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A few months back, my old friend Bill DeGidio came up for a visit from Texas. Bill and I grew up on the same block and have known each other for longer than we care to remember.
For the past decade or so, he's been a successful building contractor based in Houston, working on everything from houses to apartment complexes to commercial and office buildings.
At one point during his visit, I was called upon to get some art for a story we were doing on proposed sites for the new convention center. "Getting some art" is newspaper double-talk for taking pictures, so Bill and I went around and shot Nabisco, the Rainbow Centre Mall and Falls Street Faire.
Bill looked the Falls Street Faire up and down.
"Who built this?" he said as much as asked. "Who would use Dryvit up here?"
"Use what?"
"Dryvit, this fake stucco," he said, rubbing his hand over the building's textured exterior. "You never use this where there's a lot of moisture."
Bill pointed out other things about the Faire. Looking through one of the glass doors, for example, we saw long two-by-fours propping up interior walls. Chunks of the ceiling had collapsed, littering the floor.
We got the pictures, dropped them off and continued with our reunion. I never followed up on what he told me and had, in fact, forgotten about it.
Until last week.
That's when I came across a legal notice in, of all places, "People" magazine. It announced a proposed settlement to a class action lawsuit against the manufacturers of Dryvit.
"Plaintiffs allege, among other things, that (Dryvit) is defective because it entraps water introduced into the exterior wall resulting in potential damage to homes," the notice reads. "The lawsuit seeks monetary relief from Dryvit."
No wonder big chunks of the Falls Street Faire's exterior have broken off in recent years. You'd have to travel pretty far to find a place with more snow, rain and humidity than Niagara Falls.
It's a wonder the place hasn't fallen down altogether.
Unfortunately for the State of New York, which is seeking to seize the Faire under eminent domain, the lawsuit only covers one- and two-family homes.
Dryvit, unsurprisingly, denies culpability, the legal notice notes. Still, the company proposes in its settlement to pay for up to 50 percent of repairs for existing damage and provide up to $30,000 over a three-year period for future damage.
In an April 23 article, the Reporter predicted the fix was in and that the Falls Street Faire would be picked as the site of the new convention center. That was more than two months before the Hunter Group issued its $40,000 taxpayer-funded study concluding the same thing.
Except for the part about the fix being in, of course.
The Faire beat out Nabisco because it is located within the "development district" targeted for eminent domain by the state and because it is located next door to the financially strapped Holiday Inn Select.
It beat out Rainbow Centre because Mayor Irene Elia and City Administrator Al Joseph are doing everything in their power to get the Small Business Administration to move in there rather than taking those 100 jobs to Amherst. This is a desperate attempt to bolster Elia's flagging re-election hopes and provide a little payback for Cordish, whose unfortunate financial dealings with Joseph have been widely reported.
The politicians say the new convention center will be up and running by next spring.
If anyone out there believes that, I've got a few shares in Sweetwater Development I can let you have cheap.
In other words, despite a series of promises from Gov. George Pataki, the interest of Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver and more outside claim jumpers than you can shake a stick at, it's business as usual here in Niagara Falls.
And for 99.9 percent of the people who live here, that's very bad news indeed.
| Niagara Falls Reporter | www.niagarafallsreporter.com | July 30 2002 |