Luna Park seeks lease extension
Coney Island’s amusement district looking for lifeline amid fi nancial woes
BY ROSE ADAMS & MARK HALLUM
At the height of economic crisis
of the last decade, the city chose the
Zamperla family to rebuild Coney Island’s
amusement park in an effort to
revamp the People’s Playground.
Ten years later, the family business
known as Central Amusement International
(CAI), which operates Luna Park,
has suffered millions of dollars in losses
after remaining closed for the summer
season because of COVID-19 restrictions
— dealing the amusement park the
toughest fi nancial blow it’s ever seen.
“Unfortunately, Hurricane Sandy
was pretty bad, but this is on a different
level,” Tracee Zamperla told Brooklyn
Paper.
The lost 2020 season came two years
after the Zamperlas expanded the park
by 50 percent in 2018, and just months after
CAI dished out $13 million for a brand
new section of the park on its eastern
side. Construction on the new segment
was set to cost $20 million and wrap up
this summer, but pandemic halted the
park’s construction midway, and its future
remains uncertain, Tracee said.
Though the Zamperlas collect rent
and some profi ts from a handful of subtenant
businesses along the Riegelmann
Boardwalk, they say the costs of maintaining
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an amusement park require
signifi cant annual investment.
“You have the actual maintenance
of the rides,” Tracee said. “Then you
have skilled labor … it is a niche industry
that takes a while for people for
develop skills in.”
To allow the company to recover,
the Zamperlas are calling on the city to
extend their lease until 2040. A lease extension
— which would tack on 13 years
to the current lease set to expire in 2027
— would give Luna Park more time to
recover from the losses, owners say.
The extra time would allow also
Luna Park to see a return on their recent
expansion of the park, and would
help the Zamperlas in applying for
more loans — which could grant some
relief to the boardwalk businesses.
“This period of extension will help
us to support the boardwalk subtenants,
absorb the cost of previous investments,
offset the negative impact that
the COVID-19 situation has brought this
year and will bring in the years that follow,”
wrote Alessandro Zamperla to the
Economic Development Corporation
(EDC), the quasi-governmental agency
in charge of the lease agreement.
The couple is not asking for a rent reduction
from EDC, arguing that the city
has enough fi nancial strain already.
An EDC spokesperson said that the
agency has offered to forgive rent payments
excluding the base rent — such as
administrative fees — but implied that
they could not extend the lease yet.
“Any lease extension without a
competitive process raises issues of
fairness,” the spokesperson said.
EDC added that they are working
with CAI to ensure its survival, but
Alessandro Zamperla said he has not
heard from the EDC since May 16.
The Zamperlas are also calling on
Gov. Andrew Cuomo to release reopening
guidelines for next summer. Cuomo
has repeatedly refused to open amusement
parks statewide because of their
potential to draw large crowds, but the
Zamperlas say that without any idea of
how they could open, they have no way
to plan for the park’s future.
“The fact that to this date … we have
never received not one piece of communication,
one precise feedback about why
we are not open, that is really crushing,”
Alessando said in September.
The fi nancial hardships have caused
hundreds of locals usually employed by
Luna Park to lose their jobs, Tracee said,
adding that CAI’s 2019 deal with the city
to completely revamp Stillwell Avenue
station is also indefi nitely on hold.
CAI’s woes refl ect those of Deno’s
Wonder Wheel Amusement Park,
which operates the famous 100-year-old
Wonder Wheel. The park’s owners have
argued that the Wonder Wheel, at the
very least, should be permitted to open
because it allows for social distancing.
“The way it was designed and built
102 years ago during the last pandemic,
it was designed to be socially distant,”
said Dennis Vourderis, who owns the
park with his brother. “The cars are 50
feet apart, the people that ride in each
one of the vehicles are with their own
group, their own family.”
“Hurricane Sandy was pretty bad, but
this is on a different level.”
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