Unable To Negotiate "Fair Market" Deals For Land With Some Coney Island Property Owners, NYC Decides To Invoke Eminent Domain To Simply Wrestle It Away From Them For New Amusement Park; Area Business Owners Left Stunned By Scheme

In the Coney Island section of Brooklyn, the New York Post reports:

• Frustrated by stubborn Coney Island landowners, the de Blasio administration plans to seize property under the city’s rarely used power of eminent domain in order to spur long-stalled economic development in the People’s Playground, The Post has learned.
  
  The Parks Department plans to create new amusements and other amenities by grabbing up three vacant beachfront sites through condemnation proceedings — including a 60,000-square-foot tract that once housed the original Thunderbolt roller coaster immortalized in Woody Allen’s 1977 film “Annie Hall,” officials said.
  
  It’s unclear what type of attractions the city wants to bring to these sites, which together total 75,000 square feet and also include smaller tracts off the Boardwalk on West 12th Street and on West 23rd Street.
  
  City officials said they’re turning to eminent domain because they’ve been unable to cut “fair-market” deals with the property owners after exhaustive efforts.
  
  But area business owners said they were stunned by the scheme, which includes using seized land to build new streets and parks that were outlined in a rezoning plan approved in 2009, under former Mayor Michael Bloomberg.
  
  “It’s not nice to take people’s property. We live in America. We’re not communists here,” said one Boardwalk business owner.
  
  The head of the neighborhood community board, meanwhile, told The Post he had no idea this was even being contemplated.
  
  “This is the first I am hearing of it,” said Community Board 13 Chairman Butch Moran.
  
  Reviving Coney Island is considered one of Bloomberg’s legacy projects, but he vowed never to use eminent domain to speed the process up — even when his plans were held up for years by heated real-estate negotiations with local developer Joe Sitt.
  
  The city ultimately only moved forward with building Luna Park and other new attractions after it agreed in November 2009 to shell out a staggering $95.6 million to Sitt for nearly seven acres of prime amusement-district property.
  
  The original Thunderbolt, which opened in 1925, stopped operating in 1982. A sleeker, looping new version of the ride opened last year on a narrow acre of city-owned land, which is part of a much larger site that once housed the original wooden coaster of the same name and other amusements.
  
  The family of Kansas Fried Chicken tycoon Horace Bullard, who died in 2013, and longtime business partner Peter Sheffer own the rest of the old Thunderbolt property by West 15th Street and the Boardwalk.
  
  Sheffer said the city has yet to speak to him about the condemnation plan. He said city officials have made “multiple offers” for the site — and that all overtures were “unacceptable.”
  
  Bullard and Sheffer’s property eyed for condemnation is zoned for indoor and outdoor amusements, restaurants and other amenities.
  
  The Thunderbolt site also includes a 12,500-square-foot parcel on Surf Avenue that is zoned for building future hotels, but that portion is not targeted for eminent domain.
  
  A public hearing will be held Oct. 19 at Coney Island Hospital to solicit community input on the condemnation plan. It will start 1:30 pm.
  
  The original Thunderbolt was built atop a 19th-century home, originally known as the Kensington Hotel. In “Annie Hall,” the house under the coaster — occupied until the mid 1980s — was the childhood home of lead character Alvy Singer.
  
  Despite calls for the Thunderbolt to be landmarked, it was razed without Bullard’s consent in 2000 on orders from then-Mayor Rudy Giuliani, who saw it as an eyesore for fans of a new ballpark for the Mets’ minor-league Brooklyn Cyclones, whose stadium opened in 2001.

Source: City to seize and rebuild Coney Island property through eminent domain.