City selects RYBAK to develop Coney Island’s Tilyou Towers

A rendering of Tilyou Towers in Coney Island West; construction should begin by 2027.
Image credit: IMC Architecture

CONEY ISLAND — RYBAK Development will lead the next phase of development on Coney Island West of a city-owned parking lot into mixed-income housing, the NYC Economic Development Corporation announced on Tuesday, Oct. 28.

The project will convert the city/NYCEDC-owned “Parcel A” – an 80,000-square-foot lot on Surf Avenue between West 21st and 22nd streets, west of the Coney Island Amusement District – into over 500 units of mixed-income housing, 25% of which will be affordable.

Brooklyn-based IMC Architecture is the designer for this complex, which will provide ground-floor retail space and replace existing public surface parking with new public structured parking. Named Tilyou Towers, for George C. Tilyou, founder of Steeplechase Park, the project is slated to begin construction expected in 2027, with a completion goal of 2030.

George Cornelius Tilyou, a prominent 19th-century Brooklyn businessman, founded the iconic Steeplechase Park in Coney Island in 1897, one year before the Great Consolidation into New York City. When it opened, the amusement park featured mechanical rides, funhouses and the signature simulated steeplechase horse race game.

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