Square Feet: As Coney Island Stirs, One Man’s Vision Is Unbuilt

His plans for year-round amusement parks and bustling commerce for full-time employment never came to fruition. The properties he bought up in the 1970s and ‘80s – the Shore Theater, the Thunderbolt roller coaster and the Playland Arcade — either remain dilapidated and largely vacant, or have been utterly vanquished.

And while a burst of new retail development and two additional amusement parks have been attracting more visitors to Coney Island, Mr. Bullard’s ideas for a few key parcels seem stalled again. He died of Lou Gehrig’s disease in April, prompting his lone heir, his daughter, Jasmine, to remove his properties, including the decrepit but landmark-status Shore Theater, from the market for the first time in years.

To hear Mr. Bullard’s friends, relatives and business associates tell it, the deals that fell through over the years closely follow the ups and downs of Coney Island itself. In the 1940s, when Mr. Bullard was a child living in the Soundview section of the Bronx, his family would take the subway to Coney Island a few times each summer, recalled his sister, Nellie Bullard, a retired nurse in Florida. They would eat Nathan’s hot dogs and ride the Thunderbolt. “Those were the real good days,” she said, before the beach resort area declined precipitously in the 1960s and ‘70s.

Born in 1938 in East Harlem, Mr. Bullard grew up impoverished as the son of a black father, who was a plumber, and a Puerto Rican mother who raised five children. He began working at the age of 8 shining shoes, according to a television interview produced for the Manhattan Neighborhood Network TV channel in the early 2000s.

And although he said he largely shrugged off prejudice, his sister blamed racism for his failure to secure a Kentucky Fried Chicken franchise in New York in the 1960s. But he later turned that to his advantage, having a friend analyze the chain’s batter and adding Puerto Rican spices, or “a touch of love,” his sister said.

In 1968, that recipe grew into Kansas Fried Chicken, a chain named for Max’s Kansas City, a popular nightclub in Lower Manhattan where Mr. Bullard liked to spend time, said Ita Lew Bullard, who said she was his common-law wife for 35 years until they separated in 2002. He made his fortune from the chain, which once had 18 locations across the country — including one on the ground floor of the Shore Theater.

The business eventually closed, but the profits enabled Mr. Bullard to buy up properties on Coney Island and to begin dreaming of restoring the resort area’s luster with new or improved rides and parks.

“He wanted year-round amusements, year-round employees,” said Ralph Perfetto, a Coney Island resident and political organizer who knew Mr. Bullard since the 1970s. “It would make the neighborhood safe at night, it would be lighted up and clean, so we were strongly in favor of Horace Bullard.” Even Mr. Bullard’s stationery was inscribed with carnival rides on it.

He bought the Shore Theater for $125,000 in 1979, Ms. Lew Bullard said. Within a few years, Mr. Bullard had assembled enough land to unveil a $450 million plan for a new amusement park on the site of the former Steeplechase Park, which included a 110,500-square-foot parcel between Surf Avenue and the boardwalk where the old Thunderbolt ride, immortalized in “Annie Hall,” once sat. But financing fell apart when Wall Street tumbled in the late 1980s. Then, in what would turn into a drawn-out battle with City Hall, Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani revoked Mr. Bullard’s approvals for the project, in 1994, two months after taking office. Eventually, the city demolished the Thunderbolt.

Even when Mr. Bullard later lined up prominent development partners, he said his projects never received a go-ahead from the city. In later interviews, he blamed racist attitudes for the roadblocks.

Jasmine Bullard declined to explain her reasoning for removing the parcels from the market. In an interview, she said: “I share my father’s vision for a better Coney Island. But I don’t have any plans that are specific right now.”

Analysts say her decision may be a signal that the properties aren’t going to be sold at discounted prices as part of some fire sale simply because Mr. Bullard has died. Others say Ms. Bullard would be wise to wait, as improving land values, based in part on the increasing revival of parts of Coney Island, may enable her to get even higher prices for her holdings after the summer winds die down.

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: June 24, 2013

An article on the Square Feet pages on Wednesday about Coney Island’s redevelopment misstated the effect recent zoning changes had on the area allotted for amusement parks. When the neighborhood was rezoned in 2009, the size of the area zoned for amusement was reduced to 27 acres, not expanded to that size. (The number of rides increased, however, with the addition of two new parks later on.)

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