CONEY’S A ‘STEAL’
City to seize and develop owners’ land
Frustrated by stubborn Coney Island landowners, the de Blasio administration plans to seize property under the city’s rarely used power of eminent domain in order to spur longstalled economic development in the People’s Playground, The Post has learned.
The Parks Department plans to create new amusements and other amenities by grabbing up three va cant beachfront sites through condemnation proceedings — including a 60,000squarefoot tract that once housed the original Thunderbolt roller coaster, officials said.
The sites total 75,000 square feet, and also include smaller tracts off the Boardwalk on West 12th Street and West 23rd Street.
City officials said they’re turning to eminent domain because they’ve been unable to cut “fairmarket” deals with the property owners.
But area business owners said they were stunned by the scheme, which includes using seized land to build new streets and parks that were outlined in a rezoning plan approved in 2009, under former Mayor Michael Bloomberg.
“It’s not nice to take people’s property. We live in America. We’re not communists here,” said one Boardwalk business owner.
The head of the neighborhood community board, meanwhile, told The Post he had no idea this was even being contemplated.
“This is the first I am hearing of it,” said Community Board 13 chair Butch Moran.
Reviving Coney Island is considered one of Bloomberg’s legacy projects, but he vowed never to use eminent domain to speed up the process — even when his plans were held up for years by heated negotiations with developer Joe Sitt, who owned the sevenacre spot that is now Luna Park. The city ultimately paid Sitt a staggering $95.6 million for the land.
The family of Kansas Fried Chicken tycoon Horace Bullard, who died in 2013, and longtime business partner Peter Sheffer own the old Thunderbolt property by West 15th Street and the Boardwalk.
Sheffer said the city has yet to speak to him about the plan.
A public hearing will be held Oct. 19 at Coney Island Hospital.
Additional reporting by Michael Gartland