Domenic M. Recchia Jr., District 47 Council Member. Credit: Official NYC Council Photo by William Alatriste.
New York City Council Member Domenic M. Recchia Jr. represents District 47, covering Brooklyn’s Bensonhurst, Gravesend, Coney Island, and Brighton Beach neighborhoods. He is Chair of the City Council’s Finance Committee. He graduated from Brooklyn’s John Dewey High School, played football and received his undergraduate degree at Kent State University, and earned his juris doctor from Atlanta Law School. Recchia also has a Brooklyn private practice specializing in medical malpractice and personal injury.
Brooklyn beginnings. Recchia represents the community he’s grown up and lived in for most of his life. He fondly remembers his childhood days spent at Steeplechase Park. To memorialize those times and perhaps to predict his bright leadership ahead, he has a picture of himself as a young boy with his father at Coney Island, his bathing suit reading “I’m the boss.” As a boy, he witnessed the somber closing of Steeplechase Park in 1964. He recalls the long economic decline of the area, when Steeplechase Park remained vacant after plans to build high-rise apartments fell through and projects like MCU Park, built in 2001, were erected without forethought to smart future development. Though he thinks the field brings enormous economic benefits to the area, the Park was placed in the middle of City-owned land, which made rezoning and planning difficult during the Coney Island Comprehensive Rezoning Plan process. (See CityLand’s past coverage here). As Council Member, Recchia has been instrumental in breathing new life into the area through his work on the Comprehensive Rezoning Plan and is forging the way back from Hurricane Sandy’s devastation to the area.
