All Quiet on the Hamister Front, Too Quiet

Every elected official from Gov, Soup to Mayor Nuts, applauded when the Hamister deal was signed. Ok. So where is the hotel?

The days, weeks, and months pass.

It is amazing how, just before election time 2013, the Hamister hotel deal was such an emergency.

Niagara Falls Mayor Paul Dyster put before the council a plan that would allow a private developer to build a hotel with large taxpayer grants on land owned by the city.

Dyster wanted the council to all but gift valuable city-owned land on Rainbow Blvd, 300 feet from the entrance to Niagara Falls State Park, to Hamister.

The smallish, five-story hotel deal, Dyster said, needed to be quickly approved by the council or else Niagara Falls would lose its "tipping point" project - the one and only Hamister hotel.

Relentless coverage from the media followed.

AssemblymanJohn Ceretto, ?State Sen. George Maziarz, Sen. Chuck Schumer, Rep Brian Higgins, Council member Kristen Grandinetti, and Gov, Andrew Cuomo himself made strongly worded statements to pressure the holdouts on the council to approve the hotel deal.

We were wondering when Obama would call in.

But we asked questions: Where was Hamister's financing to build the hotel?

Why was the prime land being given away ($100,000) by the city?

Why should a small hotel be built right next to the Niagara Falls State Park, instead of building an attraction there?

Mayor Dyster condemned former Councilman Sam Fruscione, who was running for re-election last year, for asking some of the questions.

The mainstream media, in editorials, condemned Fruscione and the council majority at the time who were hesitant about the deal - calling them "three blind mice" and worse - for not approving the Hamister deal right away.

(We were, as usual, the sole voice against the Hamister hotel deal.)

The governor weighed in, saying it would be a "tragedy" if the hotel deal was not approved.

It was approved.

And Hamister was anointed as the new savior of Niagara Falls.

Now eight months have passed.

You don't hear talk of the Hamister Hotel anywhere.

You don't hear any more from the press or the politicians about this small hotel that was to be the second coming of Niagara Falls.

Construction was supposed to start last month.

Now it is nearing the end of May and still there is nothing.

By this time, almost every one suspects (or should suspect) that Emperor Hamister has no clothes. That he might not have the money and maybe never had it.

He wanted the taxpayers to build him a free hotel.

The voters un-elected Fruscione who lost the election over his dissent of the Hamister hotel deal.

The voters handed power to Dyster giving him a new council on the strength that he needed, we needed, Hamister.

Ok. All right.

Where is he?

This runt-like hotel was supposed to be the salvation of the city. So where is it?