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The Coney Island peninsula, the only beachside amusement park location in the New York City metro area, attracts more than 5 million visitors every year, with many arriving in droves during the warmer months. Popular attractions include Luna Park amusements like the Cyclone roller coaster and Deno’s Wonder Wheel, the New York Aquarium, Maimonides Park—home to the Brooklyn Cyclones minor league baseball team—and Nathan’s Hot Dogs, which famously hosts an annual hot dog-eating competition on the Fourth of July. While four subway lines lead to the Coney Island-Stillwell Avenue station, the closest major thoroughfare for visitors who come by car is the Belt Parkway.
For one team of developers, the idea is to build a casino between the train station and the Coney Island Boardwalk. It’s all part of a $3.4 billion proposal to “reclaim Coney Island’s legacy,” as Joe Sitt, chairman of Thor Equities, a private equity real estate firm and lead developer of The Coney, said in a statement. The Coney Community Advisory Committee (CAC) is expected to vote on whether the casino project advances before the end of the month.
Casinos have long been presented as a quick-fix solution to structural issues facing economically disadvantaged communities. Casino developers argue they are magnets for job creation, tax revenue and tourism. In an interview with the Prospect, Jocelyn Poe, assistant professor at Cornell University’s Department of City and Regional Planning, observed how the “dynamics and structure of a casino, and the underlying social issues that it brings, disrupt that narrative.”
Thor Equities has floated a “Responsible Gambling” program to mitigate a problem it may very well create. But Poe questions whether the company has meaningfully engaged in planning that goes beyond treating the symptoms of casino development and instead seeks to improve residents’ standard of living in a community that has an unemployment rate of 17.2 percent.
“When we think about Coney Island outside of this project, we would have to consider the history of Coney Island. What were the past traumas that need to be reconciled? What were the tensions that were there before? What are the tensions that are there now?” Poe said. “It doesn't seem like the casino is coming in with this history in mind.” |
