Coney Island Amusement Park Master Plan

Coney Island  Amusement Park  Master Plan and Hotel  NY  1981

Coney Island, the well known and once very successful amusement park from the thirties has been abandoned  to an increasing  physical decay for decades.
A  private promoter J. Silverman hired our atelier and L.Woods  to elaborate ideas and a master plan for the  future “ vision “of the entire rebirth of the area. Based on the introduction of legal gambling in NY State three casinos and a large hotel are the main focal points of the  program.
Parking, new water beach water front , hotels and  three  casino’s surrounding a plaza. Amusement pavilions, rides and restaurants.
Pools of water with fountains , park and marina. Elevated transportation system and an arrival subway station . Laguna  with piers . Ferry boats  harbor with public stations.

The new  amusement park sits on  a formidable  constructed  platform that elevates all future buildings and structures  above  street  level. The function of this artificial platform is  to bring all electrical, electronic, service connections  needed for the functioning of the amusement park  as close as possible to the raids changing final locations .
Below the vast platform an immense parking lot   for any one arriving to this destination
by  car or any other forms of  public transportation. At the symbolic point of entry from the hinterland  of the surrounding region a white elephant , a monumental digital kinetic sculpture stands still in the form of a welcoming  visual gate of large dimensions.

Ocean Front Hotel
Private suites , rooms , large apartments. Restaurants , meeting rooms , exhibition spaces, shopping , observation deck , weather station. Parking.
The proposed   ocean front hotel   marks the final destination for all those visitors wanting to spend few days in the area of the new amusement park and casinos.
The structure is conical and consists of a very narrow   curved wall   containing all the suite and apartment of the hotel. The plan   at every level of the tower   is circular and covers an angle of   270  degrees. The   hotel internal   public elevators  rise from the lower internal  public plaza diagonally to the very top making all the necessary stops  to individual lobbies one at each floor as if they were  many hotels in within a larger hotel.

The project for the Ocean Front hotel  is a structure  capable to physically confront  in the abstraction of its affirmative physical  volume,  the  continental space of an open  ocean beach front. The site is grand. Land meets water. The site reveals itself  in the light of the changing seasons without  any protective shield. The urbanity of the city meets the ocean in a vast horizontal space. The beach, the waves , the timeless presence of the waters of the ocean  intrigue the viewers.
The verticality of the proposed  hotel is the result of a study  that anticipates  formally
the future  horizontal  organization  of the new Coney Island  park and marks symbolically  the  horizon. A  park way like  corridor  at arrival celebrates  the scale of the ‘event‘ of the park itself . Such a corridor  for vehicles or other transportation systems filters  through the existing  local communities in the direction of the ocean in a way that
anticipates  as a point of  destination the unlimited space of the ocean behind the  mass of the hotel.
As one  large hollow  structure  the hotel  stands still marking the initial end point of such a corridor and later continues up through the progressive unfolding of its 800 foot  vertical structure. The tower  hotel provides to each visitor’s  suite a direct view of the ocean without any  visual barriers other than natural ones. Its top levels celebrate the highest elevation of the structure   with an observation deck  and a terminal station  for the  public elevators merging from the inner lower core  of the hotel  ground  plaza.

Location
Coney Island  NY  USA
Research Proposal
1981
Scope of Services
Chief Designer
Construction Cost
N/A
Gross Floor Area
1,500.000 SF