Sitt's Coney Island "Dead in the Water"?

It could be the beginning of the end for Joe Sitt's Vegas-tastic vision of Coney Island or could just be some City Hall yahoo shooting his mouth off. Either way, The Daily News yesterday reported that "a city ranking city official" called Sitt's Coney resort-condotower-hotel-shiny-shit conception for a New Coney "dead in the water."

That article stated:

Officials are steaming over the developer's plan for 350 time-shares at the envisioned hotels. The developer came up with the time-share scheme after it vowed to cut a luxury residential component from the blueprint.

Thor's push for $100 million in city subsidies - and fears that the developer might just turn around and sell the property once the zoning is changed - also irked City Hall. "It was clearly designed merely to try to get a lucrative zoning change and massive city funding without genuine regard to Coney Island's future," the city official said. "It's atrocious."

The official said Thor must toss its current plan and come up with a more acceptable plan before the city will even meet with the developer. "Thor's proposal is dead in the water," the official said.

Gowanus Lounge thinks the official is either New York City Economic Development Corp. director Robert Lieber or Deputy Mayor Dan Doctoroff himself.

Or course, this won't make Sitt give up the fight, any more than the world's opposition to the demolition of The Wall Street Journal made Rupert Murdoch shrink away. Moneymen want what they want. Their hearts won't be swayed. They're the idealists, you see. We're all a bunch of cynics.