A Turnaround for Coney Island? : Attractions: Optimists point to new housing, a falling crime rate and a generation of New Yorkers who never knew the legendary amusement park.

The faded and peeling sign standing on a weed-choked median in Brooklyn is a sad reminder of times gone by: “Welcome to Coney Island--America’s Playground.”

Coney Island was the Titanic of amusement parks, a grand assemblage of thrill rides, cabarets, food stands and other attractions. Today it’s but a seedy parody of its former self.

Unlike the Titanic, there are hopes today that Coney Island can recapture some of its lost glory, with one developer proposing to build a theme park on the scale of a Disneyland.

Coney Island’s demise began decades ago, when Ike was in the White House and the Dodgers were in Ebbets Field. Some blame it on changing times, television and back-yard swimming pools.

Others blame government planners who brought in high-rise housing projects that destroyed the small-town ambience of the seashore community, which is actually on a peninsula.

The grimy Stillwell Avenue subway station is the gateway to the amusements. Visitors pass a liquor store and cigarette stand, topped by a faded billboard featuring a sunburned woman with a ‘60s flip hairdo. Across the street is a fast-food store and a graffiti-splashed U.S. Army recruiting shack, padlocked and unused.

But Nathan’s Famous, where devotees swear the hot dog was born in 1916, is still there. The grills beneath the trademark lemon and green sign sizzle up to 1,500 Coney red hots an hour.

And the beloved Cyclone roller coaster, with its 3,000 feet of wooden track and cars hurtling down 90-foot inclines at speeds of 68 m.p.h., is still rolling strong.

It’s a designated city landmark. Not so Faber’s Sportland--a dingy video and pinball hall--or the Surf Motel, which caters to the by-the-hour crowd. There are numerous stands with Coney Island staples such as cotton candy, french fries with vinegar and sticky caramel and candy apples.

T-shirt and toy vendors sit in the shade of their plastic awnings waiting for visitors leaving Astroland, the New York Aquarium and the beach.

“Coney Island once was about as close to death as a community could get,” said Horace Bullard, who owns a neighborhood fast-food store and hopes to build the Disneyland-type amusement park.

He and others insist that there is a comeback in store for Coney Island, which is 25 miles from the heart of Manhattan. It draws thousands of visitors from throughout the metropolitan New York region thanks to a network of major roadways that feeds into it from surrounding areas.

“There’s no doubt about it,” said Herb Eisenberg, of Coney Island’s community board. “The resurgence is starting. We’re climbing out of the bad old days.”

There is evidence.

Five hundred new single-family homes built since 1985 were snapped up at prices that started at $90,000 and have climbed to $140,000. In two years, attendance at the New York Aquarium has doubled to 800,000.

“A whole new generation is starting to come out,” said Rick Miller, spokesman for the New York Aquarium. “They don’t know what Coney Island was, or anything about its decline.”

The turnabout began when the city started spending money--tens of millions over the last decade--to clean up the 3-mile beach and rebuild 23 blocks of the dilapidated boardwalk.

“Today, I would compare our beach to any beach in the world,” said Brooklyn Parks Commissioner Julius Spiegel. “The cleanliness and attractiveness of the sand is second to none.”

Eisenberg, who was born in the area 56 years ago, agrees. “I can tell you, it’s a lot cleaner today than it was 35, even 40 years ago.”

Indeed, on a hot and sultry day, nary a can or piece of paper was seen on a stretch of the 500-foot-deep silvery, sand beach. Instead it was filled with striped beach blankets, neon-colored umbrellas--and families.

With dozens of parks police and a beefed-up local police presence, drug-related crime that nearly destroyed the area in the 1970s is ebbing.

“I’m not deluding myself,” Eisenberg said, “there are still problems. But they are the same problems every neighborhood in this city is facing.”

In the early 1980s, the city and a private foundation began knocking down rows of abandoned and burned-out bungalows that housed gangs, drug addicts and the homeless throughout the ‘70s.

They were replaced with affordable single-family homes that attracted young middle-class families. Coney Island, once a predominantly Italian and Jewish community and later predominantly black and Latino, today is home to a potpourri of races.

“Come down to Kaiser Park on the weekend and you’ll see blacks, whites, yellows, pinks, you name it, all with their grills, all together,” said Eisenberg. “To me it’s an unwritten message that we can live together, we can play together.”

Play was always what Coney Island was about. It gained notoriety during the days of Diamond Jim Brady and Lillian Russell. Gamblers and gangsters, chorus girls and call girls came regularly to wine and dine and play under the carnival lights of Dreamland, Luna and Steeplechase Parks.

Dreamland burned down in 1911; Luna Park suffered the same fate in ’39. Today, the New York Aquarium stands where Dreamland once mesmerized crowds. Luna Park, known for its popular Shoot the Shoots water ride, is now a co-op housing complex.

But until Luna’s demise, amusement was king at Coney.

“Al Capone was a bouncer at a local cabaret here; Eddie Cantor was a singing waiter who worked for $3 a night, and Cary Grant--then only Archibald Leach--was a stilt walker for Steeplechase,” said Matt Kennedy, an 86-year-old George Burns look-alike who runs the local chamber of commerce.

Even after Luna Park burned down, Coney Island remained popular, thanks to its accessibility by a nickel subway ride, the hair-raising Cyclone and Steeplechase owner George C. Tilyou’s monument to fun: the glass-enclosed Crystal Pavilion.

Steeplechase also offered mechanical horse races and thrilling drops from the Parachute Jump.

Television in the 1950s cut into the crowds.

“On Tuesday night--Uncle Miltie night (referring to comedian Milton Berle’s TV show)--the park was empty,” said Milt Berger, a public relations man who once worked for Steeplechase and now represents Astroland, Coney Island’s only multiride park.

And things got worse.

When Steeplechase owner Frank Tilyou died in 1964, the heirs wrangled about Steeplechase’s operation until, Berger said, “for peace and harmony’s sake” they sold it. The buyer was developer Fred Trump, father of Donald. “He wanted to put up some big seaside condo development,” Berger said.

Down came the pavilion of fun, and with it the end of a legend.

But Trump couldn’t get the building variance he needed to construct residential housing in an area zoned for amusement. The ‘60s rolled by and Steeplechase sat vacant.

The city condemned it in 1969; after a court battle Trump reportedly received $4 million for the 12-acre parcel. About the same time, the city condemned blocks of red-brick bungalows once used as summer homes.

With the ‘70s came plans to build public-housing projects.

“The city had this vision that they would round up a lot of low-income people from the city and bring them out to Coney Island, to this paradise,” said developer Bullard, “and that once here all of their problems would be over because they’d be in paradise.”

Tall, boxy buildings sprang up. Whites fled. Stores closed. The vacation trade died, nearly taking the entire community with it.

When the urban renewal projects began, Mermaid Avenue was a thriving business center with more than 400 retail stores. Today, there are 39.

Coney Island, says Ann Weisbrod, vice president of the city’s Public Development Corp., was “the victim of government good intentions.”

Now the city has a new slate of plans to revive Coney Island, among them Bullard’s proposed $350-million Steeplechase Park and a 14,000-seat Sportsplex to be used for college and high school events.

The proposed new Steeplechase, covering 25 acres, would be a three-tier park with 65 major attractions, 14 theaters and a $3-million renovated version of the Parachute Jump.

There are also plans to renovate the subway stop, repave local streets, rebuild bridges leading onto Coney Island and turn Stillwell Avenue into a pedestrian mall.

The city has committed $20 million to the project. “That’s just about enough to build the parking garage,” said Bullard.

If all goes well, Steeplechase could open in 1993. If approved, the Sportsplex project, which is still in the development stage, could be operating by 1995.

“You’ll never be able to recapture the glory days of old Coney Island,” said state Sen. Marty Solomon, who represents the area. “But these projects are giving an awful lot of hope to an area that hasn’t had any for a long, long time.”