What happens next at the Shore Theater?

Eye on Real Estate

May 11, 2016 By Lore Croghan Brooklyn Daily Eagle

This is Coney Island's Shore Theater, which has a new owner. Eagle photos by Lore Croghan

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When will prep work start on the adaptive reuse of Coney Island’s Shore Theater?

Stay tuned.

We recently asked for an interview with Pyotr Yadgarov, who is identified in city Finance Department records as a member of Shore Tower Group LLC, which bought the long-vacant theater building. When we phoned his office, we were told he would get back to us — in the future.

As of yet, there are no city Buildings Department filings by Yadgarov or his colleagues at his company Pye Properties about the Shore Theater.

This past January, reps for Pye Properties told the Coney Island Blog and the Bensonhurst Bean that the property will be renovated and used as an entertainment venue.

Kudos to these publications for reporting on the sale of the individual city landmark at 1301 Surf Ave. before the deed appeared in Finance Department records.

The deed was recorded in late January. The sale had closed on Dec. 29, 2015.

By the way, according to Finance Department records, the purchase price was $14 million.

Jasmine Bullard signed the deed for the seller, Kansas Fried Chicken Inc.

She is the daughter of the late Horace Bullard, a Harlem-born real estate investor who purchased numerous Coney Island properties in the 1970s and 1980s. Horace Bullard had wanted to turn the Shore Theater into a hotel and casino.

The neo-Renaissance Revival-style movie house was built in 1925 and leased to Loew’s. The theater chain operated numerous picture palaces in New York City in the 1920s.

Superstorm Sandy destroyed an eye-catching vertical red-and-yellow sign on the corner of the building that spelled out the word “SHORE.”

The building, designated as a city landmark in 2010, is one of a handful of Coney Island structures to be granted that protected status.

More info about the purchaser

Online records offer interesting info about Yadgarov:

* On at least one other occasion, Yadgarov has had business dealings with Kansas Fried Chicken.

Yadgarov signed a mortgage on Dec. 29, 2015 for vacant land at 805-825 Surf Ave., Finance Department records show. The lender was Kansas Fried Chicken. The site is in Coney Island, a few blocks from the Shore Theater. That was the same day he closed on the Shore Theater purchase.

Earlier in 2015, an LLC with Yadgarov as managing member had paid $3.5 million for 805-825 Surf Ave., Finance Department records indicate.

* Years before Yadgarov’s purchase of the Shore Theater, he had wanted to build an entertainment venue at another Coney Island location.

As a member of Citi Development Enterprises LLC, he offered to purchase property at 809-873 Neptune Ave. from the Brooklyn Union Gas Company, according to an affidavit he filed with the state Public Service Commission in 2012.

A 2010 letter from a marketing executive that accompanies that affidavit says Citi Development Enterprises LLC hoped to build “an international family entertainment and recreation destination” on that site.

But the property was not sold to the developer.