Dude, It Would Be Zone Uncool To Do That And Have The Astroland Site Sit Vacant For Years

As Astroland prepares for its final season, some city officials are worrying — without attribution — that developer Joe Sitt is simply in it to change the zoning and then flip the land for, as some might say, big buck$:

Several officials told The Post they’re concerned that Joseph Sitt’s next selling spree could involve the massive assemblage of beachfront land his Thor Equities has bought up in Coney Island — especially if City Hall doesn’t allow his planned $2 billion entertainment complex to include luxury housing.

“The guy has a track record of flipping land for big bucks,” said one source close to the project. “He’s done it already in Coney Island and other Brooklyn projects like [Downtown Brooklyn’s] Albee Square Mall, and who’s to say he won’t play the city again?”

Chuck Reichenthal, a member of the city’s Coney Island Development Corp., is worried Thor will hold up the plan either by selling out or by holding out to see if the next mayor is willing to allow the housing.

“I look out my [Surf Avenue] office window, and what I see now is very sad,” he said. “They’re beginning to create a ghost town.”

. . .

[Officials] note that when Sitt bought the Albee Square Mall on Fulton Street five years ago for $24 million, he talked about giving the gritty site the same type of Vegas-style makeover he’s now pitching for Coney Island.

Instead, Sitt spent $10 million rehabbing the mall — which he renamed The Gallery at Fulton Street — but never followed through on his grand plan.

Then after the city rezoned to allow for larger development there, Sitt sat on the mall before finally agreeing last January to sell it for $125 million.

“It’s a great deal for him and it’s going to bring larger-scale development there by the new buyer, but it’s not going to be the ‘Bellagio of malls’ that Sitt said he was going to turn it into,” a source said.

In Coney Island, Sitt last year sold one of the properties he bought for $90 million — a 168,000-square-foot tract known as the Washington Bath House site — after the city said it would allow residential development there.

A spokesman for Thor Equities, Lee Silberstein, insisted that the company isn’t planning to back out of Coney Island.

Location Scout: Coney Island Amusement Core, Albee Square.