Coney Island #3: Taconic Working to Buy Land from Parks Department

A while ago, we wrote about Taconic Investment Partners Coney Island strategy, noting that the company was interested in parcels of land owned by the Parks Department, which has land around property that it has bought. Apparently, Taconic may be closing in on a deal for more land. Interestingly, web pages about the North and South Taconic ventures are back online (they had been pulled down for about a month), but some verbiage has disappeared. For instance, this wording about potentially huge size of the project around the Childs Building was pulled down:

Taconic hopes to have the potential to develop between 1,125,000 and 1,800,000 square feet of residential, retail and parking areas on nearly 5 acres of prime beachfront property. In addition, Taconic is in preliminary discussions with the City to acquire approximately 11 acres of City owned land in various locations immediately adjacent to the property. While the feasibility, cost and likelihood of such a disposition by the City can not been determined for some time, there is the potential to increase the total size of the development to more than 5,000,000 square feet.

The verbiage may have been deleted because the numbers are no longer valid or because it's not good strategy to put such impressive statistics up for everyone to see. Regardless, the Brooklyn Eagle notes that the company is currently negotiating with the Parks Department for the property and seems close enough to a deal that details are being worked out. The Eagle writes:

Aside from the block-sized Child’s Restaurant, Taconic also owns another vacant block across the street and is in negotiations with the city’s Department of Parks and Recreation to buy more adjacent land west of KeySpan Park.

The problem is that when Parks land is sold to a private developer, it has to be recreated somewhere else. Without going into details, [VP Ari] Shalam and an EDC spokesperson said the two parties are in the process of working out the kinks on that deal.

If successful, Taconic would own three adjacent waterfront blocks, including the one occupied by Child’s, that the company could turn into a mixed-use development with residential and ground-floor retail.

What's especially interesting is that Taconic has gone about its planning none of the publicity or controversy surrounding Thor Equities' purchases of land or plans.