The Eminent Domain

It’s sold out, but see if you can sneak in: Tonight the Municipal Art Society is hosting “Coney Island at the Crossroads,” a panel discussion on the fate of one of New York City’s great public spaces.

Like many New Yorkers, I’m mourning the demise of Astroland, the heart of Coney Island’s gloriously cacophonous amusement area. And like other commentators, such as the Village Voice’s diligent Neil deMause, I’ve been wondering why the loss of Astroland sparked such a tepid reaction? Where’s the New York moxie? The outrage?

Well, one reason, of course, is that Deno’s Wonder Wheel park next door remains open, featuring similar attractions and the all-important Coney Island energy.  Though they won’t admit it outside the anonymous forums of the Daily News website, a lot of post-Giuliani New Yorkers also fear and loathe a public space where teenagers who live in housing projects dance on the streets late into the night.

But I think there’s also another reason for the mournful silence around Astroland’s dismantling — an attack of cognitive dissonance about what government’s role ought to be in city planning. For several years, many New Yorkers who care about the shape of the city’s future have been fighting massive development projects by standing up for the small property owners who are being pushed aside. From Manhattanville to Atlantic Yards, grassroots groups seeking the preservation of beloved neighborhoods have coalesced around the absolute support of property rights, in the face of government’s power of eminent domain.

But in Coney Island, preservationists faced the exact opposite problem. The owner of Astroland, Joseph Sitt, has done exactly what property owners are supposed to do — exercise their rights, within the zoning and other codes, to do what they want with their property. City planners and economic development officials are now twisting themselves like contortionists at the Coney Island Sideshow to accommodate Sitt’s dreams of condos by the ever-encroaching sea while carving out some space for the rest of us. And while a few hardworking activists are demanding more aggressive action, it’s hard to ask the mayor for a heavy hand by the sea after years of decrying incursions by the City to advance big projects. New Yorkers have to demand, loudly, that the Bloomberg administration — this time — push a lot harder.

On Monday night, mermaids and freaks ranked among the demonstrators urging the Department of City Planning to preserve Coney Island more or less the way it is. But while tattooed performers and the Rev. Billy got plenty of attention, they were part of a much broader spectrum of views voiced at Lincoln High School about the fate of New York’s ocean playground.

Monday’s event was a hearing on the city’s draft Scope for rezoning 27 acres of Coney Island as historically preserved public land. Department of Planning Brooklyn Director Purnima Kapur addressed the audience last night, elaborating on the city’s initiatives as they have changed since the last scoping hearing, in February; mainly, the expansion to 27-acres of amusement area, up from 9, and the movement of indoor amusements toward the southeast extending from Steeplechase Plaza.

If City Planning gets its way, developer Thor Equities, which owns much of the land, will have to scale back its plans to build condo towers on the site. Yet the city proposal still retains much of Thor’s vision, including “indoor amenities,” like big-name retail, and adding 2,700 new housing units, on what Kapur calls “vacant and sparsely utilized” land.

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