Today’s New York Times visits Coney Island, not in the news section, but via a real estate report. Lee Silberstein, who is the spokesperon for Thor Equities, which has bought up some 10 acres of land and proposed a massive redevelopment, including residential highrises, describes the new Coney Island the firm would like to build as “something like a Bourbon Street, before Katrina.” He continues: “That’s exactly what we’re trying to recapture,” he said, “a place where people can just have fun.”

The most interesting part of the article, though, may be the info about Coney real estate values:

Coney Island housing prices, though still reasonable by New York standards, have risen sharply in the last five years — fueled in part, according to real estate agents, by an influx of well-heeled Russians from neighboring Brighton Beach.

The median sales price for a one- to three-bedroom house, for instance, was $369,000 in the first six months of the year, according to the Brooklyn Board of Realtors, more than double the price in the same period in 2001.

“Like a Bourbon Street, before Katrina”?