The Only Reason I've Ever Liked Developer Joe Sitt

That reason? Because he's the only person in the city powerfully positioned enough to screw up the Bloomberg administration's ruinous rethinking of Coney Island.

Despite widespread, and unrelenting criticism (including protests from documentary filmmaker Ric Burns and Pulitzer Prize-winning historians Edwin Burrows and Mike Wallace (“Gotham”)) of it's awful rezoning scheme for the treasured Brooklyn neighborhood (More towers! Less amusement!), the City has steamrolled forward in typically arrogant, Bush-style, the-public-be-damned style with its plan. Yesterday, the City Council's land-use committee approved the city's controversial rezoning, meaning it is likely on track for full Council approval on July 29 (because when lately has the Council stood up to Bloomberg?).

According to City Room, "City officials and Councilman Domenic M. Recchia Jr. also hinted that the city may expand the amount of land dedicated to amusements between Surf Avenue and the boardwalk, as many critics have sought. But that will only happen if the Bloomberg administration comes to terms with the developer Joe Sitt before the full council votes on the redevelopment plan on July 29."

That's a big "but." Sitt, long a thorn in the side of both the public and Bloomberg, say thanks, but no thanks, to the City’s offer to buy his property for $105 million. He wants more dough than that.

Sitt's bad for New York. But Bloomberg's worse. And, unbelievably, in this dog fight, I'm rooting for Sitt. No one, not even that prevaricating skunk, shouldn't be threatened with having his land taken away via Eminent Domain, as the Bloomberg goons have done. Perhaps if he stands his ground long enough (and it's hard to make a mega-developer budge when it comes to money), he's scuttle the City's Coney plan, or at least force them to revise it. I mean, who the hell proposed erecting a high-rise hotel in front of the historic Wonder Wheel and thinks it's a good idea? The kind of person that should be stopped, that's who.

(Nice picture, above, via Amusing the Zillion.)

Some Stuff That's Interesting

EV Grieve takes a look-see at the Holland Bar situation. [EV Grieve]

Some more typical anti-New York behavior from Bloomberg's City Hall. [NY Post]

More Coney Island soap opera grist, with developer Joe Sitt maybe going down to defeat, finally, but (of course) making a profit in the process. [NY Post via Curbed]

A handy City Council political corruption guide. [Queens Crap]

People from City Island call the proposed new City Island Bridge a "monstrosity." They're right. [NY Times]

A new location for A&S Pork Shop. [Gowanus Lounge]

The Prison Ship Martyrs Monument in Fort Greene Park is rededicated and relit. [Brownstoner]

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.

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?