During one of the countless news conferences at Prospect Point to announce one development or another leading up to the opening of the Seneca Niagara Casino, state Assemblywoman Francine Del Monte took her turn at the microphone.
"We want that," she said, pointing across the Niagara River to the ever-changing skyline of Niagara Falls, Ont., "over here!"
That pretty well summed up the mantra of every politician -- city, county, state and federal, Republican and Democrat -- who opened his or her mouth in the months leading up to the opening of the first casino in Western New York. The casino would provide jobs, spur offshoot development creating more jobs, bail out a cash-starved city and generally allow everyone to live in a state of bliss approaching ecstasy.
Because, after all, that's what's happening in Niagara Falls, Ont. Right?
Right?
Well, apparently not.
Last week, longtime Mayor Wayne Thomson, on whose watch Casino Niagara opened and that aforementioned skyline erupted, got swept out of office along with the city council members who supported him.
And it wasn't even close -- political novice Ted Salci won handily, with Thomson receiving barely a third of the vote.
So what happened?
The answers are worth considering as Niagara Falls, N.Y., struggles to build its own tourism-based economy.
The people who backed Salci felt Thomson had lost touch with the city outside the tourist district, for one thing.
"It just seems that anything that was happening was for tourism," said Gus Koroneos, a denturist who owns a home and operates his practice in the city. "The city always improved the tourist area, and in the older areas, the streets and sewers were neglected."
A drive through the city demonstrates Koroneos' point.
Clifton Hill and the surrounding streets are smooth and spacious, with fresh black surfaces and turning lanes at most intersections. The rest of the city's gray, cracking thoroughfares, though, look to be suffering from the same sort of neglect that makes driving in most of Niagara Falls, N.Y., a motorist's nightmare and an alignment shop owner's dream.
Outside the tourist district, cars clog streets too narrow for the traffic in some areas. The Canadian Auto Association recently launched a survey that allows drivers to nominate Ontario's worst roads. A number of Niagara Falls streets have already been nominated, including the area around the intersection of Thorold Stone and Dorchester roads, as well as Stanley Avenue and Drummond Road.
Potholes alone didn't create last week's landslide. City Hall's treatment of the tourist district as compared to the rest of the city, though, fueled a perception that Thomson and his supporters on the council -- known as "the A team" to critics -- were mainly concerned with pleasing a handful of large tourism concerns.
"Thomson was the mayor of the few," said Marie, a waitress at a restaurant outside the tourist area. "We need someone who will represent everyone."
Plenty of city residents were also unhappy about Thomson's easing of height restrictions on new buildings near the falls, including discussions about a new, 54-story hotel.
"It's like a cement wall around the falls," said Wes Hill, who, like his father and brothers, became famous locally for rescuing boaters stranded in the river and retrieving the bodies of those who didn't make it.
A seemingly smaller disagreement proved equally telling, after homeowners within a few miles of the falls complained about nightly fireworks during the summer.
"Some residents brought up the issue that seven days a week is a bit too much," Koroneos said. "City council said, 'Hey, the tourist industry loves it because the bars are filling up.' And that was the end of it.
"It wasn't even a polite '(expletive) off.' It was '(expletive) off, we're not going to even to listen to you.'"
The administration's growing detachment from the majority of its constituents became apparent during the weeks leading up to the election.
Rather than addressing concerns about infrastructure and the continuing escalation of tax rates despite the success of Casino Niagara, Thomson's campaign featured a series of large billboards emblazoned with the phrase "Keep the Momentum" and a picture of him in front of the suddenly controversial skyline.
Casino Niagara has been so successful since it opened in 1997, the original "temporary" facility is now scheduled to keep operating after the massive Niagara Fallsview Casino Resort opens next spring. Revenue from Casino Niagara flows to the Ontario provincial government that oversees it, but critics allege that little of it makes it back to Niagara Falls, as was promised before a referendum required to allow legalized gambling.
"We thought the casino was going to make our taxes go down," Koroneos said. "We don't know where those casino dollars are going. They're sure as hell not going toward our taxes, because our taxes are going up."
During the campaign, Salci's promise of a full audit of city finances to answer that question and others resonated with voters.
Another sore subject for Thomson's detractors was the condition of Queen Street, a main arterial in the city's downtown area. While most of the buildings have tenants, many were shuttered and ample parking abounded on two afternoons last week.
A little perspective here -- most residents of Niagara Falls, N.Y., would gladly swap its virtually abandoned Main Street for Queen Street, whose tenants include several banks, investment centers, furniture stores and restaurants.
But critics point out that Queen Street gets most of its traffic after those businesses are closed, when revelers of college age and younger from both sides of the border crowd into several nightclubs along the strip, which also serves as a late-night staging area for street prostitutes.
"Things are generally nice on our side, and we want to keep it that way," Koroneos said.
Even before New York State and the Seneca Nation reached an agreement to site a casino in downtown Niagara Falls, political leaders have pointed to tourism-related development as the solution to all the city's problems.
A look across the river, where that industry's success has been indisputable, shows that serious questions remain once you get past that neon skyline.
| Niagara Falls Reporter | www.niagarafallsreporter.com | November 18 2003 |