Coney Island’s Luna Park closed on a $47 million bank loan Monday, the Wall Street Journal reported. The five-tower, 1,576-unit cooperative had been threatening to drop out of a state housing program for middle-income residents and to convert to market-rate apartments. Instead, Monday’s deal marked the last piece of an aid package that also includes commitments for $21 million in government grants and loans for the complex that will eventually be forgiven. As part of the
funding package, Luna Park agreed to remain in the state’s Mitchell-Lama program for at least another 20 years, with incentives to remain an additional 10 years. The funding will be used to strip off all the bricks from the building, and to install new windows and roofs. [WSJ]

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Coney Park’s two new amusement parks are expected to create hundreds of jobs and bring in at least $100,000 a year for the city, Mayor Michael Bloomberg said yesterday in his weekly radio address on 1010 WINS News Radio. Situated on the nearly seven acres purchased by the city last November, the $15 million Luna Park, slated to open on Memorial Day, and the $12 million Scream Zone, which will debut in summer 2011, will together make up “the largest Coney Island amusement area since Steeplechase Park closed in 1964,” Bloomberg said. The lease agreement stipulates that the city receive $100,000 per year for the land plus a percentage of the parks’ gross receipts. The city is also investing in a $100 million public-private partnership that will upgrade the existing aquarium in the neighborhood, and is pooling $150 million for community improvements, like a new entrance plaza for the amusement district. Residential and community development Coney Island Commons, which will have upwards of 180 units of affordable housing and a new YMCA, is also slated to break ground this year, Bloomberg said. TRD

Zamperla USA, the company tapped last week to be Coney Island’s new amusement park operator, is bringing Luna Park back to Brooklyn. Luna Park was the name of one of Coney Island’s four historic amusement parks; the original was there between 1903 and 1946. Zamperla’s new Luna Park will span three plots of land between the former Astroland site and Keyspan Park and will welcome an estimated 400,000 visitors for the first season, which opens Memorial Day weekend, Alberto Zamperla told his hometown newspaper in Italy. He takes over the site April 15 and plans to invest $24 million over three years. [Amusing the Zillion]

From left, Brooklyn Beep Marty Markowitz, State Sen. Diane Savino, Rep. Jerrold Nadler

City officials announced a $21 million deal today to renovate the Luna Park housing complex in Coney Island, under an agreement that would keep the apartments in the Mitchell Lama affordable housing program for another 20 years.

The agreement ends years of controversy about the Coney Island co-op complex. A number of shareholders at the 1,600-unit development had been actively considering a plan to go private, with some actively pushing for a feasibility study on whether to exit the Mitchell Lama program.

“It was a poignant moment for us to preserve the affordability [of Luna Park],” said one local official, who asked not to be identified.

Several other Mitchell Lama buildings in the Coney Island area have gone private in recent years, including Ocean Towers, a 360-unit development that was sold for $5.9 million to Cammeby’s International in 2007. [more]