Mayor Mamdani announces Coney Island Business Improvement District: transcript

Key points

• He said he signed Executive Order 11 to cut fees and fines for small businesses, with reforms delivered within six months.
• Council Member Santosuoso said the BID will be governed by residents, property owners and business owners, and credited former Council Member Justin Brannan and the Alliance for Coney Island.
• Dennis Verdaris of Dino's Wonder Wheel said services will include sanitation five days a week in season and three in the offseason, plus landscaping, snow removal, graffiti removal and power washing.
• Pamela Pettyjohn of the Coney Island Beautification Project said the BID would give lasting structure and resources to beautification work.
• In Q&A the mayor discussed rental ripoff hearings in every borough, NYCHA heat pump investments, and said the seven hypothermia deaths occurred in private residences with no further information yet.

Chapters

1. 0:33Mayor opens and celebrates the Coney Island BID
2. 3:10Coney Island's history and the case for investment
3. 7:06Council Member Santosuoso on ending neglect
4. 9:12Dennis Verdaris on BID services and thanks
5. 13:54Pamela Pettyjohn on beautification work
6. 15:40Press questions on BID impact and rollercoasters
7. 18:16Questions on rental hearings, NYCHA and hypothermia deaths

Full transcript

0:33Thank you. It's a pleasure to meet. Good afternoon, everyone. It is such a pleasure to be here alongside old friends and new. And, you know, there's always the saying of the best thing since sliced bread. So for those who don't know, sliced bread was invented in 1928. Coney Island cyclone over there was invented in 1927. Coney Island is actually better than even what we think of when we think of the the best in the recent past. It is a true pleasure to be here at the People's Playground the one and only and the last time that I came in here in weather like this I plunged into the ocean a full suit so it is it is it's a pleasure to be here in a different capacity and I am very firmly I have my feet planted on the boardwalk today, and I'm so excited to be celebrating the formation of the Coney Island Bid.

1:35The launch of the Coney Island Business Improvement District marks a new era of investment in this beloved community. An era where the small businesses who make Coney Island so vibrant and inviting have the support that they need to thrive. It took eight years of community organizing and advocacy to make this bid a reality. It took local merchants and property owners and city workers at the Department of Small Business Services coming together to mobilize for this community's future. Knocking on doors, talking to their neighbors, and many of the people who led that slow, steady work are here today.

2:10I want to say thank you to each of you alongside me and in front of me and beyond for believing in this project. I want to say thank you to a dear old friend of mine who I now have the privilege of serving alongside, Our council member, Kayla Santoso, my former boss, I want to say thank you to Dennis Vorderas of Dino's Wonder Wheel. it's truly i i feel i do feel a little bit starstruck i'm being honest i've been on the wonder wheel many times i never thought i'd meet you and then i want to say thank you as well to sophia harrison of arts house schools of music we have daniel murphy from alliance for coney island and then we also have the former council member whose legislation this was who ushered this through so many different passages and challenges former council member Justin Brennan finally Pam

3:10Pettyjohn of Coney Island beautification for a time in the late 19th century it was not the Statue of Liberty that immigrants first glimpsed when they entered our harbors it was instead Coney Island specifically the Coney Island elephant a hundred and twenty two foot colossus of a hotel built in the shape of an elephant. And though it burnt down in 1896, that playful spirit has defined Coney Island for generations of New Yorkers. When New Yorkers think of summer, we dream of escaping the city heat to roam this boardwalk, to ride the Dino Wonder Wheel, to load up on candy at Williams and split some Nathan's cheese fries with friends. This has always been a haven for working New Yorkers, and while seasonal traffic accounts for much of Coney Island's economy, there is another Coney island as well.

3:59This is the Coney Island made of black and Latino families, of Italian and Jewish small business owners who built storefronts here decades ago. The Coney Island of Russian, Ukrainian, Caribbean, Central Asian, and South Asian neighbors who are now pray, shop, and build their lives along Mermaid Avenue. And yet we know for far too long, the city and state have failed to invest in Coney Island in a meaningful way. That's true for both the colorful shops that cater to beachgoers and the mom-and-pop pharmacies that sustain those who call this home. As Coney Islanders contend with the challenges of life here, whether it be the damages of Hurricane Sandy or the increasingly untenable cost of maintaining a business, they have too often been left to fell for themselves.

4:41No more. The Coney Island bid will invest an initial $1 million in the small businesses that power this community, ensuring the People's Playground remains a welcoming place all year for visitors and residents alike. Beautiful. That's true. Yeah. that means a variety of sanitary sanitation and beautification efforts from the development of marketing materials to power wash shared spaces to touches like potted plants and festive lights lining mermaid avenue during the holidays the simple truth is that it's become too hard to run a business in this city.

5:13That is why I signed Executive Order 11 last month, so that we not only identify ways to cut fees and fines for small businesses, but start to deliver these reforms within the next six months. As we work to transform the lives of working Coney Islanders, City Hall remains laser-focused on passing our affordability agenda. Because the New Yorkers who give Coney Island its character are the same New Yorkers who stay awake at night, wondering how they are going to cover childcare costs every month. They are the same New Yorkers whose rents keep rising even as their paychecks don't, who are sick of hidden costs and junk fees making it harder to make ends meet.

5:48And they are the same New Yorkers who lose precious time with their families every week as they ride the slowest buses in America to and from work. The Coney Island bid is the first step of many as we redouble our commitment to a prosperity shared among all New Yorkers. Thank you to everyone here who believed in this project, who ushered this project to this moment. Coney Island and all of our city will be better for it now it is my honor to sign the certificate of incorporation for the Coney Island business improvement district I would like to invite councilmember Santa Suoso to join me in doing so from a very small former falafel shop in 2017 here we are at the boardwalk came a long way Council member. We will now hear from our council member, Kayla Santosuoso.

7:06Thank you, Mr. Mayor, my good friend, and thank you to everyone who has made today possible. Coney Island is one of the most legendary neighborhoods in the world that attracts visitors across the globe, most notably during the summer months. But when the days get shorter and the tourists pack up and go home, it's my job as council member of Coney Island to think about and serve the people and business owners that call Coney Island home year-round. These are the people and the businesses that make Coney Island so special.

7:40Despite being one of the city's most iconic neighborhoods, the unfortunate fact is that a sad history of government neglect of this area has made Coney Islanders accustomed to going to bat for basic services that the rest of the city takes for granted. That ends today. This Coney Island bid will beautify our streets, help to give our small businesses a fighting chance year-round, and be a source of support and improvement for our commercial corridors from surf to mermaid. And importantly, this bid will be governed by and composed of residents, property owners, and business owners who all have a stake in making Coney Island the best it can be. And that is why it will succeed. This is only possible today because of the hard work of many committed business owners residents and elected officials I have to shout out in particular my predecessor former councilmember Justin Brannan one of his very lack last acts while in office was getting this across

8:42the finish line I want to shout out the Alliance for Coney Island without whom this really would not have happened I also want to shout out Daniel Abramson from the Brooklyn borough president's office as well and of course I want to thank our mayor for coming to Coney Island today to seal the deal, co-signing our commitment to giving Coney Island the love and attention it so desperately needs and deserves. It's an honor to serve and represent Coney Island, and it's an honor to see this important project through today.

9:12Thank you, everybody. And now... Of Wonder Wheel fame himself, Dennis Verdaris. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Good afternoon. My name is Dennis Verdaris, and I am the co-owner of Dino's Wonder Wheel Amusement Park on the boardwalk, right here, which is the intersection of Lula Verdaris Way, named after my mom, and Dino's Verdaris Place, named after my dad. My family and I are very excited about this bid.

9:47I look forward to all of the benefits that it will bring not only to the amusement district but also to Mermaid Avenue which it richly deserves. The most important thing that the bid will provide is consistent supplemental sanitation which is so important. Services will be five days a week during the season and three days a week in the offseason. Right now the Alliance for Coney Island is providing sanitation based on funds that we get from the grants funding cycle from our council members and local politicians, of course.

10:24Bid services will be more consistent throughout the year with this funding that we're going to generate. The bid will also provide landscaping and streetscape services, as Pamela knows, including tree pit maintenance and planting trees and flowers. The bid will net will also provide something that would I'm very familiar with the past couple of weeks, snow removal at curbs and crossworks, as well as graffiti removal and power washing, all very important quality of life issues that we desperately need here.

10:57All of the services combined will create a positive experience not only for the residents but also for the visitors and make you feel good about your neighborhood. And I just want to tell you a little story about one of our employees that was working here many years ago, and he's gone on to bigger and better things. His name is Akeem Allen, and he lived in Marlboro Projects and was very excited to learn that he was chosen from the lottery to fill out the paperwork and come in for an interview for an apartment at 1515 Surf Avenue.

11:34he was so happy to learn that he might be able to live in Coney Island finally this is what we need people that want to live and work here not run away the bid services and enhancements to the district will continue to attract more Rakeem Allens and new businesses to our neighborhood remember everybody a rising tide raises all ships in the harbor so all of us working together to beautify this area and make it safe for everybody that comes here and visit here and live here. We're all rowing in the same direction. So thank you very much to our former council member, Justin Brennan. Thank you to our new council member, Kayla Centrioso. Especially thank you to Mr. Mayor here for signing our document today and having it notarized to make it very official.

12:21i want to also shout out to uh fellow steering committee members uh that saw this through the last decade or so uh we owe it all to alexandra silversmith who started it she started it all for us many years ago and insisted on moving forward and danny murphy took the took the football from her and uh kept it up kept us all together attending meeting after me i said we another meeting are you kidding me when's this gonna end i got family you know i have a business to run here but yeah so thank you to everybody that helped us see this through thank you to my family who supported me through this whole process my nephew dj uh my son dinos sorry i can go on and on but thank you so much guys really appreciate it and one more thing it's really nice to be here in the in the winter but it's a little it's a little creepy because the

13:21rides aren't put together and it really But I want to invite everybody back, especially this guy right here. I want to invite you back for opening day, March 29th, to cut the ribbon, because we do our annual Blessing of the Rides. And you have to see this event. It's really heartwarming. So we invite local kids from the Salton Sea Mission to come and ride for free and bless the rides for us, because that's how my dad started it 50-something years ago. And we continue that today.

13:54So thank you so much, Mr. Mayor. Really appreciate it. Such a pleasure. Yes, sir. Thank you. Now, please join me in welcoming Pam Pettyjohn. Thank you. Good afternoon, everyone, and thank you so much for coming out to Coney Island. I'm Pamela Pettyjohn, and it has been the greatest honor to work alongside of residents, merchants, and students to help beautify Coney Island. I am the founder and the president of Coney Island Beautification Project.

14:28And thank you, Mayor Mondani, for coming to Coney Island today and making such a historic opportunity for us. I'll never forget the look on elementary school children's faces when they discovered earthworms while planting in the tree beds with my organization on Mermaid Avenue. While it might look like work to you and I, the students found joy, beauty, and feel ownership of their community in Coney Island while improving our community.

15:02We expect the formation of the Coney Island Bid will be important to all of us. Hopefully, the bid will carry out our beautification efforts, providing the structure, resources, and long-term commitment needed to help to keep our work going year after year, building on the work of Coney Island Beautification Project. I look forward to seeing the bid carry out the work to help Coney Island and small businesses, neighbors, and our families so that they can thrive.

15:40Thank you, Mayor Mondani, and I thank you for your vision for Coney Island, and I look forward to working with you in the future. And thank you both for everything that you do. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you so much. I wonder, other than sanitation, what concrete impacts residents can expect this to have? Obviously, sometimes things like this are hard to quantify their everyday lives.

16:13Absolutely. Well, I think first and foremost, and you've heard this also from prior speakers, this bid will also bring a regularity and a sustained commitment to some of the services that are so critical in maintaining Coney Island, maintaining the boardwalk maintaining the surrounding area and it supplements so much of the work the city is doing and what i'm so thankful to be here for is to follow the lead of businesses in this community because a bid can only be established when you have a majority of businesses making that decision themselves and today is the opportunity for the city to join hands and say that not only will we establish this bid but that we are so excited for everything that it will bring i love roller coasters i was on the phoenix like four months ago um i i'm a big fan of coney island

17:14Big fan of rollercoasters. Also a big fan of the bumper cars that you can go on, just not too far from the boardwalk. Many a memory listening to Pop Smoke while being in those bumper cars. Yeah, I would say 10 out of 10, recommend. Cyclone, also incredible. All of these things around me are great. Slingshot is a little too much for me. Over on the beach, there's a polar plunge going on right now. Right now? Well, you know, running from there got me to do the polar plunge. and i was yeah i was not too far from here just dripping wet in my suit talking about the importance of the rent guidelines board so thankfully i think the days of the polar plunge are over for now maybe one day maybe when we're doing the 10 year anniversary of the bit who knows how's it going boss yeah what's going on so i don't want to talk all right yeah sorry yeah we can talk about it later i hope you feel better yeah we got the rental rip

18:16off hearings coming up yes um and uh they're primarily focusing on gathering complaints from people in privately run buildings uh why not nicher residents and is there going to be an opportunity for nicher residents to hear their grievances so we are going to be approaching The housing crisis in a wide variety of ways. One of those are these rental ripoff hearings, which will be taking place in every borough of our city to give New Yorkers an opportunity not only to attest to the conditions that they are living through, but also to help inform what city policy should be in following through on those conditions and holding bad landlords to account. And we will also continue to work with NYCHA residents to ensure that they are being delivered the quality of service that they've long been denied. And while we know that so much of The reason that NYCHA residents are living through a system that requires around $80 billion of capital improvements by last count is a lack of commitment from the federal government.

19:13The city also has to make clear what we will be doing. And so I was proud to be in the Rockaways not too long ago to announce the investment of heat pumps at a NYCHA development because these are the kinds of investments we can make that not only address the systems of heating and cooling that have long outlived their useful life, but also to ensure that we can deliver a quality of life as well as taking on the climate crisis simultaneously. We will continue to do so in our work. One real quick question. Just was curious about, we got the seven New Yorkers died of hypothermia in their homes. We're wondering if the, you know, if your administration is investigating that right now?

19:51So we mourn the loss of lives of New Yorkers. And we keep their families in our thoughts. And at this time, what we know about their deaths is that they were within private residences. The preliminary indications point to hypothermia. Beyond that, there's no additional information to share. Thank you guys so much. All right, we're going to do a group photo and then we're going to...

Source and licence

Recording: File:2026-02-16 Mayor Mamdani Holds Press Conference to Make an Announcement.webm by NYC Mayor's Office (2026-02-16), via Wikimedia Commons. Licence: CC BY 4.0.

The transcript is machine speech-to-text by the TidyTools Audio & video transcriber; the summary, key points and chapters were written by Claude from that transcript. Both may contain errors: check the recording before quoting it.