My Coney Island memories of former New Yorker Jennifer Howze

Nathan's has served a mean hot dog for nearly 100 years. For New York, the sausage is surprisingly small but with a strong aftertaste, accompanied by sauteed onions in a soft bap. Served with a regular beer and thick, crinkle cut chips, the bill comes to under a fiver.

Just off the waterfront at Coney Island, the snack sets you up nicely for the 3.2 miles from one end of the boardwalk to the other, often walking over crumbling slats and past a century of arcades and amusement rides. You'll pass Shoot the Freak, the cold clam and hot shrimp stalls, the wooden rollercoaster and the aquarium.

You'll see jugglers on the beach, skaters on the boardwalk, Deno's Wonder Wheel and tired souvenir shops. And you should grab a hotdog and walk the boardwalk this summer, because Coney Island will probably never be the same again.

One of the two remaining amusement parks, Astroland, will close at the end of the season in September, taking with it a slew of arcades, rides and stalls. The park, one of the prime sites on the waterfront will be boarded up, as the future direction of Coney Island remains clouded in uncertainty.

Coney Island is just a 40-minute Metro ride from Grand Central Station, a journey New Yorkers have done for a hundred years.The first carousel was built in 1876 and the area had its heyday in the 1930s, since when Coney Island has been in decline. But the future isn't totally bleak.

One protected landmark, the Parachute Jump - "Brooklyn's Eiffel Tower" - was overhauled last year and is now illuminated until 11pm year-round, and midnight at weekends during the season - although it closed as a ride in 1968.

Two other working rides are also protected landmarks and will continue operating outside of Astroland: the Cyclone rollercoaster (80 years old last month and still shockingly terrifying) and Deno's Wonder Wheel, built in 1920, which has rocking chairs that slide down a track. But the uncertainty is palpable.

Steve, one of two brothers that owns Deno's Wonder Wheel Amusement Park - the remaining park - has had enough. "I want to sell up but my brother doesn't. The next four years when they close the park and board up around us - that could hurt us."

The person causing the uncertainty is businessman Joe Sitt and his company, Thor, which has spent $100m over the past decade buying up large swathes of Coney Island, including Astroland from the Albert family last November. Sitt says he has grandiose plans to build an entertainment, hotel and residential complex on the front and hopes to start development later this year.

It's a vision that many have no wish to share. Charlie Denson, a Coney Island resident and author of a 2002 book, A Coney Island Roller Coaster Family, says: “He (Sitt) wants to build condominiums but the city won't let him do it. The development isn’t going to get zoning change.

"A lot of older amusement owners were feeling left out so he was able to buy up important parcels of land - the city made mistakes as well. But Sitt's track record isn’t very good. He is trying to push the project down the city's throat - but you can't have condos and an amusement park together. It would be a terrible loss.