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Spy planes and fighter aircraft are quietly being moved to a new location, and Afghanistan isn't even part of the equation.
In a story you read about first in the Reporter back in July, Niagara Falls real estate baron Frank Amendola announced plans to move the Niagara Aerospace Museum from its cramped quarters at the nearly deserted Summit Park Mall to a new location in the heart of the city.
Over the past three weeks, those plans have come to fruition, as the disassembled aircraft have been moved piece by piece into Amendola's Niagara Office Building.
"We'll have it open before spring," Amendola said.
Plans call for airplanes, spacecraft, flight simulators and other artifacts to be housed in an 86,000-square-foot glass and steel structure to be built at the rear of the building, on Wendell Way between Third and Fourth streets. The new Aerospace Museum will incorporate portions of the first and second floors of the present office building, as well as open space currently used for parking.
Museum officials have long been unhappy with their remote Wheatfield location. And the mall's low ceilings and pillar supports made it impossible to display aircraft in an "in-flight" mode or even provide an unobstructed view of the exhibits as they sat on the floor. Furthermore, only a small portion of the museum's outstanding collection could be displayed at any one time due to the lack of space.
The new museum is the result of year-long negotiations between Amendola, the Smithsonian Institution and Niagara Aerospace officials.
Architectural drawings of the new facility show airplanes in the collection -- including a 1911 Curtiss Pusher, a World War II Bell Aircobra fighter and a supersonic F-94A jet -- suspended by cables from a high ceiling. A realistic conning tower, described by planners as the project's "signature," will be erected on the Third Street side. And the long-unused theater on the Niagara Office Building's second floor will be utilized to show film, mostly shot by engineers at the former Bell Aerospace here, of the test flights that led to the creation of some of the world's most famous aircraft.
Additionally, a dozen flight simulators will give museum patrons the opportunity to experience supersonic flight for themselves.
While planners said the museum definitely would benefit from the opening of the Seneca Indian casino at the nearby Niagara Falls Convention and Civic Center, Amendola told the Reporter in July he was confident that current convention business, combined with normal levels of tourism, would be more than enough to sustain the project.
"This is a natural for downtown Niagara Falls," a source close to the project said. "And with the exodus we've had over the years to Wheatfield and the Town of Niagara, it's nice to see something coming back this way for a change."
Ironically, the move comes at a time when area politicians and newspaper columnists are calling for the city's Department of Motor Vehicles office to be moved from its downtown location to the moribund mall.