Highlighs From Monday's "Imagine Coney" Gathering

As posted on the Coney Island USA message board by Tricia, the Municipal Arts Society gathered a few econmists, designer, and Coney folk to get togehter and "Imagine Coney".

Here is what Tricia posted on the message board:

The charrette team includes architects, engineers, designers and an economist from France, Denmark, Spain, UK and US whose credits include working with Tivoli and Disney. Their names and websites are listed on the schedule and will probably be up on the project website www.imagineconey.com when it goes live.

For about 4 hours, we listened to remarks from Marty Markowitz, Domenic Recchia, the EDC, the CIDC, CB13, Boro Prez’s office, the Aquarium, Parks Dept , Creative Time, Astella and South Brooklyn Youth Consortium. Charles Denson and Dick Zigun gave presentations similar to their recent talks at MAS. A rep from Taconic gave a talk. Thor Equities was listed on the schedule but apparently was a no show.

Marty talked about making the Parachute Jump “as blingy as we can” (phase 2 of lighting) and also the amphitheatre in Asser Levy. Jon Benguiat, an architect and planner from Marty’s office gave a great presentation with many renderings of the amphitheatre for Asser Levy Park. There were 3 possible designs. The most favored is nicknamed the potato chip design for the shape of the roof. During the offseason it can be used for skating or other uses. Lots of photographers taking pics so I’m sure some will show up on the web.

Recchia’s remarks were mostly about the beginnings of the CIDC and money that he’d gotten for projects such as the new community center and Dreier Offerman Park. Not much mention of the amusement area except obliquely. He said: “I urge them [the CIDC] to go back to the drawing board to accommodate those who have invested heavily in the community.”

Lynn Kelly mentioned that for the first time the CIDC would have a booth at IAAPA, the amusement industry trade show in Orlando in November. That could be good news for the future of amusements in Coney.

We all hope that with the help of MAS an effort in the right direction will actually make a difference. Though the city needs to reciprocate in some way if what comes out of this is reasonable. The words from the city planner's office already sound like conflict.

Image courtesy of Mike Pesce (Flickr.com)