The spin doctors in the local media have been putting a happy face on the abject failure of the Niagara Falls Holiday Market, adopting the mantra that the "European-style" attraction deserves a second chance to work out the bugs that this year's version suffered.
Their concerted efforts to enthusiastically prop up any dingbat idea proposed by Mayor Paul Dyster apparently didn't end when Dyster won re-election in November.
First off, the only thing that was "European" about the market was that it resembled some of the refugee camps established across the continent in the aftermath of World War II. Broken-down garden sheds, tents, trucks and even hastily hung sheets of plastic served as venues for the sale of tchotchkes and street food.
The shabby ice-skating rink was disastrous even compared to the one Lewiston residents managed to put up with money collected through bake sales and other community events, and the dwarf Christmas tree that served as the centerpiece for the shabby tent city was emblematic of the slipshod nature of the entire operation.
And the old Festival of Lights was drawing 10 times the number of people who attended the Holiday Market when city officials pulled the plug, calling it a waste of time and resources.
We know for certain that the craptacular mess cost the taxpayers of Niagara Falls and the state of New York $450,000. Idaho huckster Mark Rivers said he put in another $500,000, but if that debacle actually cost nearly a million dollars to stage, I'll eat the silly red scarf he wore throughout the thing in the Como Deli window. It's my belief that he took the taxpayers' hard-earned money, spent about half of it on the "event," pocketed the rest, and will walk away from Niagara Falls with more than $200,000 for what amounted to a few weeks of his time.
The City Council should demand a full audit, paid for by Rivers, that would show definitively whether or not the public was fleeced by this fly-by-night snake oil salesman from Idaho.
Because until then, Dyster's cheering section in the local media will continue to spread the lie that the mess was actually a success.
Sam Hoyt used to be a state assemblyman, best known for bagging young female interns in Albany as his long-suffering wife kept the home fires burning.
As such, he made the perfect candidate to head the regional branch of the state Economic Development Corp. that is responsible for overseeing the rebirth of comfortable Niagara Falls. He is the boss of the lackluster head of USA Niagara Development Corp. Chris Schoepflin, and also a longtime friend and supporter of Mayor Paul Dyster.
The three of them -- Hoyt, Schoepflin and Dyster -- held a news conference last week at which they breathlessly announced, well, nothing.
They told the gathered throng of three or four alleged journalists that seven developers were vying for control of the less than one-acre site formerly occupied by the Great American Balloon attraction and, more recently, by a parking lot operation that sold marijuana and bootleg tickets to local attractions as a sideline.
Is there any way of verifying that seven developers are actually interested in the site? No, of course not. But still, it wouldn't be surprising if USA Niagara and Dyster's City Hall were prepared to hand out the same sort of lucrative deal extended to Mark Rivers for his Holiday Market fiasco.
And Hoyt, Dyster and Schoepflin, having been the ones who fell for the Holiday Market scam in the first place, might just be stupid enough to do it again.
In fact, they are most certainly stupid enough to do it again.
The truth of the matter is that, if any of the three of them had the slightest inkling about how to run a business, they wouldn't have spent their lives sucking at the public teat as bureaucrats and politicians. As a taxpaying employer and businessman here in the Falls, I wouldn't hire any of them to run a hotdog stand.
Politicians who think they know more than businesspeople about how to do business constitute the single biggest problem holding Western New York and, indeed, the entire state back from the kind of development currently booming in places like California, Texas and the Carolinas.
Hope you all had a happy Christmas and are now ready to embark on the merriest and most prosperous New Year ever. Here at the Niagara Falls Reporter, as we enter into our 13th year of service to the community, a cautious optimism pervades for the city we love.
Since we started the Niagara Falls Reporter, the city has had three joke mayors in a row, one of whom went to prison for corruption in office, and another the jury's still out on, and a power structure that has been the target of numerous investigations, indictments and worse.
But we're still here, right? After doing everything they could to tax us out of existence, after all the mean-spirited attacks on private business, we're still here. It feels kind of good.
| Niagara Falls Reporter | www.niagarafallsreporter.com | Jan. 3 2012 |