The City of New York has formally announced plans to purchase property to expand the amusement area at Coney Island.

Mayor Michael Bloomberg (I) announced that the City signed a contract with Thor Equities, the company at the center of a controversial plan to redevelop the area, to purchase 6.9 acres valued at $95.6 million.

City Council approved a zoning plan in July that would expand the amusement area to 12.5 acres within a new 27 acre amusement and entertainment district.  Thor Equities had proposed a major mixed-use development which would inlcude retail options and up to 5,000 new housing units.

Bloomberg claims that the proposal would generate $14 billion in economic activity for the City over the next 30 years and that 25,000 construction jobs and 6,000 permanent jobs would also be created as a result of the project.

“Coney Island’s amusement park will be owned by the public, and its future will be in the hands of New Yorkers who have cherished it for generations,” Bloomberg said at a press conference yesterday.  ”What’s more, today’s announcement means that we can move full-steam ahead with our plan to revitalize Coney Island – not only as America’s greatest seaside amusement park – but also as a vibrant community with thousands of new apartments and jobs.”

The New York City Economic Development Corporation released a request for proposal to potnential developers today.  The RFP states that bidders must include an operating plan for – at a minimum – the amusement park at the Astroland site at Surf Avenue between West 8th and West 10th Streets for next summer as well as an “enhanced visitor experience in keeping with Coney Island’s tradition of public access.”

The NYCEDC is also seeing proposals for two parcels of land bounded by Surf Avenue, West 15th Street, West 12th Street, and the Boardwalk.

VIDEO: Mayor Bloomberg’s press conference on Coney Island deal

CONEY ISLAND – After nearly four years of delays, a proposal to remake one of the city’s most recognizable outer borough attractions appears to be on track again.

New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg (I) announced plans yesterday to spend $96 million in city funds to expand the iconic amusement park through the purchase of seven acres of a nearby property.

The current owner of the park, Thor Equities, had propsed a massive Las Vegas style hotel/entertainment complex for Coney Island as early as 2005.  A 2005 article in New York magazine describes the project as follows:

The plan includes megaplexes. An indoor water park. A 500-room, four-star hotel—four stars, in Coney Island!—and, at the center of it all, an enormous, psychedelic carousel laced with visual cues to a Coney Island that Timothy Leary could have dreamed up. Equally spectacular, Sitt hopes, will be a blimp that will take off from the complex’s roof, carrying tourists on joyrides over the city as it flashes the resort’s name in giant technicolor letters: THE BOARDWALK AT CONEY ISLAND.

City officials, however, raised objections to the project in 2007, after Thor Equities had sought nearly $100 million in city funding while failing to live up to some of it’s promises, according to this post from the Gothamist blog.

The Astroland amusement park, long a part of the island’s history, was closed last year after the owner and Thor failed to reach an agreement regarding a lease.  The park reopened as Dreamland this past summer, however a dispute over rent again forced the iconic park to close on August 21.  Councilman Dominic Recchia (D) took issue with the business dispute, and, after heated discussions, the park was allowed to open for Labor Day weekend.

The revival of the development project by the Bloomberg Administration should prove a very interesting process, as some critics of the proposal have expressed concerns over the character of the popular summer destination, as one activist did in a recent interview:

Coney Island’s unofficial mayor, Dick Zigun, said in July that at first he was pleased by Bloomberg’s masterplan but felt that the neighborhood was give the “ol switcheroo….” that will end with overdevelopment and what Zigun calls “a wall of highrises.”

Anyone who wants a good example of how development – or lack thereof – can affect a summer-time destination should venture down to Wildwood, N.J., once a prospering beach community on the South Jersey Shore and home to it’s own amusement park complex.  Just walk a block or two away from the beach and you’ll see a community that would make some of Brooklyn’s toughest neighborhoods look like Westchester County.

Years ago, there was actually a virbant nightlife in Wildwood City; this past summer, many of the popular nightspots remain shuttered, padlocked, and vacant.  While the amusements still remain, the economic development for the Wildwood area hasn’t exactly spread to the outlying neighborhoods.

One can only hope that Coney Island doesn’t meet the same fate…