There's a new battle over the composition of the Coney Island Boardwalk. Activists are asking lawmakers to block the city's replacement of the boardwalk's wooden planks with concrete. NY1's Jeanine Ramirez filed the following report.
Most of Coney Island's iconic boardwalk is made of wood. But in the last several years, the city has been replacing wooden boards with concrete. Now the City Council is trying to stop the transformation.
"This was built as a boardwalk. This was never built as a sidewalk or as a street," says Councilman Mark Treyger (D-Brooklyn).
Adds Arlene Brenner, of the Coney-Brighton Boardwalk Alliance, "It has to be here for our children and our grandchildren like it was for me for the past 70 years, a wooden boardwalk."
It's a fight community activists have taken to City Hall before, only to lose in state Supreme Court, which sided with the Bloomberg administration's decision to lay down concrete and plastic boards.
The city says the non-wooden planks are more durable and resilient, and save trees in the rainforest. But now opponents are taking a new approach. Treyger has introduced a measure calling the boardwalk a landmark that merits protected status.
"Right now the city can do whatever it wants without the public weighing in and that to me is wrong," he says.
The city Landmarks Preservation Commission rejected protected status for the boardwalk two years ago. It said Coney Island's significance pre-dates the boardwalk, and that the boardwalk already had been altered from its original state.
But the Commission confirms it is now reviewing its position. Treyger says that's because the boardwalk's significance cannot be disputed.
"The boardwalk was a symbol of a major turning point for integration, accessibility and affordability for all New Yorkers," he says.
"It's a place that was developed out of a sense of equity, developed to encourage the mixing of all classes, of all economic statuses," adds Rob Burstein of the Coney-Brighton Boardwalk Alliance.
The Council's resolution is non-binding; if it passes, the de Blasio administration could simply ignore it. But passage would send a powerful message. When NY1 contacted the mayor's office, a spokesman said only that the Landmarks Commission was reviewing its position.
The Council's Land Use Committee is expected to vote on the resolution by next month. If it passes, it would be sent to the full City Council for a vote.