The date is official. After months of negotiation, Nik Wallenda will attempt his wire walk over Niagara Falls on Friday, June 15, in front of what are expected to be huge crowds on both sides of the gorge and a worldwide television audience. While many had hoped for a later date, extending the busy tourist season into mid-September and possibly even into October, the debate is over and Wallenda will officially begin training for his stunt on Thursday, May 10, on the grounds of the Seneca Niagara casino, for next month’s event.  Visitors will be welcome.
Wallenda will attempt the walk of his dreams over the gorge near the falls without a rescue helizcopter hovering nearby, although cable cars at each end of the two-inch wire rope will be ready to try and save him should he have trouble in the crossing. While Wallenda is a trained and highly experienced performer, the risk of his crossing is part of the spectacle and he is the latest in a long line of daredevils, in all sorts of contraptions or by wire, to brave the falls to make their case for history. The difference is this time the whole world will be watching. We wish Nik, a brave young man of unquestioned acrobatic skill, all the best and hope the event is a grand chapter in the history of Falls’ daredevils and boosts the appeal of the world wonder as a tourist destination for many years to come ….
New York Governor Andrew Cuomo made a daring splash of his own last week when he added some $450,000 to his more than $14.4 million campaign war chest in a Buffalo stop, one of biggest hauls by a politician in local history.
The Campaign 2014 event was held at the newly renovated Hotel Lafayette in downtown Buffalo, and featured a smiling Cuomo mingling briefly with some 100 well-heeled donors (minimum $5,000) including Russ Brandon, the CEO of the Buffalo Bills, who is in the midst of negotiations with Erie County and the state over how to pay for more than $200 million in stadium renovations the team wants as part of a new lease deal.  Taxpayers still don’t know how much that deal is going to cost them.
Brandon must be hoping he will do as well with the state as the Hotel Lafayette and developer Rocco Termini, who in a touch of irony given the Cuomo fund raiser, received a $2 million grant last January from Empire State Development, the primary agency overseeing the governor’s Regional Economic Development Councils. Cuomo says he’s in favor of campaign reform but he has not offered his plan as yet and he’s raising money at a fast clip, perhaps with an eye toward the White House in 2016. a run his father never made ….
There was more than Wallenda’s upcoming walk into history to talk about last week in Niagara Falls as the Niagara Falls Reporter, in an exclusive story, disclosed that city planning chief Tom DeSantis had quietly spent $36,000 to redo his kitchen in 2010 without obtaining the necessary city building permits. We have learned that DeSantis has since obtained the necessary permits at a cost of more than $1,000, including penalties, and will face a new assessment now that the work has been revealed. By all accounts, DeSantis is a top professional, well-schooled in the city’s planning code and thorough in making sure businesses meet the standards the city has set. It is unfortunate that he didn’t abide by the letter of the law in his own case and that oversight certainly tarnishes his image as a no-nonsense defender of the city’s code. In the end, you can’t have it both ways because somebody might catch you. That’s what happened to poor Tom, a top professional who stumbled badly on this one and seriously undermined his credibility.