Say “NO” to Coney Island Casino!

We, the undersigned residents of Coney Island and surrounding Southern Brooklyn neighborhoods, are adamantly against having a casino built on the Coney Island peninsula. While we want a healthy, year-round economy here in Coney Island, a casino is not the right way to achieve this goal and does not belong in our future as it would have detrimental impacts to our neighborhood including but not limited to:

Quality of Life.   Coney Island is a vibrant, tight-knit seaside community with many multigenerational families. We are proud to live in a historic, hard-working neighborhood. However, too often we are saddened to find ourselves in the headlines for all the wrong reasons. As a community struggling to overcome decades of disenfranchisement, we have significant gaps in our neighborhood's social service network.  Too many of our neighbors do not receive desperately needed vital services, especially in areas such as mental health, addiction, counseling and harm reduction services. And, yet, development continues unabated, increasing neighborhood density to the point of distress. Something’s got to give. 

We want to live in a safe, clean, inviting neighborhood with better schools, centers for civic and social activity, thriving local businesses, and similar public amenities that other neighborhoods enjoy. Many of our neighbors often feel unsafe, our streets are not always clean, and we do not receive the levels of municipal support and services we deserve; however, we believe that these existing neighborhood conditions will be made worse, not better, by a casino. We can look no further than to Atlantic City to see that our concerns are not misplaced. Coney Island is brimming with possibilities for a brighter future. We welcome projects that will uplift our community and not add to our daily problems.

Infrastructure. Coney Island is one of the leading neighborhoods in the borough in terms of new development, yet its old and failing public infrastructure does not keep up with the pace. Coney Island, a flood-prone neighborhood most affected by sea level rise, has not seen anywhere near the levels of investment in green infrastructure as other watershed areas. Public infrastructure systems throughout the neighborhood have lagged far behind the rest of the city — whether in sea level rise and stormwater management, traffic safety and congestion, or communications networks — while developers continue to build at an alarming rate. In the absence of significant public infrastructure investment, critical system-wide failures are a real threat.

Jobs & Labor Force Development. While the development team and their supporters are quick to point out how many jobs could be created, the real question is: How many of our neighbors would be qualified and eligible to fill those jobs?. Many skilled, high-paying, quality union jobs in the construction, hospitality and gaming industries could be created (assuming the developer is committed to building with union labor); yet, how many Coney Island residents would be trained and ready to begin on day one? Coney Island lacks a pipeline to union membership through apprenticeships and other related training programs. Neighborhood unemployment is high. Residents need access to adequate job training, job placement and job retention programs. Saying that jobs will be available to the community without creating the necessary structures to grow and support a local labor force to fill them comes across as a hollow offer.

Transportation & Parking. Coney Island lacks mobility and access to efficiently process the volume of vehicular traffic visiting the neighborhood, especially on event days. This especially hurts us as we must compete with visitor traffic. It adds significant time to get on and off the peninsula. The same Vision Zero traffic safety improvements that are commonplace throughout the city are few and far between here. Additional traffic from a casino will add to the neighborhood’s congestion, increase competition for scarce parking, and worsen ambient air and noise pollution. The demand for on-street parking far exceeds supply, particularly in the amusement district where there is insufficient parking turnover. Coney Island has long needed a regional traffic study which would both identify ways in which even more people can visit while using fewer personal vehicles to do so, and analyze the curbside regulations and inefficiencies to suggest ways in which on-street parking can be optimized.

Developer's Track Record. It is important to note that the casino's principal developer, Thor Equities, has owned significant Coney Island real estate for decades. At any time they could have taken a more active interest in our neighborhood by addressing many of the things they are now promising to do in exchange for our support of their casino proposal. If the development team was serious about building a casino, they would have been a much better local partner by making more of an upfront investment in the very community in which they now want to make a substantial profit.

This proposed casino is not the right project for Coney Island. We, the undersigned, want a year-round, sustainable, and empowering economy for the people of Coney Island; but not like this. Let’s dream bigger when it comes to creating a better quality of life for Coney Island. We say "NO" to the casino!