By Harold Egeln
Brooklyn Daily Eagle

CONEY ISLAND — The huge $64 million Coney Island Performing Arts Center amphitheater that has been hailed as a significant enhancement for the popular outdoor concerts at Asser Levy-Seaside Park and a major concert venue for Brooklyn is also being questioned as a waste of money and destroyer of the parkland.

This August, ground is scheduled to be broken at the 22-acre park, flanked by Surf and Sea Breeze avenues between Ocean Parkway and West Fifth Street. The new 87,200-square-foot concert hall will be 110 feet high with 5,000 seats, occupying about eight acres, with a 10-foot-high wall fronting Surf Avenue.

The current partially covered bandshell stage totals 66,000 square feet, covers 1.5 acres and has exposed removable seating.

Last February, Borough President Marty Markowitz, in his State of Brooklyn Address, announced the amphitheater plans. He remains optimistic about it being built as a park improvement. “The Coney Island Center will be a much-needed community resource, and will bring to Coney Island the kind of state-of-the-art performance facility Brooklyn deserves,� he said.

“The city’s first covered, outdoor performance space will make our borough a natural stop on the summer concert circuit for entertainers who now play Jones Beach, Westbury and the PNC Bank Arts Center in New Jersey,� he added.

Within the past few weeks, opposing views have surfaced from those who question the site, size and cost of the project, setting the stage for a controversial public discussion that may or may not impact on the project’s future.

When Markowitz was a state senator before winning his current post in 2002, he sponsored the park’s popular summer concert series. He has continued it as borough president, featuring classic and contemporary major singers and bands such as the B-52’s and Brian Wilson.

What sparked interest in the scale and scope of the project was a recent briefing at Borough Hall by the famed British-based Grimshaw Architects, designer for the Fulton Street Transportation Hub in lower Manhattan. The city’s Economic Development Corporation is working with the Parks Department on the project. Funds come from $54 million in the Borough President Office’s capital and $10 million from the Mayor’s Office secured by Councilman Domenic Recchia Jr. The original cost was $35 million.

Opposition Organizing Now

The first visible sign of opposition came in the form of flyers from the Save Seaside Park campaign, coordinated by NYC Park Advocates, a nonprofit open-space advocacy group. They say: “Don’t Waste $64 Million of Your Money on an Amphitheater!� and “It Will Destroy the Only Park in the Area!� It plans a town hall meeting soon to air public comment. The group calls the new amphitheater an “atrocity.�

“What — $64 million for this?� said environmental activist Ida Sanoff, who lives near the park and is a former Community Board 13 member. “Why put a commercial venue in the midst of a residential community, bringing traffic jams? Our libraries and school programs are being cut. It will take away parkland and bring more noise. We don’t need this expensive plastic potato chip here!�

Her last remark referred to the facility’s design with a sweeping clear concave roof over the stage and 5,000-seat area. “Use KeySpan Park’s baseball stadium space a few blocks from here, with its parking lot and concessions, which is in use for only about 35 days a year,� she said.

“We got a lot of calls clamoring for information about the project,� said President Geoffrey Croft of NYC Park Advocates. “They are attempting to build a commercial concert venue with a much smaller lawn area spread out in different locations, which will not accommodate the park’s current uses, no matter how hard they try to spin this.�

Community Board 13 is expected to take its position on the proposed amphitheater within the next two months.

Seaside Park dates to 1875. It was later named for Asser Levy, a trailblazing Jewish immigrant who fled with 23 other Jews from Brazil in 1654 to New Amsterdam, and was founder of America’s first Jewish congregation.

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