By Ben Silverbush
CONEY ISLAND — Plans to construct two seven-story residential buildings alongside the Coney Island Boardwalk are in the works for a site at 3500-3622 Surf Ave. A project of developer Ocean Dreams LLC, with design by Scarano Architects, the site is partially occupied by a school bus depot. The 318,371-square-foot development will have a total of 313 market-rate housing units and 277 parking spaces.
“This project represents a resurgence in residential use in Coney Island,” said architect Robert Scarano Jr. “It’s really one of the first planned residential developments for the area.”
To be called Ocean Dreams, it requires a rezoning from its current R-5 to an R-6A designation, according to attorney Deirdre Carson of Greenberg Traurig, LLP. The City Planning Commission has decided that this rezoning will not have a significant negative environmental impact if specific conditions are met. The requested R-6A designation would occupy about the same amount of space as if it were R-6, but be shorter and wider.
According to Scarano, the buildings would rise to 170 feet, a height that’s “somewhat modest in scale” compared to the Mitchell-Lama projects built in Coney Island in the 1960s, such as Luna Park.
Prices are expected to range from $350,000 to $500,000. Over half of the dwellings would be two-bedroom, but some would be as small as studio apartments and others could be as large as four bedrooms.
By Dennis Holt
Brooklyn developer Joe Sitt said in September that he was willing to spend $1 billion to turn Coney Island into one third of what it used to be long ago, one third what it was more recently, and one third what it has never been.
Sitt has made a name for himself in Downtown Brooklyn — he is the co-chair of the Fulton Street Improvement Association and has acquired a big chunk of waterfront property in Red Hook. For some time now, he has been quietly buying up properties in Coney Island, too.
Sitt has spent about $100 million buying up parcels, and is probably the largest single private property owner in Coney Island. What he wants to do is build a Las Vegas-type colossus entertainment center, with bells and whistles, a 500-room, four-star hotel and residential. At one swoop, he would try to bring back the early days of Coney Island, when three large resort hotels dominated the place, and the more recent days of Disney World.
This is not just a far-fetched idea. Sitt and the city have been in discussions about this.
© Brooklyn Daily Eagle 2006
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