Service on the F train will be suspended weekends between Church Avenue and the Coney Island/Stillwell Avenue stations starting March 20th and lasting through the end of the year -- a move that Coney Island merchants worry will destroy their crucial summer tourism season.

The MTA said in a release Friday that "the next phase of the Culver Line Signal Modernization project – which will improve service reliability and performance throughout the F line for decades after its completion – will begin on Friday, March 20. The $253 million project will replace 70-year-old signals between Church Av and Coney Island and provide improved and more reliable service and more efficient operations."

The suspensions will begin every Friday night at 9:45 p.m. and last through 5 a.m. Monday mornings. The MTA will run a free shuttle bus service, the Culver Link, to serve the F train stations between Church Avenue and Coney Island/Stillwell Avenue. There are also plans for a free express shuttle bus directly to Coney Island from Church Avenue. Several holiday weekends like Easter and Passover, July 4th, Thanksgiving and Christmas will have weekend service.

The head of the Coney Island business merchant group said they received little warning of the service changes.

"We received notice like less than a month before the shutdown is supposed to start, which I think is outrageous in itself," said Alexandra Silversmith, executive director of the Alliance for Coney Island. She said the lack of notice "clearly shows a disregard for the business community here but also for all the residents who live not just in Coney Island, but all the way from Church Avenue down, making the assumption like people don't work on the weekends and don't have other things that they need the train for."

With no weekend service on the F train line, Silversmith said people will have trouble attending special events like the Brooklyn Half Marathon (which has its finish line on the boardwalk), the Mermaid Parade, and the planned 100th anniversary celebrations for the Wonder Wheel.

Dennis Vourderis, vice president of Deno’s Wonder Wheel Park, told Bklyner that the weekend service suspensions would have "a huge negative economic impact": “Many of the 100 of our employees use the F line to get to work. Everyone will be late, I guarantee you. Visitors will be very upset and probably not come back again as the shuttle buses will be stuck in traffic trying to get past the increased traffic,” he said.

Silversmith said the change will also hurt businesses that are year-round: "We have been having some struggles here with year-round businesses really being successful and thriving, and now we have a handful that are finally flourishing, and have expanded even like the Coney Island Brewing Company," she said. "But then the MTA goes and sort of undercuts that success."

The Brooklyn Cyclones have ten weekend games and seven Friday night games scheduled that will be affected by the subway changes.

"Obviously, we understand the facilities were severely impacted by Sandy. We get the need to fix things and get back to normal so we know that work has to be done," said Steven Cohen, the vice president of the Brooklyn Cyclones minor league baseball team. "So to have that critical artery shut down when a lot of people are coming to Coney Island, it could be a potential problem for the businesses. There are alternatives but the F train is one of the main ways people get to and from Coney Island. So having to shut down at this point of the year is a difficult time."

Silversmith pointed out that the N train was currently not running between Stillwell Avenue and 86th Street either, though that service is scheduled to resume in April.

The MTA says they have no choice but to schedule the work during the warmer months, since the F line is elevated after Church Avenue.

“This project will replace 70-year-old signals between Church Av and Coney Island in order to improve service reliability and performance for the 600,000 people who rely on the F line in three boroughs every day, for decades after its completion," said Kayla Shults, MTA spokesperson, in an emailed statement. "We have put together a robust alternate service plan and customer communications effort, including beach season express shuttle buses to carry people directly to Coney Island from Church Av. N train service to Coney Island will also be restored by the end of April, and there are multiple transfer points in the city for other trains that serve Coney Island. We have scheduled the work on weekends in order to minimize disruptions for the vast majority of our customers. Above-ground work requires good weather and daylight hours for worker safety and to minimize the impact to the nearby community; delaying the start of this long-term project will only lengthen its duration, add to project costs and delay the benefits for hundreds of thousands of Brooklyn, Queens and Manhattan residents."

Silversmith said while she understands the need for the work, she wants the MTA to delay the work until after the height of the tourism season -- "To see if it can be pushed to the end of the summer," she said. "I understand it needs to be done, and it definitely does need to be done, because I know that that train has signal issues. But it just seems like it could have been thought out in a better way right now."