Musings on Coney Island
Reflecting on summertime destinations, and one in particular …
As I look back on a summer gone by all too quickly, I find myself reflecting on those places where East Coasters escape when the heat and humidity become too much to bear. There is a distinctive difference between the coastal getaways of the East Coast and the frigid, rocky beaches surrounding the Bay Area, where I grew up. In my 17 years in New York, I’ve explored various seaside destinations, from Martha’s Vineyard to Fire Island to the Jersey Shore. My first visits to Long Beach Island left me longing for Bruce Springsteen’s depiction of summer adolescence – eating ice cream on the boardwalk with your sweetheart on a balmy summer night. In our enjoyment of these spaces and the relief they offer from summer’s oppressions, we can easily forget that there are still red class lines drawn around them. These locations are difficult to access without a car; hospitality and dining options are prohibitively expensive for many; beach access often comes at a price.
And then there’s Coney Island. Almost anyone you ask can remember their first time in Coney Island. Over a decade ago, when I was working full-time in the service industry, I was stunned to realize that there actually are beaches in New York City. On quiet summer weekdays, there was nothing more perfect than a bike ride down Ocean Parkway to the Coney Island boardwalk, where we’d rinse down a meal of raw clams and knishes from Paul’s Daughter with ice-cold pilsners. “The People’s Playground,” Coney is a place where people from all backgrounds and walks of life can escape from the brutal grind of trying to survive in a City that just keeps getting more expensive and eat a hot dog with two feet in the Atlantic ocean.
Coney Island has a mystical allure, shrouded in nostalgia and chaos. Questionably part of its appeal, the neighborhood also has a reputation for being dirty, crime-ridden, and unregulated. Unlike the pristine boardwalk of Asbury Park, it’s a place where mothers don’t want their teenagers to go alone on a Friday night. (And while possibly a sign of urban decay, this reputation is nothing new – in 1893 the New York Times called Coney Island “Sodom-by-the-Sea.”)
But I don’t need to tell you about Coney Island – leave it to the famous authors, artists, and delinquents. In the words of Henry Miller, “Everything is sliding and crumbling, Everything glitters, totters, teeters, titters.” Coney has been countlessly portrayed and referenced in popular culture, from Lou Reed’s “Coney Island Baby,” to Bruce Gilden’s photo depictions, to Lawrence Ferlinghetti’s “A Coney Island of the Mind,” Billy Bragg and Wilco’s “Mermaid Avenue” … Even Taylor Swift has a song about Coney Island.
On account of its reputation, or perhaps in spite of it, Coney Island is a world-renowned tourist destination. People from Japan and other far flung home bases come to New York City and want to visit Coney Island, lured by its fantasy and history. And over the years, businesses have signed on to be part of this experience – to help bolster the magic of the place and lend their voices and spirits to the swirling mix. And, well, to do what businesses do – make money, in part by leveraging the brand name of Coney Island. You have to have a certain amount of grit to run a business in Coney Island, and many of those who do are staunch insiders, long-time proponents, and investors in the neighborhood. They’ve jumped onboard this seaside wild west, or maybe the business was in their family, so the beautiful pandemonium is all they’ve ever known.
As one might imagine in a place with such a reputation for being “inclusive,” or some might say “unregulated,” the economic activity that takes place along the boardwalk and in the “Amusement Area,” (the area bounded by Surf Avenue to the north and the boardwalk to the south), is a mash-up of legitimate brick and mortar businesses, and unlicensed, or some might say “illegal,” vendors, peddling everything from glowsticks to Nutcrackers (bathtub punch) to photos with their 20-foot boa constrictor. Nonetheless, tourists and locals come to Coney Island with open pocketbooks, and Coney Island businesses, both legitimate and under the radar, can make a decent takeaway in the summer months.
Beyond Coney Island, the mythic tourist destination, is Coney Island, the neighborhood,where people live and shop and work year-round. As with much of NYC, the landscape of residential Coney Island was shaped by Robert Moses’ grand vision for the metropolis. My first project with Perch Advisors, beginning in 2017, involved working with a merchant association in the Rockaways, where Robert Moses’ impact still looms large. Similar to the Rockaways, once a popular summer resort, Coney Island suffered from disinvestment after the 2nd World War, when the beaches of Long Island became publicly accessible, and a destination for middle-class leisure. Moses had no fondness towards Coney, nor nostalgia for its past glory, and saw an opportunity for large-scale public housing development in the struggling seaside resort. As head of the Mayor’s Committee on Slum Clearance, he oversaw the development of thousands of units of high-rise public housing on the shorelines of the City, including in Coney Island.
Natural disasters are known to disproportionately impact low-income communities, and such was the case in particular with Hurricane Sandy, which left hundreds of public housing residents without necessities like heat and hot water in the aftermath of the storm. The Alliance for Coney Island is a nonprofit organization that was started right before Hurricane Sandy and represented an effort of the Coney Island business community to band together, pool resources, and make a cohesive effort to not only bring visitors back to Coney Island but also to create a structure for businesses and residents to build relationships. To this day, The Alliance provides crucial resources to the business and neighborhood communities, including supplemental sanitation services, streetscape and horticulture improvements, district marketing, and regular activities and events that bring together the local community. The bulk of this work is supported by grant funding, specifically grant funding earmarked for communities impacted by Hurricane Sandy. More than 10 years out from Sandy, much of this funding has dried up, and the Alliance is now seeking a new, sustainable structure for continuing to carry out its important activities far into the future.
Back in 2017, the Alliance convened business owners, property owners, and community stakeholders to discuss the idea of a Business Improvement District, or BID, in Coney Island. A BID is a public/private partnership in which property and business owners within a dedicated geography elect to make a collective contribution – called a BID assessment – to the maintenance, development, and promotion of their commercial district. BIDs provide ongoing services such as supplemental sanitation, security, marketing, events, and business support and outreach. A BID assessment is different from a tax because it can only be spent locally, and a board of directors consisting of local stakeholders – property owners, business owners, and residents – gets to decide how the money gets spent. Supporters of BIDs liken a BID assessment to an investment; as the old adage goes, “you have to spend money to make money,” and stakeholders in a commercial district choose to invest in the long-term economic vitality of the area by providing services that make people want to shop, dine, and play there.
In essence, the actions of a Coney Island BID would be quite similar to what the Alliance does currently but would eliminate the need to rely on grant funding and voluntary contributions to comprise the organizational budget, and thus would create a resourced organization with the capacity to bring about real positive change in the neighborhood. Although BIDs have certainly suffered some criticism over the years for being drivers of gentrification, when thoughtfully executed and appropriately placed, they are one of the best tools that we have for creating a structure that allows businesses and property owners to invest in hyper-local economic development. An impactful BID works in partnership with its board of directors to articulate a vision for the neighborhood that takes into consideration the uniqueness of the place and the needs of all stakeholders.
BID conversations began in 2017, continued until 2019, and were paused during COVID-19. At the end of 2022, the Alliance for Coney Island contracted with Perch Advisors to support them in restarting the BID formation process, with the goal of guiding a Steering Committee of local stakeholders towards 4 key decisions, which constitute the “planning” phase of BID formation: the geography of the district (down to exact blocks and lots), the services the BID will provide, the maximum budget of the BID, and the assessment formula (the formula by which that budget gets divided amongst all the properties in the district).
In the second half of fiscal year 2023, our team at Perch Advisors worked with the Steering Committee to drive these key decisions about a prospective BID. These decisions involved the commitment and engagement of everyone on the Committee and were ultimately a powerful exercise in consensus building. As the main person interacting with this group (business owners, property owners, community leaders, and otherwise very busy, important people) I was continually floored by their thoughtfulness, commitment, and willingness to work together. On a personal note, working with groups like the Alliance for Coney Island Staff and the Coney Island Steering Committee is what makes my work at Perch Advisors feel rewarding.
BID formation in Coney Island is certainly not textbook, for a lot of reasons.
From the beginning of these conversations, it was very important to the Alliance to include Mermaid Avenue as part of the BID’s geography. Mermaid runs parallel to Surf Avenue, and unlike the Surf Avenue and Amusement District corridors, which widely cater to summertime visitors, Mermaid Avenue has shops and services geared towards local residents. A challenge of the Coney Island BID formation effort was how to address and cater to the distinct needs of these two different commercial areas within one organization.
Additionally, much of the land in the Amusement Area, which comprises the majority of the BID assessment – is owned by various City agencies, including NYC Parks and the NYC Economic Development Corporation. Historically, City-owned property is not assessed by BIDs – New York City will never tax itself. This has created major challenges for BIDs containing significant amounts of City-owned property, as they have to service these properties, but don’t derive any funding from them. Such a large percentage of the prospective Coney Island BID geography is owned by various City agencies that the BID would be dead in the water were it not possible to assess the commercial tenants of this land.
And finally – a question that lingers in my mind in every BID formation – how can a BID strike the balance between providing services that make the area cleaner and safer, while still preserving the character of the neighborhood? Is there a world where the magic that is Coney Island can still exist within a neighborhood without trash in the gutters, gang violence on the news, and unlicensed vendors running amok? How do you apply this tool of economic development to a place that is somewhat defined by its lawlessness?
Members of the Steering Committee seemed to innately understand this tension and articulated a vision for a Coney Island BID that not only supports increased tourism and a safer, cleaner space for people to visit but also a vibrant neighborhood year-round. Part of the mission of a Coney Island BID is to make the neighborhood livable for year-round residents, providing events and activities that keep young people out of trouble, and connecting residents to local jobs. The Committee understood intimately the differences between the Mermaid Avenue commercial corridor and the Amusement District and was able to create a BID structure that articulated two sub-districts, which received different types and quantities of service based on their unique needs, with a focus on how to support local residents who rely on the area for their basic needs (rollercoasters and ice cream are great fun, but there’s also something magical in a reliable, clean place to do laundry).
And, isn’t this the crux of what BIDs are trying to do? How can we invest private dollars into making public spaces cleaner, nicer, and more welcoming, while still preserving the essence of the place?
But, the question that remains to be answered: Can the City set a new precedent by allowing for the assessment of commercial activity on City-owned land? It seems like a tiny technicality – large International businesses are making plenty off of their leases from NYC, why shouldn’t they pay a BID assessment? The BID formation effort is attempting to create a formalized structure wherein private businesses contribute to the maintenance and improvement of the public space, for the benefit of all. Shouldn’t the City want to figure out a way to make this happen?
We believe that there is a pathway forward, and the NYC Department of Small Business Services, the City agency that oversees the BID formation process, has been a tremendous partner in helping push for interagency conversations to determine a solution to this challenge. In the words of former Deputy Mayor Dan Doctoroff, “the degree of difficulty in completing a public project is a mathematical function of the number of governmental entities involved” (self-titled “Doctoroff’s Law). But, Coney Island is a unique place that requires uniquely complex solutions, and all those who are invested in this effort remain hopeful that all invested agencies and parties can work collaboratively to find an answer. A Coney Island Business Improvement District represents an amazing opportunity and a new chapter for this eccentric, magical, oft-neglected underdog of a neighborhood.
