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Niagara Falls is a beautiful place to visit. The park area and falls themselves, that is. The city is another matter entirely. Once upon a time, the city was vibrant, aesthetically pleasing, and full of hope and the promise of continued prosperity. That was in the days of plentiful factory jobs, a population base of more than 100,000 people, a jam-packed Old Falls Street and honeymooners from around the world plastering their cars with "Niagara Falls or Bust" bumper stickers.
Unfortunately, those days are long gone. In fact, for those of us born in the 1960s or later, they simply are an illusion.
Our connection to that Niagara Falls is tied with nothing more tangible than tales of yesteryear heard at a grandparent's knee or seen on the yellowed pages of a decades-old newspaper stored in the recesses of a dusty attic. This truth is a shame. A world-renowned attraction like the falls of Niagara deserves to be surrounded by a world-class city, not a world-class monument to repeated futility and failure.
In February 1997, a journalist from the New York Times came to town to cover an Ultimate Fighting event at the Niagara Falls Convention and Civic Center. You may have heard of Ultimate Fighting. It is the "sport" that encourages behemoths to pummel each other into bloody pulps for big prize money. In fact, a famous local eatery could have had a perfect marketing pitch, "After you've been beaten into a coma, there's no better place than the Como."
Fortunately, the State Senate came to its collective senses and banned the freak show before Niagara Falls could further embarrass itself nationally. This brings us back to the Times reporter. With his story on the way out of town, and his paper having footed the bill for airfare and a snazzy room and all, he figured he'd write a piece on the most logical subject affecting Niagara Falls tourism.
"Unromantic Economic Facts Cast Pall Over Niagara Falls."
That is the headline that ran with the reporter's story. Worst of all, it is accurate. Did it affect tourism? Of course. Was it deserved? Absolutely. The story went on to detail the sad boulevard of broken dreams known as Main Street.
It also featured photos of boarded-up businesses and crackheads on the corners of avenues with such noble monikers as "Niagara" and "East Falls." In the article, Senior City Planner Thomas J. Desantis laments, "Since the 1970s, the city's been struggling to redevelop its downtown, to interest people into coming down to this wasteland, this botched-in-the-'60s downtown."
Sadly, in the three and a half years since the Times piece ran, things have actually gotten worse. AquaFalls, that monstrous hole in the ground, sits idle, hoping for Howard Milstein to fish in his deep pockets for a major cash infusion. The tethered hot air balloon attraction has been, so far, nothing more than political hot air. Turning Stone is still the closest United States-side casino, while Niagara Falls, Ontario, breaks ground on a second gaming house. The Rainbow Centre Mall officially has turned into the parking garage everyone mistook it for all along. Meanwhile, the population level, tax rolls and the people's ability to remain optimistic continue to decline at alarming rates.
I recently had the opportunity to speak to a number of business and travel and tourism majors at Niagara University. I asked them a simple question. "When you get out into the business world," I queried, "can you possibly imagine being in a locale that has a guaranteed yearly influx of 10 million to 15 million tourists (all of whom carry wallets filled with either green or plastic) and fail to capitalize on that opportunity?"
Not one of them could. Yet it has happened. It continues to happen. Tragically, it is the future of these bright and ambitious kids that is being frittered away.
Here's a radical thought. Maybe we should turn over the keys to the city to the Gen-X kids right now. They couldn't possibly foul things up any worse than they already are. Due to the ineptitude of city leaders both past and present, these kids truly are faced with the quintessential Ultimate Fight, the fight to save our city.
In the Times article, former Mayor James C. Galie was questioned on the status of a proposal to allow a professional daredevil to cross the gorge on a tightrope. His answer seemed to speak to a much larger issue, to the future of the city of Niagara Falls itself.
"It's not dead," Galie said, "but it's not alive that much either."