Sitt Hires Coney Island Design Consultant

Coney Island developer Joe Sitt of Thor Equities has hired Thinkwell Design & Production to work on the Brooklyn mega-project. Thinkwell is the company that staged the interesting and well-covered M&M store opening in Times Square that featured people being spraypainted like M&Ms. The company plans, develops and manages theme parks, museums, sports franchises, casinos and hotels, including Universal Studios in Japan and Florida, and Cirque de Soleil worldwide. (The photo above, from the Thinkwell website, is of something called Ski Dubai--an indoor ski and winter park in Dubai in the United Arab Emirates. The one at the bottom is something called iPort Caesars Singapore.)

If Thinkwell were being hired to do theme park work, the results might actually be interesting. The Coney blog Kinetic Carnival cheers the firm's hiring, noting:

Things may be starting to look brighter now that Thor has called upon the imagineers to do the dream work. It's a matter of time before the release of some concrete master planning. Hopefully, they will inspire and enthrall us!

We will keep an open mind until we see their plans, hoping that they will produce something more than a Times Square-by-the-Sea. Meantime, here's some verbiage from the firm's website that gives a sense of them:

Made up of creative executives from Universal Studios, Cirque du Soleil, the Chicago Museum of Science & Industry and elsewhere, Thinkwell started in a loft over the historic Pasadena Playhouse in Pasadena, California. Before we opened our doors we were creating immersive new experiences for Nike, Dreamworks SKG and others. In 2002 Thinkwell opened Thinkwell Europa, our sales and project management office in Barcelona, Spain to service Thinkwell's projects in Europe and the Middle East. In 2004 Thinkwell received the experience design industry's Academy Award, the Thea, for Outstanding Educational Experience for the 50,000 square foot traveling educational attraction, Jurassic Park Institute Tour. By 2005 Thinkwell reached an important tipping point and the very companies Thinkwell's team came from were the clients that allowed us to innovate new immersive experiences, attractions, exhibits, rides, visitor centers and resorts.

Whether this means that Ehrenkrantz Eckstut & Kuhn--which has produced some of the early Coney drawings--has gotten the boot, we don't know.

Ski Coney could work nicely, no?