Excitement Generated by Wallenda Long Gone; Development Plan Looks Like Another Empty Promise

By Tony Farina

It has been 12 long years since real excitement was generated for anything in Niagara Falls and nothing that has happened since or is on the drawing boards now will come close to electrifying the city like Nik Wallenda’s historic tightrope walk across Niagara Falls.

It was June 15, 2012 when more than 13 million viewers from around the world and tens of thousands on site on both sides of the river watched daredevil Wallenda take his incredible night walk across Niagara Falls after months of controversy to clear the path for him to really put Niagara Falls on the world map again.  It was a huge success.

But alas, Wallenda wanted to stay in Niagara Falls and open an entertainment tourist attraction that would have been a big draw for the American side but that didn’t happen.  The powers that be at the time instead went hook, line, and sinker to build a grand hotel for a political crony of the governor and the city, pretty much gifting land with tax breaks on Rainbow Blvd. for the Hamister Hotel, nothing close to the possibilities that a Wallenda tourist center would have brought to the Falls.

Wallenda and his dreams are long gone and left standing is a small hotel that is a legacy to political connections, the sort of connections that have kept Niagara Falls an empty and broken city with development projects falling nearly every day.

The latest development brain child, this time by Mayor Restaino, is to buy 39 properties on Main St., including the Rapids Theater, with $1.5 million in tribal funds transferred to Niagara Falls Urban Renewal to buy the properties ensnarled in a tangled web since much of the property which has been owned by Blue Cardinal Capital, has already eaten up more than a $1 million in state funds and Blue Cardinal’s lender, CNB Bank, has reportedly initiated foreclosure proceedings on 27 of Blue Cardinal’s properties.  Investigative Post reports that Blue Cardinal is behind on property taxes and delinquent in paying its bills.

What a tangled mess the city may be getting into by forcing taxpayers into the development business which has been a failure just about anywhere you look in Niagara Falls.  City and state taxpayers are on the hook for millions of dollars to political developers, like in the Hamister Hotel deal 12 years ago, who bring little if anything to the table.  And transparency in government deals is as murky as the water in a hole in the ground next to the Falls.

It has been a history of failed public development in Niagara Falls and there’s more failure ahead, given the mess on the Main St. properties that the city hopes to acquire from another failed public developer.

The city and the state could have combined forces and dollars by keeping Wallenda as a tourist attraction, capitalizing on his world fame, and bringing new tourists to Niagara Falls, tourists with money to spend in the city.  But no, the city got a shadow of the hotel that had been hyped to the moon and Wallenda, the aerialist who put Niagara Falls on the world map again, is long gone.

The only thing that has changed in 12 years is the legacy of failed deeds by government, including the City Market and the Rod Davis venture, in their efforts to revitalize Niagara Falls.  Worse now than ever.