Meet the New New Coney; Same as the Old New Coney

Joe Sitt and Thor Equities have listened to New Yorkers, who complained about his outsized vision of Coney Island's future, with its looming, out-of-scale condo towers, and come up with a new vision....with looming, out-of-scale hotel-and-time-share towers.

Look, New York: He listened!

WTF? What a shell game. If this plan isn't approved, will he come back with a new version where the towers are painted sky blue so we can't see them standing there?

"This is our way of showing the New York community that we’re responsive to what they want," Sitt told the Times. "Our design, in all its greatness, is a way of showing the world what Coney Island can be." In all its greatness.

Sitt wants three hotels in all, ranging from 25 to 32 stories (cute!), including more than 400 time-share units. His critics asked: And those time-shares are different from apartments how? One notes that plan has the same density as the old one.

The Times article was notable for the unusual level of un-Timesian sarcasm. Check out this section, in which Sitt sells the deal to the whole darn melting pot:

The hotels, Mr. Sitt said, would offer black residents not only jobs, but careers. The Russian immigrants, who enjoy a "quality of life and activity by the water," would flock to the hotels and nightclubs. Jewish and Italian-American residents would get the "quality retail, bookstores and entertainment venues” that they want. As for everyone else, “what’s better than having fabulous restaurants, catering halls, shows and concerts?"

"Tell me, what issue any one of these constituencies would have with our plan," he said. "We’re asking for motherhood, motherhood. Apple pie, Chevrolet and Coney Island."

Again, I must say: WTF? Has the man gone batty. Motherhood? Would anybody buy a vacuum cleaner from a man with a line like that?