This is amazing, sucks for small biz but if the wealthier flock and traffic increases then the rent hikes won't damage their business. Places like Ruby’s Bar & Grill should go anyways, most of these existing business serve terrible food/cocktails and don't deserve to remain in the new gentrified CI. We should support awesome spots like the CI brewery and quality mom and pops shops.
This is business, and CI is sitting on prime real estate next to the ocean. Time to take back this lovely gem and make it amazing. In 5 years this place won't be recognizable based on the already in progress developments in the area.
4
An entire article without even mentioning what is the rent per se. If it is a 200 percent increase from $300 per month to $900. If it is a 400 percent increase from $1000 to $4000. No context, no quantification leaves the reader under informed.
41
Empty storefronts correlate inversely to package delivery trucks. There are even more empty store fronts in the tri-state suburbs because people use cars. They don’t walk to work or school so they don’t even pass by the empty storefronts on foot. The equation for suburbs is: order with a click from your spacious home or get in car, drive, park, walk into store, return home. Families with two working spouses and children don’t want to be bothered to go out for shopping.
2
Restaurants, etc. don’t compete with online shopping.
4
Coney Island, Baby: Ah, but remember that the city is a funny place / Something like a circus or a sewer
7
Once again NYT uses gentrification as a curse word, so often they are trying to divide people instead of unite them
9
the city should ensure the charachter of coney island stays because if it does'nt the place will die.It's too far away from manhattan to be a playground for the rich.
11
Year round? Here on Cape Cod the seasons ,well, seasonal. No amount of legislation can change that.....
15
As an ex nyc resident, this should be the clarion call not to elect people like Mayor Wilhelm (socialists) or billionaires (Bloomberg) who believe they know better than regular people.
We have a good thing with Trump, don’t mess it up.
3
@stan
Trump and father Fred are remembered for racially discriminatory housing policies in Coney Island, which got them sued in the '70s. Fred also had Steeplechase Park demolished when NYers were trying to have it saved. Neither Trump were a "good thing," just self-serving.
56
@stan... trump was a con from the day he was born. minimal research will show you that.
38
How many storefronts are already empty in NYC?
How many businesses have closed after having rents increased by huge amounts?
Meanwhile those storefronts sit empty.
There are only so many tenants willing and able to pay the rents being requested by some landlords. Is it better for NYC - and those landlords - to have stores sit empty instead of housing functioning long time businesses?
25
New York is a very big and expensive place to live. Putting a “wealth tax” on rich folks should free up lots of real estate when the folks with wealth pack their bags for Texas or Florida.
3
@Paul they always say that and yet they never leave
16
@Paul : Either the get the money from the wealthy that stay or the free up much-needed housing units when those wealthy leave.
A win either way.
And keep in mind, when high-end housing frees up (and falls in price a bit due to sinking demand), it creates a situation where people can float a little *up* the housing quality ladder. Meaning more housing available at the lower end, and people ending up in slightly nicer places.
7
Your right, it’s usually not the ultra rich but rather the upper middle class and modestly wealthy that always get squeezed the most.
They are the ones that will leave first.
5
won't this all be underwater in 50-100 years?
13
The legacy of Michael Bloomberg, followed by Bill DeBlasio.
Everything for the rich.
12
See: Venice Beach c. 1990.
9
NYC is constantly changing: nothing stops it. Coney Island in the early 90s was a strange seedy hoot: not anymore. Everyone knows that.
6
Maybe we should make Coney Island a national monument, or a national historic landmark. It certainly qualifies.
8
There's very little left to landmark -- the parachute jump and Cyclone, of course; Deno's, one hopes; Nathan's. I'd keep Surf Avenue with its current low buildings, but the stores and arcades a I knew even as a young adult are gone.
Once Fred Trump destroyed Steeplechase and the projects went up, things changed.
Today, it's better than the 1970s through the 1990s, but on any summer evening the musical cacophony from loudspeakers and amplified live bands is ear-splitting. Because of violence, cops have to hang out on the boardwalk. When I take my walks, most of the time I start at Brighton and stop at the aquarium. The noise any farther down clashes with the sound of the surf. And now marijuana stenches, masking the salt air. I still stroll as far as Sea Gate, but unless I go before the crowds, I find it unpleasant.
Coney was better in the 1950s. And it'll never become a playground for the rich.
15
I suppose I never got to experience Coney Island in its heyday. Nowadays, it's just some filthy and tacky example of urban decay and dying NYC Americana. But nothing could possibly destroy it more than a bunch of wealthy hipsters who feel "more diverse" and less "white privileged" because they moved to Brooklyn. The fact they have gentrified near NYCHA houses is like a cultural badge of honor a la rich white kids who cornrow their hair, wear gold teeth and listen to hip hop. Gentrification will only make a cliche of an already dead bygone era of a time in which NYC had certain elements of real world interest. And whereas NYC holds a lot of memories in the hearts and minds of the people, she is for sale to the highest bidder. Developers the world over have designs on your sacred cultural NYC monuments. Thanks a lot Mayor Bloomberg! RIP NYC.
23
Why should the developer brought in to save Coney Island be allowed to destroy it.
I guess Sephora, H&M, and all the rest will be moving in shortly.
22
I visited Coney Island first on a break in college about 40 years ago. Back in the Midwest, I realized I had lost my wallet somewhere. About a week later, it arrived in an envelope from the Parks Dept, all cash and cards intact. I returned many years later and saw the packed boardwalk and a Brooklyn Cyclones baseball game. Ms. Carlin's Lola Star shop can be supported at their online store. My granddaughter is getting a onesie.
16
Dianna Carlin is the kind of fierce advocate every town needs. I believe it was she who opened a roller rink for one summer in the old Childs Restaurant. That is the building in "Two Weeks Notice" that filled in for the endangered community center. I hope NYC officials come to their senses and pressure the landlord into being fair. Best wishes to all who love and enjoy Coney Island.
17
Look to Asbury Park NJ for the answer...the ocean and sky are being blocked by big tall hotels and condos etc. It's awful. Why does gentrification have to include tall buildings casting shade and blocking the sky?
40
Too much money at the top. All the best properties are going to those who don't need money but wants great returns. Local peeps who made these places wanted fun, so gravitated to cheaper locales...alas, brought about their own gentrification.
12
@Watah Same happens out in California; The parents die and the kids inherit , then they hear that they could be getting lots more money for the same property, shazam, giant rent increases follow. Shops , workspaces , homes, It happens to them all. Greed is now king, long live the king.
11
Of course it's going to gentrify as soooo many other parts of the city have, and there will be banks, a Trader Joe's, Target, and other corporate businesses. If and when the cit decides to apply rent control to businesses, it will be too late for many mom and pop stores.
6
The denizens of Coney Island’s low-income high rises, and there are many, would probably appreciate a Target. I think the closest one is farther along on the Belt Parkway, near Fountain Avenue. The residents of Flatbush welcomed Target at the Junction, near Brooklyn College.
One person’s corporate villain is another person’s convenient, inexpensive shopping venue.
13
@Lisal Makes me sick.
The problem with Coney Island in gentrification terms is: It is FAR from the city. It is not Williamsburg or Harlem or LIC with twenty minute proximity to the paying jobs for college educated folks. It is the boondocks. It was the Catskills for the great unwashed a century ago. A long train ride for a summer day trip. Beach, boardwalk, bizarreness. Today, the neighborhoods in southern Brooklyn are immigrant and black working class. The subway takes an hour or more to reach certain parts of mid-town Manhattan. However, the value of transforming spaces for the actual dwellers nearby does hasten some turnover.
4
If you walk along Broadway on the Upper West Side now, every block has a vacant store, if not more than one. The rapacious landlords, claim their tax deductions, and toss out long term tenants with 400% rent increases like they're doing to Ms Carlin.
the city residents lose, while the landlords keep reaping profits on empty space. Where is our mayor in all of this? The real estate industry greed has destroyed our city. Coney Island a vestige is next.
33
@Bocheball i walked around the West Village today. Same siruation. The reason people have been drawn to Coney Island is partly for the individuality and eccentricity of some of the businesses . Corporate businesses, or perhaps, people laundering money will be the only ones who can afford the rents. These are mostly seasonal businesses ,flanked by low income housing projects.
29
This article saddens me. I am the proud owner of at least half a dozen or more Lola Star T-Shirts, my first bought probably 15 years ago. I have made a yearly tradition of visiting Coney Island on the first day of summer vacation. We visit the Aquarium and then hit the Boardwalk to head to Lola Star where I buy each daughter (and myself) T-Shirts with her the latest designs. A 400 percent increase in rent is unconscionable and is reflective of corporate greed. The city is rapidly losing it’s soul and character. I would mourn the loss of Lola Star profoundly. And I know two little girls who would be greatly upset by it’s closing. I hope she wins this fight both for our sakes and for the future of Coney Island.
49
Commercial rent control is needed, especially in a place with an identifiable vibe and history.
39
@Paul Why? So we can preserve inadequate retail formats that no longer serve the times or the community? It's trite but true, the only thing that's constant in NYC is change.
8
For the people who are bothered by this as I am, we have to call city hall and DEMAND Bill de Blasio’s administration step in to help the shop tenants. There is power in numbers! This is unacceptable.
As reader, thank you to the NYT for telling their story. We need more stories like this, or else people like Zamperla would keep getting away with this. The public shaming should be the start.
25
I remember my mother telling me in the '60's never to mention my family's ownership of properties on Coney Island. Presumably, that was because Coney Island had gone into a great decline since the days of Henderson's Music Hall, Henderson's Hotel, one of the roller coasters (which mysteriously was destroyed by fire), etc. Yet "Henderson" was still an intersection right off the subway as of a few years ago.
I remember a cousin leading the effort to prevent the destruction of Henderson's--which had fallen into disrepair since our fathers sold their interest in Henderson properties in the 1970's. We were mere "westerners" with no clout in 2000-whatever. (I did have an e-friend with a son of Harpo Marx who was trying to prevent the tear-down of the original Marx Brothers house at the same time; Harpo had made his debut as a Marx Brother at Henderson's).
Henderson's was torn down and turned into an utterly ugly, nondescript building near the entrance to Coney Island from some subway station.
It is sad to see that good merchants who have hung in with Coney Island's rebirth are being driven out by, huh, developers who promise and want to "gentrify." (Fred Trump Sr., anyone?)
As someone in the now-maligned SF Bay area who has witnessed gentrification" right and left, I am saddened by this (possible) "development"
41
This is not capitalism at work.
It is feudalism.
The wealthy come in buy or steal property then evict tenants by increasing the rents to in affordable rates.
The landed gentry did it to serf farmers in feudal times and the wealthy of NYC are doing it to small business owners and residents.
It goes on and on in different guises at different points in time.
We are currently in the cusp of such a time when the majority of the citizenry will all be serfs once again.
So when I hear that the Bloombergs of the world are terrified of a Warren presidency I am affirmed that a Warren Presidency is exactly what the working people of this country need in a visionary leader to restore some measure of socio economic equality.
It’s time for a progressive movement the likes of which has never been seen before.
73
@PP I am quite sure that Bloomberg decided to run for president when Elizabeth Warren started to talk seriously about a wealth tax. He is out to save his billions and the billions belonging to his friends. Greedy little Bill Gates said that if Warren is the Democratic candidate he will vote for Trump. I gag every time I see one of Bloomberg's commercials.
10
It's such a shame how this is happening all over the city. DeBlasio should step down.
28
Shameful how greedy landlords can upend a hard-working shop owner who has contributed to the fabric of Coney Island by increasing her rent by 400%. It's bad enough that music is now blasted out of humongous speakers, destroying the solitude and fun sounds of a day at the beach (who's idea was that??), but now chasing away the things that make Coney Island Coney Island is just one more example of how de Blasio is ruining the character of NY. I can hardly walk by Central Park South without grieving the loss of our horse carriages, now replaced with those idiotic, outrageously priced bicycles, powered by enslaved humans. Leave this one area of old NY alone.
25
Shop owners blast that music outdoors, including on the Coney Island boardwalk, because they think it makes shoppers and passers-by happy and peppy. Come to the Church Avenue area of Flatbush Avenue and take a listen. I think it's foul.
Coney Island hasn't been Coney Island in 50 years.
10
Earth to City Hall:
I don't care what you put there, the wealthy are not going to start flocking to Coney Island.
79
@Charlie
You're missing the point. Which is, that the landlords are destroying the character of Coney Island, so they can reap massive profits when it's 'redeveloped'. Doesn't matter who flocks there.
14
@Charlie That's what they said about the Lower East side and Williamsburg Brooklyn.
6
The rich to Earth AND City Hall:
Oh honeys, you thought this was about bringing PEOPLE there? We'll make money hand over fist just from all the slick Instagram and YouTube marketing as our lichen follower counts (and ad payouts) soar. Besides, REAL big buyers don't occupy buildings anymore—the Chinese buy your flats, keep them empty, and flip! *evil laugh*
5
One wave of privileged white gentrifiers complaining about subsequent waves of privileged white gentrifiers...sweet.
"The fertile urban terroir of cultural creation is being destroyed by the conspicuous displays of wealth and power typical of private developers and public officials who build for the rich [and claim that] benefits will trickle down to the poor, by the promotions of the media who translate neighborhood identity into a brand, and by the tastes of new urban middle-classes WHO ARE INITIALLY ATTRACTED TO THIS IDENTITY BUT ULTIMATELY DESTROY IT. These forces of redevelopment have smoothed the uneven layers of grit and glamour, [and] swept away traces of contentious history."
5
@SD
She sells inexpensive T-Shirts and beach towels in a funky tiny shop that very much pays homage to the rich history of Coney Island. Far from the privileged white gentrifier you assume she is.
13
Here we go again. Looking to turn a perfectly fine Coney Island into a bland bit of blandness
48
The city must step in and help negotiate a more reasonable solution. Homogenizing yet another wonderful, historic, and unique area of this great city, which no doubt is what will happen should the local businesses be forced to shutter, diminishes the soul of what those of us who still live here live FOR, and those that come to visit adore experiencing.
23
It's not just Coney Island, every small business in the city trembles at the thought of this kind of rent increase whenever the lease is up for renewal. Landlords in NYC and elsewhere have created a quasi-feudalist society, with rapacious landlords swooping in at every chance to gouge tenants, demanding ever higher percentages of their income and offering little to nothing in return.
58
Another Disneyfication of Times Square or another Xanadu?
23
@Chef Dave
Exactly! Just like Vegas.
5
To me, Coney Island died when they tore down the batting cages (2002?).
I was born too late to enjoy Coney when it was still “nice” in the 60s, but I was able to enjoy it when it was cheerily weird and seedy in the 1980s-2000 but still not exceedingly dangerous. The fun of it was that it was unlike the rest of the city. Why would anyone go there if it’s just like everywhere else?
50
It really disappeared when they tire down Steeplechase in the 1960s. Riding the steeplechase -- a kind of hilly, oval, open-air merry-go-round -- was a thrill.
We still have the little kitty park, though, where you can still ride the little clanking boats or fly little elephants and planes -- the very same rides I rode on over 60 years ago.
15
"Tore" down Steeplechase, that is.
2
Coney Island died in the 60s. It's been a zombie ever since. Even today its pretty grim.
25
"Over a decade ago, New York City promised a year-round destination with a water park, an arena, an ice-skating rink, and millions of dollars in residential and commercial investment.
At the same time, then-Mayor Michael Bloomberg said, the cheap eats and mom-and-pop shops would be protected. The then-Brooklyn borough president, Marty Markowitz, said in 2005 that the plan would preserve “Coney’s famed freakishness and fun-loving spirit.”
That's the crux, no further reading req'd. What was promised was promised to a select few, by an elect few - the rest of everybody else's opinions need not matter.
21
@TomR I loved Marty Markowitz. He helped make Coney greater by promoting free concerts for much of the summer. I saw Aretha, Lynyrd Skynyrd and Blondie for starters. He'd always make you pay for the show though by spending 45 minutes thanking everyone he ever met. But it was still hella fun!
7
And don’t forget Liza Minelli, who put on shows there, costume changes and all, as though she were at Carnegie Hall.
5
Most of the fun of going to Coney Island was that you
did things there you could not do in the rest of New York
and you ate foods, too much of, that you could rarely get
outside of Coney Island and you visited shops that had
all sorts of oddities.
Sounds like Zamprerla just wants to move in the typical
National Chain stores and restaurants.
Why ruin the lives of the small shop owners and gentrify
Coney Island, for once it is gone, it will never come back.
126
Mr. Siegel is right, if the city and Mayor DeBlasio truly cares about preserving the authentic charm of Coney Island and these beloved longstanding businesses, it would intervene and let them stay — after all, Zamperla is supposed to work on the city's behalf, make them do so or find new management. Mom & Pop businesses are a huge part of the boardwalk's draw, as much as the Cyclone, Deno's Wonder Wheel Park, Steeplechase Pier and the beach — it wouldn't be Coney Island without them. Stop steamrolling all of NYC's local character. Let them stay, without ridiculous exorbitant rent increases, meant to drive them out.
65
Exactly what sort of businesses does Zamperla envision taking the place on the boardwalk at these proposed rents? Is somebody going to shlep out to Coney Island so they can enjoy the ambiance of a Starbucks, CVS, or TD Bank? Bloomberg started this dismantling of our city's charm and faux-gressive de Blasio, the stooge of REBNY, has continued the process.
87
@stan continople There already is a Starbucks with a Drive-Thru on Surf Avenue near the New York Aquarium.
3
Alas, Stuyvesant Town and LICH proved that de Blasio is on the big-developer take. His bizarre presidential campaign, presumably a favor to said developers (and the treasonous marketing sites), didn't make his hands look any cleaner.
Coney Island—and NYCHA—can expect a bleak future.
6
And when all this collapses - these ravenous landlords will be weeping and wailing to have their old tenants back.
28
won’t happen. unregulated capitalism always wins.
21
@Plennie Wingp
Nah. They'll just collect tax breaks on the empty storefronts...which they drove to emptiness. It's already happened all over the city.
8
Plenty of high-rise, low-income housing in Coney Island. Ever go to the boardwalk in the summer? Very different from when I was a kid in the 1950s, and my dad had an uncle who manned a candy store in the subway arcade area.
I wouldn't worry about the place being gentrified.
23
(That said, such a large increase in commercial rents will result, as always, in empty stores. As it is, though, the stores that are there don't serve the community all that well anyway.)
6
@B. Pretty funny, too that the first time I heard gunfire and smelled gunpowder was in the Coney Island shooting galleries where you fired real bullets at the ducks! (Not to mention being dropped from the sky under a real parachute, or horses jumping into the ocean at the Steel Pier- what a crazy place!)
14
Something important seems to be continually *lost* in conversations about "gentrification".
There are a couple of real drivers of the problem:
1. A housing shortage, which forces everyone to *down* the proverbial ladder in search of housing.
2. An exacerbation of the housing shortage, driven by extreme wealth inequality (where there's a class of people who own *multiple* homes) and the phenomenon of affluent foreign investors buying up housing stock.
3. An exacerbation of the housing shortage because of the skyrocketing cost of building materials -- and increase that is, in part, driven by the climate crisis. All those people whose homes were destroyed by floods, hurricanes, and wildfires need to rebuild, after all.
4. An exacerbation of the housing shortage due to the shortage of skilled labor to build houses. With so much emphasis on getting a college degree, parents and young adults alike seem to forget that there is real money to be made in the trades (carpentry, electrical work, plumbing, etc.).
Want to deal with "gentrification"? Tackle wealth inequality (starting with both a wealth tax and a tax on second homes), encourage young adults to pursue training in the skilled building trades, and start taking the climate crisis seriously (including *not* allowing rebuilding of homes in the path of destruction).
54
I think you need to acknowledge that, as this article blatantly spells out, public policy is behind much of what is happening today. Policy in conjunction with control over zoning regulation. In retrospect, rezonings will be seen in the same light as redlining.
34
@Rose
I'd add
5. An exacerbation of the housing shortage due to rules designed to limit development. Often couched as protecting the "quirky nature" of a given place, these rules simple prevent added commercial and residential space from being added, driving up prices.
6. Rent control, which creates a disincentive to invest in housing for poor and working class people. Why build apartments to rent to people when the ability to pay the mortgage--the rent--could be cut to the bone.
13
@J c - "Rent control, which creates a disincentive to invest in housing for poor and working class people."
While without rent control the rents would be such that poor and working class people couldn't afford them anyway? I'm not being pro or con on rent control in nyc, i am trying to understand that part of your comment.
10
how can the Warriors afford to live there now?
59
@Chet, and will the Warriors be able to come out and Play Yay!!
10
@chet
They don;t
They just come out to play ay ...
6
@chet
Come out to play-eee-aaaaayy!
7