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Niagara Falls Redevelopment spokesman Roger Trevino last week declined to comment on reports that the group, headed by New York real estate mogul Howard Milstein, has entered into discussions for the purchase of the Nabisco property at the intersection of John Daly Boulevard and Buffalo Avenue.
Last week, Kraft Foods announced it would close the Nabisco plant -- which produces Triscuit wafers -- laying off more than 200 employees and sucking more than $10 million annually out of the Niagara Falls economy.
"The Nabisco property is the gateway to Niagara Falls," a source told the Reporter. "Every developer in town will likely be looking at it."
At the same time, Mayor Irene Elia's recent sojourn to Baltimore to meet with developer David Cordish turned out to be a complete disaster, with Cordish shunting the Niagara Falls contingent off on associate Joel Weinburg, it was learned. To add insult to injury, Elia and her party reportedly had to pay their own lunch tab at the posh ESPN SportsZone, sources said.
As the tourist season officially gets underway on Memorial Day weekend, it would seem that promises repeatedly made by the Elia administration and Cordish company officials that the Rainbow Centre Mall would be up and running as a "family entertainment complex" by June represented gross overstatements, to say the least.
And the Mayor's jubilation over the startup of promoter Michael Davis's spectacular helium balloon attraction downtown was somewhat tempered this past week, when she stated in a public forum she would not take a ride in the balloon without the benefit of accompanying clergy.
The Nabisco facility, a Niagara Falls institution for more than 100 years, is the latest in a long line of industrial facilities that have chosen to leave town over the past year. Along with layoffs at Occidental Chemical, Moore Business Forms, the Niagara Gazette and TeleTech, the latest round of job cuts bring to well over 1,000 the number of workers idled in the city since the summer of 2000.
Only one area of the local economy has been seemingly unaffected by the downturn in employment here -- those workers depending on the city for continued employment.
"We tried to make some cutbacks in the last budget, but over the past year the majority of those have been reinstated by the mayor," City Councilwoman Barbara Geracitano said. "Looking at the local economy at this point, I have no idea how they plan to make ends meet."
Area lawmakers now talk openly about the possibility of Niagara Falls going into receivership sometime late this summer when, just a year ago, such talk was unthinkable.
The Niagara USA Corp., an arm of the state's Empire Development Corp., has taken a four-year lease in the Niagara Office Building, 345 Third St., with options on two more four-year extensions. Many observers believe the move is just the first step in the state coming in to manage the city, as has been done in the past in Yonkers, Utica and other municipalities.