Joshua Malbin

Joe Sitt is no better than a sophisticated thug. This week’s editorial in the Brooklyn Paper sums up the history pretty well:

Sitt, you’ll recall, is the man who started buying up land in [Coney Island] a few years ago and successfully consolidated quite a nice bit of Boardwalk-side property.

He said he wanted to build a 24-7, Vegas-style theme park that would include all-year rides, attractions, hotels, shops and, yes, new amusements. If it happened the way Sitt promised, Coney would indeed be a better place — and we said so in many editorials.

But over time, it has become clear that Sitt’s only goal in Coney Island was to make a killing on his property by forcing the city’s hand and then getting a buyout from Mayor Bloomberg.

He kicked out the Astroland tenants and opened a much-inferior Dreamland amusement park, but then locked everyone out this week because the operator owed him back rent.”Forcing the city’s hand” apparently means making Coney Island into such a failed pit that the city can’t abide it anymore.

From the editorial again:

Sitt now has acres and acres of vacant land that are doing nothing for anybody. Meanwhile, the mayor is close to buying a large part of Sitt’s land for about $100 million — tens of millions more than the speculator paid for it just a few years ago.

That really bites. Apparently the city that had no problem declaring dozens of homes blighted in order to make way for the odious Atlantic Yards project isn’t willing to muscle Sitt out of the way using the same tactics. So the man who’s killed one of New York’s greatest landmarks will be rewarded handsomely for it.

It really, really bites.

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