If It Looks Like A Niketown, Sells Like A Niketown And Acts Like A Niketown, Then It Probably Is A Niketown

One of Coney Island’s own, who had once backed the ambitious master plan, has rescinded his support:

Dick Zigun, the so-called mayor of Coney Island plans to resign from the group charged with redeveloping the amusement mecca, the Daily News has learned.

Zigun said he would bow out of the 13-member Coney Island Development Corp. to protest a revised city development plan he charged could include a shopping mall near the center of the 47acre plan.

“This spring, without the CIDC ever having a discussion or ever taking a vote, the strategic plan that I had been a major cheerleader for was totally changed and compromised in a way that no amusement park lover could possibly be happy with,” said Zigun, founder of Coney Island USA, which runs a world-famous sideshow.

In a blistering attack, Zigun said that the revised city plan would also mean a significantly smaller amusement park if passed by the City Council next year.

The shopping mall, which would usher in retailers such as a Toys “R” Us with its looming Ferris wheel or an FAO Schwarz with its giant floor keyboard, is a concession to developer Thor Equities, Zigun and other critics contend.

“The CIDC plan promised a world-class tourist attraction with an entertainment core — lots of rides complemented by year-round nightclubs and enclosed water parks,” said Zigun in a letter to Mayor Bloomberg.

“Instead the core will now be rezoned for a shopping mall full of Niketowns, Toys ‘R’ Us and four 30-story hotels.”

. . .

CIDC President Lynn Kelly balked at Zigun’s complaints, insisting the role of CIDC members was to create a development plan for the area, not vote on its merits — a job that will be left up to the City Council.

Kelly defended the revised zoning plan and a shopping mall, but said the use of so-called entertainment retail across 15 acres of Coney Island was still being debated.

“We’re still writing the zoning text, but if there is going to be any type of entertainment retail, the driving force is the entertainment,” said Kelly, who used as an example a rock climbing wall at a Niketown store or a Sony electronics store that provides video game demonstrations.

“It’s really about the interactivity with the item,” Kelly added. “We’re carefully considering how you define entertainment retail because that’s really key.”

Mayor Absconds With 17 Square Miles Of City; Brooklyn Hit Hardest

It’s like a punch in the gut, like hearing that sweet 18 year-old you’ve been dating is actually more like 16:

For two decades, the city’s official directory, the Green Book, has stated definitively that the five boroughs encompass nearly 322 square miles of land.

Not so, Mr. Miller and his staff recently discovered: New York’s land area actually totals 304.8 square miles.

The shrinkage generally is not the result of rising sea levels from global warming or beach erosion or any other act of nature. It is largely the work of man, mainly Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, whose yen to precisely measure everything from poverty to traffic congestion led the planning department to recalculate the city’s land mass.

Acting on the mayor’s mandate, Mr. Miller and his team spent months analyzing thousands of digitized, high-resolution aerial photographs of the squiggling shoreline and other geographic features to calculate the city’s size anew.

“This is not a reflection of a change in the physical area, but a refinement of the measurement,” Mr. Miller said.

Seventeen square miles may not seem like much. But consider:

• 17 square miles could accommodate 13 more Central Parks, nearly a third of Washington, D.C., about three dozen versions of Vatican City and nearly two dozen replicas of Monaco.
• If 17 square miles were populated at Manhattan’s density, New York might be home to as many as 1.1 million more people.
• At the price of an acre in Midtown, as recently computed by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, 17 square miles could be worth $1 trillion.

Mother Rapers, Father Stabbers, Father Rapers, Gentrifiers!

The Vermontization of the Lower East Side:

The National Trust for Historic Preservation designated the Lower East Side of Manhattan as one of the 11 most endangered in places in America on Tuesday.

But for some people, the designation only makes explicit the obvious: that the wide swath of Manhattan well known for its immigrant communities and countercultural vibe has long ago given way to rampant real estate development and gentrification.

In a news conference at Seward Park High School, the National Trust warned that construction of new hotels and apartment towers threatened to efface the area’s immigrant past.

“The community, with little recourse for protection,” it said, “is reeling from the recent destruction of its cultural heritage, including the defacing of several historic structures and the loss of First Roumanian Synagogue. Slapdash and haphazard renovations have led to the destruction of architectural detail, while modern additions to historic buildings sharply contrast with the neighborhood’s scale and character.”

Nothing Can Stand In The Way Of The Mighty Airport Village

Losing an alcohol license didn’t kill Club Kalua, but eminent domain might:

The strip club Sean Bell visited the night he was killed in Jamaica could be demolished as part of a larger redevelopment plan for that area of Queens.

The Greater Jamaica Development Corp. is moving forward with plans to turn Jamaica into a transit-oriented development center and is assembling sites on which to build new hotel, “affordable” housing to lure some of the 35,000 employees who work at nearby John F. Kennedy International Airport, and additional parking.

The development corporation has already targeted a number of nightclubs for demolition, and sources with knowledge of the plans have suggested Club Kalua could be next on the chopping block.

The president of the development corporation, Carlisle Towery, said the area’s positioning as a nexus of the Long Island Rail Road, the AirTrain to JFK airport, three subway lines, and dozens of bus lines makes Jamaica an ideal place to build an airport village.

“It is highly accessible. A lot can get to it and a lot goes through it and we are tying to make it a destination, not just a transfer point,” he said.

Mr. Towery said there are no fixed plans to condemn Club Kalua, but he made his feelings about the establishment clear.

“It’s been a social blight for years,” he said. “What its future is, I don’t know. But it certainly doesn’t belong here.”

And Mayor Bloomberg kills two birds with one stone, eliminating the source of Sean Bell and solidifying his legacy in one fell swoop. Funny how that works out sometimes.

Real World: Canarsie

Do it, do it, do it, do it:

It seems that Brooklyn might not be ready for the “The Real World.”

The MTV reality series is heading to the borough for its 21st season, possibly starting production this summer for four months, says Jim Johnston, the executive producer of the show.

Johnston says the network is considering various areas that are Manhattan-accessible — Greenpoint, Williamsburg, Dumbo, Park Slope, Cobble Hill, Brooklyn Heights, Carroll Gardens, Red Hook and even Coney Island — but nothing is locked down.

“Just the sound of ‘The Real World: Brooklyn’ [has a ring to it],” Johnston says.