom actually were being insulting), which I don't think is fair. When people take stuff personally like that, I often suggest bringing it to email, so that everybody in the thread doesn't have to see people airing dirty laundry. You declined this opportunity, and so be it.

The ironic thing is that I don't actually disagree with you - a fact that you've continually ignored. I don't actually believe in putting up a mall in Coney Island, which I've stated repeatedly. I'm just trying to show that there are perspectives other than yours.

I pretty much take a middle ground on this issue. While I don't support building a mall in Coney Island, I also don't think that CI is the timeless cultural treasure that you and others make it out to be. And I also don't think that all gentrification and development is bad - a controversial perspective here on the Blue, I know. Finally, I think your whole argument is a bit of a straw man.

I'd love to hear from some actual, present-day Coney Island residents on this issue. I suspect some of them may actually support building a mall. Not for any condescending "poor people may like to get a look at a mall" reason, but because most people who live in CI do so for reasons other than nostalgia, and may actually enjoy the convenience that a mall represents. Not everybody shares your values. Also, I reject the assumption that building a mall would place CI "off-limits to poor people." One must take some fairly significant leaps of logic in order to get to this conclusion, and what can I say? I just don't buy it.

So, yeah. Sorry that I didn't play along and let you make me into your straw man. I know that you want to get angry and rail against someone, but in me, you have found an inappropriate target.

And if you do want to continue this, you will have to do so through email, because I'm finished responding in-thread.
posted by Afroblanco at 4:27 AM on May 30

Also, I reject the assumption that building a mall would place CI "off-limits to poor people." One must take some fairly significant leaps of logic in order to get to this conclusion, and what can I say? I just don't buy it.

I don't think you need leaps of logic at all. Instead, you can look at concrete examples nationwide to find that shoreline redevelopment with emphasis on national retailers and high-end luxuries like time-share condos and hotels quickly becomes inhospitable to poor people - not because they're formally barred, but because they're priced out, made to feel unwelcome by a variety of intentional cues, and the attractions they enjoyed and could afford don't remain. We've got 100 years of shoreline development to study for examples. It's not paranoid imaginings that should cause people to be skeptical - it's the history of what has happened in community after community up and down at least the Eastern Seaboard. There's a lot we can learn from both the successful and the failed developments of the past, and the concerns in this thread are right on.

When developers begin such a project, they tend to paint a beautiful and exciting picture that does get residents excited. This is why when that's the most prominent message out there, the response of residents is only of limited use in understanding the impact of the development. Developers promise jobs, beautiful new spaces, and increased municipal tax revenue.

Unfortunately, far too often the promised benefits fall far short of what's offered by the actual completed development. The tax revenue often does not offset the need for increased public services such as increased fire and law enforcement response when the population increases, increased need for roadway maintenance, increased power and water draw, increased need for ER and 911 services. Meanwhile, when national retailers are given square footage, the profits generated by the store space don't stay in the community to be reinvested; they travel to distant corporate headquarters and enrich the professional economy there - not at the point of sale. The jobs created in the development area, meanwhile (especially in a tourist-focused development) are more likely to be service industry jobs: chambermaids, waitstaff, clerks, cleaners. These low-wage jobs rarely pay benefits. They attract a workforce that then has to rely on local, state, and federal aid for medical care, some food, and other social services - a ticket the developer does not pick up. With municpal resources draining off to support the development, the city's residents find that infrastructure outside the development zone can become neglected, creating deferred maintenance problems.

But because of the promotional efforts of developers, residents can get stars in their eyes and think only of the promised benefits - jobs, money, shopping, nice new buildings. In the absence of citizen action and education presenting the other side of the story and pressing for full and easily accessible public information on the development, citizen response is bound to be simplistic and one-sided. This company has set up a "Summer of Hope" campaign to celebrate your last chance to experience Coney Island as it is today while touting the supposed benefits of redevelopment. It's up to government to weigh the costs and set parameters, so I find it interesting that the city's head of economic development has opposed the Sitt plan, calling it "a wolf dressed up as a sheep." This is the guy whose job it is to be pro-development, but it sounds as though he values preservation and is interested in preserving exactly what some in this thread are hoping for: the "democratic, open-air quality of Coney Island’s culture and amusement district on the south side of Surf Avenue."

Too often their palms have been greased, or they themselves stand to gain in ways that are attractive, or they're just not particularly literate about the consequences of development. Therefore, it's up to citizen action to step forward and get that education done, to galvanize, if they can, enough community response and funding to preserve something they wish to preserve. It's challenging, and the stars do have to align, and it has to be something worth saving. But it does happen. (The museum I work for exists as a result of such an effort in the 1950s, snatching a city block full of pre-1800 buildings out from under a government-funded high-rise development plan. Incidentally, this early preservation project became the catalyst for a citywide revitalization focused on establishing it as a history and heritage travel destination. People come here from around the world to experience a New England waterfront city. In the 1950s it was a slum, and folks laughed at the idea that it should be preserved. Well - the people here then made the stars align, and now the 1400-foot-square old colonial houses adjacent the museum sell for over a million dollars. With preservation, when it works well, you can have cake (preserved environments) and eat it too (economic development).)

The thing is, as I said above, development is complicated. It's never as simple as YES or NO. When zoning change for economic development is proposed, there needs to be a discussion about values and aims. There are endless tools for taking community inventory and reaching broad public agreement about the directions for development. Government is empowered to set restrictions. Citizens, individual and in groups, are empowered to press government for changes to restrictions and offers. They're empowered to propose and vote on law, and read long dry development contracts, and conduct research. If you get active in this stuff, you find yourself learning arcane terms for types of roadway access and discussing the user habits of public space stakeholders and so on and so forth. Sometimes you hire lawyers and researchers. The tools of redevelopment for greater public benefit are many. But you know who really can't make use of those tools very often? Poor people. Impoverished communities with resources like shoreline are great targets for development because it's unlikely that large, powerful citizen's groups will form to conduct this research, build websites, hire lawyers, and start PR campaigns. It becomes relatively easy for deep-pocketed developers and friends in the halls of government to steamroll community concerns about development. It is a class issue and a public issue, and whenever one of these projects goes through without due diligence, all Americans lose a little.

PLan NYC on details, including some response from residents
posted by Miko at 7:53 AM on May 30 [6 favorites]

Thank you, Miko. This conversation has been far too enraging to me from both a personal and class perspective to be able make the graceful arguments I would have liked to in this thread, so I'm truly grateful that you did it so well.
posted by melissa may at 8:38 AM on May 30

shoreline redevelopment with emphasis on national retailers and high-end luxuries like time-share condos and hotels quickly becomes inhospitable to poor people

And the opposite of this is Ocean City, for example? That haven for the working class? Or Martha's Vineyard? Montauk? These places have developed in a more organic, local-community way without the retail chains and yet there's no room for the poor there, either.

In the 1950s it was a slum, and folks laughed at the idea that it should be preserved. Well - the people here then made the stars align, and now the 1400-foot-square old colonial houses adjacent the museum sell for over a million dollars.

Exactly, forcing the working class out into the peripheral areas, just like the other kind of development you oppose.
posted by Kraftmatic Adjustable Cheese at 12:06 AM on May 31

And the opposite of this is Ocean City, for example? That haven for the working class? Or Martha's Vineyard? Montauk? These places have developed in a more organic, local-community way without the retail chains and yet there's no room for the poor there, either.

I have to disagree with you here. I'm from that region, and after Long Branch burned down, my working-class family started going there and we still do, once a year. Ocean City is a nice place and it draws a suburban crowd in the summer, giving it the appearance of an affluent place at peak times. Some of the housing, the summer rental strip, is indeed priced out of ownership possibility for the working class. And yet, at the same time, the city is full of middle and lower-income people. Who rents these $700-800 apartments and does the jobs advertised here? Who are these hairdressers, boat engine mechanics, painters? People who are able to benefit from the tourist economy without being cut out of it or suffering from it. The region around Ocean City is one of the last parts of coastal New Jersey where you can purchase a home for under $200,000. One of the most important things about the character of Ocean City's preservation, though, is that it has retained the "open, democratic" principles that are threatened with the Coney development. You can get to OC on public transport from AC or Philadelphia. Once there, you don't need a car. There are motels in which you can stay for under $50 a night on up. There are regular grocery stores at which you can purchase food at reasonable prices. The beach is accessible to anyone who buys a $3 tag. The boardwalk is free. The amusement parks are free to enter. If you want, you can buy a single slice of pizza or an ice cream cone. This is the kind of accessibility to using the developed facilities that Sitt's plan doesn't provide - he's closing in a large amusement area and restricting beach access. At Ocean City,if you have a family of four and your kids are under 12, and you don't want to pack a picnic lunch, you can still spend a full day at the beach for $6, splurge on a pizza and soda lunch for $23, and give the kids each $3.50 in quarters to play arcade games. That's a full day of family entertainment for under $9 a person. Working-class friendly? It costs less than a night of bowling, and lasts a lot longer.

The difference between this and bad shoreline development is that OC was able to preserve historic structures and create a safe and attractive boardwalk and a tourist economywhile preserving access and affordability. They are an excellent example that such a thing can be done if the values are in place.

Their emphasis also on locally owned business, which you can encourage or discourage in a development plan just as Sitt is discouraging it in his CI plan, makes a huge difference. Locally owned businesses return profits to the owner, who lives in and has a stake in the community. The businesses expenses themselves (accounting, legal, supply, construction and maintenance, wages) are more likely to go back into the nearby community as well. There is an important benefit to that, because it helps maintain income diversity - a community will have both hourly service workers and professionals such as lawyers and accountants. That certainly makes a difference to the local tax base and the diversity of schools and the health of the community, since communities dominated by either servicenor professional workers become dysfunctional and forbidding to other classes. The Andersonville Study, among others, found that locally owned businesses generate 70 percent more profit for the local community than chain businesses, returning an average of $68 per $100 spent into the local economy, as opposed to chain stores who generate only $43. Every square foot of retail space owned locally generated $179 for the local economy, while chain stores generated only $25.

Other findings show that the locally owned businesses return more than 250% of money in donations to local nonprofits. That makes an enormous difference to quality of life. If you've been to Ocean City, you know that you can stuff yourself with free concerts, free art events, free street festivals, a free kids' summer rec program, a free nature center, free fireworks displays. Thanks, local businesses! - they're largely footing the bill through donations from their profits. Is it likely that Banana Republic will do that sort of thing for CI? Not so much, because local spending amounts to wages and some services, while profits and professional services get exported to wherever the home office is and enrich the community there.

And that doesn't even begin to look at the social service nonprofits, tutoring and afterschool programs, volunteer firefighters, and so on and so on.

Exactly, forcing the working class out into the peripheral areas, just like the other kind of development you oppose.

That can happen with badly planned development, but it doesn't have to: it's a choice. It doesn't sound like you've been here. In this city, the working class does not normally live in the center downtown historic area, which is certainly gentrified (though you can get a studio for $650 if your lifestyle allows, which is in normal range for a Northeastern city). However, it's a small city, and there is housing for people in lower income brackets only a few blocks away. People pushed out of the historic district weren't pushed to a neglected and blighted distant outlying area devoid of services. It's good housing, in good shape, within walking distance to stores and public transportation (the kind of place I live in). The stores are nice and the public transport functional, because the city has developed in such a way as to favor locally owned businesses. Their property and sales taxes help the municipal coffers stay healthier. The schools are good. There are work opportunities not only in service sector jobs, but in professional jobs as well. In other words, the city once again developed with a set of values: historic preservation, economic revivial from a post-Cold War economic slump, the cultivation of a tourist economy without sacrificing local quality of life, support for local nonprofits and cultural organizations as a pillar of tourist appeal, and encouragement and incentive for locally owned businesses.

There are always problems and challenges in managing the mysteries of a finite local economy, and redevelopment is very tricky. What you're aiming for in a functional community development is a mix of business ventures that offer employment at all professional levels, housing to support those employees, a high percentage of locally owned business, cultural diversity, mixed-use residential/commercial environments for street safety and profit generation for business. It's not easy to strike such a balance, but to suggest that there will always be losers is to start by embracing development principles that aren't community-centered. Sure, changes to the infrastructure and policy mean effects that will be locally felt - that's inevitable. The question is: which effects will you aim for? "The other kind of development you oppose," the large-scale, restricted-access kind that depends on chain retailers and luxury services, is not the same thing as my city's or Ocean City's. Development decisions are more finely grained than that. There are glaring hallmarks to the Sitt project that indicate badly planned development. The types of jobs Sitt's project will create in a community desperate for jobs and training programs aren't likely to lead to a comfortable secure life. He's planning a twelve-acre development of enclosed space for hotels and fee-based indoor entertainment facilities in what is now an open-air location that costs nothing to walk around in. There's not even a lot of evidence that Sitt's plan will work - that it will attract the numbers and the money that it needs to to succeed. This article does a good job of pointing out the challenges that the Sitt project faces, and the fact that Coney Island is the home of several large-scale development schemes that withered on the vine because the place is too remote and the market is seasonal.

As I said above, I'm not someone you could call "pro-development" or "anti-development." Development happens and needs to happen. But I'm for community-based, open and fair development by public-private partnerships that improve quality of life and economic opportunity for residents at all income levels. Which is a lot more complicated to pull off than just making a single decision - develop/not develop. The conversation is a lot more complicated too. It's not just "save Coney Island, rebuild Coney Island." There are any number of ways to approach the CI development - this is just one. I definitely think citizen action is called for here, as is strong government oversight, and watchdogging.

Also called for are the voices of preservationists and experienced community planners from all over the country, because Coney Island is undeniably an extremely important site in American history, a place that has been instrumental in forming our pop culture and mass entertainment culture. Place is culture. If we value our culture, we value its history (the good, bad, and ugly) and seek to acknowledge it and preserve it, when possible, in ways that improve our lives and enhance community pride. Americans can do a better job at this, and with the cumulative experience of a century of urban planning, coupled with detailed economic study about how development can privilege different sorts of industry and ownership, we have a pretty good idea of what works and doesn't.

It would be a shame not to add this link to the Coney Island Interactive Development Map from the Coney Island History Project.
posted by Miko at 9:15 AM on May 31 [2 favorites]

(With Martha's Vineyard, the problem there is it really wasn't developed in the sense of creating large infrastructure investments to generate island income. The infrastructure hasn't been drastically changed in a century, and there have been no major projects. There was a period of loose zoning and additional housing construction before the current tighter zoning on homebuilding was put into place, but definitely nothing on the Coney scale. What exists today is the result of strict conservation, preservation, and local economic development creating a an attractive but finite resource, generating higher and higher competitive home-buying and rental prices -- because the community protected itself so well from unwanted infrastructure elements, creating this intense money vortex where whoever pays most gets a place to stay and everyone else is screwed. But there are poor on the Vineyard; the problem isn't lack of work or lack of services or education, though - all are pretty good - it's affordable housing, nothing else. I'd say the property taxation and valuation out there is still too low to be a curb on pricing. But again, government and citizenship are working to address the issue and balance the fact that the island has and needs a lower- and middle-income class in order to survive, function, and be healthy.

I don't know anything about Montauk. :)
posted by Miko at 9:36 AM on May 31 [1 favorite]

Thank you for your contributions to the thread, Miko.
posted by Afroblanco at 10:55 AM on May 31

My only problem with Ocean City is that it's dry. I have to go to Sommer's Point or SIC for a beer? Yeah, I know, it was founded by Bible thumpers and all.

Miko, what public transport from Philly to OC? NJT? Also, your hypothetical 200K home in the OC area is on the mainland, not on the barrier island, right?
posted by fixedgear at 11:05 AM on May 31

My only problem with Ocean City is that it's dry.

No kidding! Amen.

Miko, what public transport from Philly to OC? NJT?

You use AC as a hub. NJT comes out of 30th street in Phila, and both NY and Phila have frequent bus routes to AC. Then you take the NJT Atlantic City/Ocean City bus to the Ocean City Transportation Center. Then you can hoof it or take the trolley (my aunt does this every year.)

"NJ TRANSIT
Arrive in Atlantic City relaxed and with more money to spend! The AC Line offers 14 round-trips daily from Philadelphia's 30th Street Station to AC Rail Terminal where a convenient shuttle bus meets you and stops at all the casinos. Just $8 each way.

"

Also, your hypothetical 200K home in the OC area is on the mainland, not on the barrier island, right?

Well, it's not completely hypothetical because I checked the real estate listings before venturing that assertion, but yeah, I'm basing it on locally advertised prices (though you could look up recent sales every week and turn up a few closing prices under $200K. It's not like I would argue that there is a bonanza of real estate at the low end on the island, because with all those investment vacation-house properties, the median price runs high. But with a little searching, it looks like there are many condos in that price range, and here and there some single family homes under $200K.
posted by Miko at 11:36 AM on May 31

I'm in complete agreement with Melissa May - it's a disaster.

Government has a typical agenda - you saw it in 42nd St. At some point, even though the majority of the residents of the area were perfectly honest working class people, the City basically stopped providing social services to them. The area crumbled, decent people left, then the government gave it back to the businesses for a song and converted it into a giant mall.

I never thought I'd feel any nostalgia for the dangerous, filthy and violent Times Square of the 70s and of course it couldn't go on that way but I really feel like it's the equivalent of a building owner hiring an arsonist so he can get out the old tenants and get new richer ones, and I feel the same of Coney Island, but in spades. Coney Island's going to be far worse and I predict that it will be a failure - too expensive for your average New Yorker, too far away for your average tourist.

Overall, the complete failure of imagination, of trust in the people, the complete corruption of all branches of government up and down the level, make me sick with anger whenever I look at things like the Oppression Tower in lower Manhattan or the new Coney Machine. Imagine if they'd said, "Hey, let's spend a few million dollars on paint and construction materials and allow the people of New York to fix the place up." This has worked many times in Europe, for example.

Honestly, if you don't live here, you don't have any idea how many people really care, or at least cared, about the place, how many of these people are weird artists or people who work with their hands and would have loved to work to make it something free for the people.

But no, I'm sure no one even thought of anything other than, "Let's find a rich developer, make sure they make a lot of money, and figure out a way to profit from it."
posted by lupus_yonderboy at 3:06 PM on May 31

(And I understand that Miko said everything better than I said, in a nuanced fashion, with more facts. I'm just sick of death of seeing everything I love destroyed and nothing good taking its place.)
posted by lupus_yonderboy at 3:07 PM on May 31

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