Don’t look now, but the zoning recommendations for Coney Island will probably be out before the end of August. We don’t know if the date is official, but what we’re hearing is August 24 or August 28. This is in keeping with the word floating around in Coney circles that the zoning recommendations would be out by September, perhaps after Labor Day. (It should be noted that previous dates have slipped.) A long land use review process would follow and any rezoning would ultimately have to be approved by the City Council. We would guess that any zoning changes wouldn’t be finalized until the last half of 2008 or the first half of 2009, which calls into question the strategy of demolishing things at the end of the 2007 summer season and creating a disaster for Coney next summer.

The key Coney battleground is what kinds of uses to permit in the historic Amusement District as well as what densities to allow. There is significant opposition to both condos and to timeshares as well as buildings that would exceed the height of the Parachute Jump. The CIDC is said to still be leaning to allowing hotels west of Stillwell Avenue and to allowing retail, but timeshares are considered the same as residential and there is opposition to this. There is, of course, a school of thought that says that if Mr. Sitt builds say, two or three “hotels,” that it will produce a glut of rooms and that they will fail. Hence, several years down the road, the developer would be looking to convert the hotels to condos. There’s an ongoing discussion of some of the specific zoning issues over at the Coney Island Message Board.