Yesterday's big Coney Island reveal brought a flood of memories about past unveilings. Of course, not a single thing in any of these drawings has ever come close to turning into reality. And, this doesn't count renderings from the past we don't have at our fingertips or the Pavilion for the Steeplechase Plaza or the Coney Island Aquarium, which actually stand a better shot of happening.
1) Everyone remembers Coney Island 1.0 (Beta), right? This is the original Thor Equities "glam rock" Coney Island makeover that was released two years ago. It's the one with the blimps landing on the hotel roof. Also known as Vegas Coney, it seems a bit of a long reach in retrospect, no?
2) This is Coney Island 2.2, floated by Thor Equities in the heady days of June and July when developer Joe Sitt went announced he was dropping his plan for condos.
3) It's hard to remember last November's Coney Island 2.1 release, but it, too, ran into some marketing difficulties. Pffffft.
4) We threw this in to throw off all but the most hardcore Coney obsessive. This is "Steeplechase Park," an idea floated by Kansas Fried Chicken founder Horace Bullard in the 1980s. Who's he? Let's just say that he owns that big empty lot next to KeySpan Park and that he is in no hurry to sell his land to anyone. Call Mr. Bullard the Coney Island Wildcard.
5) This is the Coney Island V. 1.6 (Alpha) release. It was only supposed to go out to select users for testing. There were serious problems with the user interface and it came to be known as the Easy Listening version. It was pulled from the market so fast it hardly existed. Oopsy.
6) This, of course, is Coney V3.0 (Beta), released yesterday by the city. We understand that its internal working name is No Sitt. Don't like it? No worries. It will be updated shortly with V3.1, V3.2 and, most likely, V4.0 and V5.0, with V5.1, the final release, to come around 2012, give or take.
Loading comments...