It could be the onset of the holiday season.
Or the flurry of activity surrounding the former Niagara Falls Convention and Civic Center.
Or an as-yet-undetected toxic emission from one of the few factories still operating in the city's industrial district.
Whatever the cause, an unmistakable air of optimism pervades Niagara Falls these days. A feeling that maybe, just maybe, decades of disappointment, deception and despair will finally recede, leaving one of those economic recoveries we hear so much about, but never seem to experience, in its wake.
Optimism remains a pretty relative term in these parts. More than a quarter-century of plant closings, environmental disasters and empty promises by politicos and business types alike carved out scars deeper than the Niagara River gorge in the area's collective psyche.
Healing that sort of wound requires time, determination and occasional flashbacks. But even if complete recovery remains a ways off, at least it's no longer just a fond, but futile dream.
Here's a look at a few of the signs that the Niagara Falls area and its long-suffering citizenry have finally stepped through the looking glass and into a world that promises to be wonderful and is almost guaranteed to be strange:
As recently as August, Flo Acotto, doyenne of that Niagara Street institution, the Press Box restaurant, said it was never going to happen. Having done business at the same location for more than 40 years, she had better reason than most to be pessimistic, and she talked openly about selling out and moving to Maryland, where her niece, Linda, lives.
What a difference 90 days can make. Today you've got to look around for a seat during lunch hour at the Press Box, and the bar and most of the dozen or so tables are lined with the hard hats of construction workers coming in for the Thursday buffet or one of Flo's famous Pittsburgers.
She's had offers to sell recently, but feels the flood of new business might be a portent of things to come. The casino construction workers, after all, will be outnumbered by about 10 to one by casino employees once the Seneca Niagara Casino opens its doors.
"I think I'm going to wait a couple years and see how it works out," she says with a smile. "I've been here for all the bad times, why not stick around a little longer?"
Skeptics still openly doubt the Senecas can meet their announced opening date of Jan. 1, but even the most hardened among them has little doubt that casino gaming will become a reality here.
"You've got too much money in this, and too much political capital," said one local real estate man. "At this point, it's like a runaway train."
As much as for the casino itself, local developers and working people are giving thanks for the demise of the corrupt leadership of Laborers Local 91 here.
For 35 years, a "goon squad" within the union ruled with an iron fist, deciding which members would work and which would collect food stamps. Developers were terrorized to the extent that Niagara Falls gained a national reputation as a bad place to do business and, over the years, even the members of other skilled trades unions learned to tread lightly at work sites for fear of beatings, bombings or worse.
That all changed in May, when longtime union boss Michael "Butch" Quarcini and 13 of his close associates were indicted on federal racketeering and extortion charges. The indictments led to a takeover of the Seneca Avenue union hall by former law enforcement officials dispatched by the Laborers International Union of North America.
Sources working on the casino project say there has been none of the violence and intimidation that characterized the city's last big construction project, the Niagara Falls High School, and most rank-and-file Laborers interviewed by the Reporter seem as relieved as anyone else that the bad old days seem gone for good.
Some might see the indictments coming down just three months prior to the start of the casino construction -- after a grand jury investigation that dragged on for nearly two years -- as a coincidence.
We don't.
The biggest downtown tourist attraction that might actually attract tourists to open since someone decided it would be a really good idea to level Falls Street represents exactly the sort of development needed to keep the casino from becoming a black hole.
The array of historic aircraft should draw aeronautics aficionados, as well as giving bored family members a non-gambling option. It might even lure a few slot jockeys into resting the lever-pulling arm for a while.
Visible from the casino entrance, and with a Vietnam-era Bell helicopter perched on the roof, the museum's success seems assured.
Entrepreneur Frank Amendola moved heaven and earth to get the museum into his Niagara Office Building from its former home in Wheatfield's moribund Summit Park Mall. Incidentally, the building itself is closer to full occupancy than it has been since Amendola bought it years ago.
One of the few downtown structures to survive Urban Renewal, the art deco edifice is a thing of beauty. On the outside, at least.
Buffalo developer Carl Paladino, a veritable Johnny Appleseed of parking lots, emerged last month as the latest new owner with a new plan for the United Office Building.
Old-timers remember Don Stefano Magaddino's illegal gambling den on the top floor of the 20-story building, which was otherwise occupied by professional offices. Ironically, the landmark structure was completed in 1929, just before the stock market crash.
Vacant for more than a decade, the building's interior was completely gutted by a previous owner whose plans never went any further. In fact, Paladino is the latest in a long line of owners who've announced plans to restore the place.
A cynic could suggest that Niagara USA could have found a developer who hasn't donated hundreds of thousands of dollars to Gov. George Pataki's political war chest over the years and who would have been willing to pay more than $1 for such a prime piece of real estate. Or that the Rainbow Avenue property will wind up as a parking lot if the market for luxury apartments isn't quite as large as Paladino suggests. But we're trying to be optimistic here.
In that spirit, we're sure Paladino won't have any problem finding tenants eager to pay $1,700 per month in a region where spacious apartments, or even entire houses, go for less than a third as much. In fact, sign us up!
For years, uncertainty over a casino kept investors and developers watching Niagara Falls closely, but prevented them from reaching into their wallets.
Most projects remain in the planning stages, but a number of proposals show that the glacier encasing millions in investment capital is beginning to melt, if not break apart completely. Several involve hotels, including Genaro Vilella's plans for a $50 million Ramada Plaza hotel at Fifth Street and Rainbow Boulevard, John Prozeralik's sale of the Days Inn Riverview on Buffalo Avenue and renovation of the Inn on the River and a $225 million hotel and expo center at Niagara and Fourth streets envisioned by the Antonacci and Colucci families.
Then there's Niagara Falls Redevelopment's plan for a convention facility at the former Nabisco property on Buffalo Avenue, and David Cordish's announced intention to site an IMAX theater in the all-but-abandoned Rainbow Centre.
At the other end of the city, the proposed Niagara Christmas Wonderland could inject much-needed life into the withered area around the Summit Park Mall, appealing to local shoppers and drawing out-of-towners.
With the opening of the casino looming, it looks increasingly probable that even if all of these plans don't materialize, someone will arrive, checkbook in hand, with more.
When the Spanish corporation Cintra and the Niagara Frontier Transportation Authority attempted to arrange a backroom deal that would have given the foreigners a 99-year lease on the county's most valuable property, it took a year-long investigation by Congressman John LaFalce to glean even the most rudimentary details of the business plan on which the deal was based.
There wasn't a peep out of the local daily newspapers or the Chamber of Commerce. The NFTA wasn't talking, and Cintra officials were hunkered down in Spain or Mexico and had a hard time speaking English anyway.
Which is why we're baffled by the reaction to a proposal by a consortium headed by Norstar Development to operate the airport.
Buffalo Niagara Partnership lackeys, including Niagara Gazette Publisher Steve Braver and Niagara USA Chamber CEO Bobby Newman, have both strongly questioned the plan, which they admit they've never seen.
Local hotelier John Prozeralik mustered more than 400 citizens to his last town meeting on the proposal, and Braver's Gazette didn't even bother sending a reporter.
Unlike Cintra, Norstar and its partners not only have extensive experience running airports both in America and around the world, but they clearly have the capital to turn the facility into a first-class international destination. Newman's family owns NOCO Energy, which has the jet fuel sales monopoly at the lackluster Buffalo airport, the NFTA is the organization that has allowed NOCO to grow rich at the public trough and, as for Braver, well, he's frankly clueless.
Rich, but clueless.
That these snake-oil salesman would even think they could come to Niagara Falls and sell a bill of goods to the people stands as testament to the "business as usual" attitude pervasive here since the days when E. Dent Lackey was mayor.
But, like Flo Acotto, we wonder about the need for outside intervention when, for the first time in decades, it seems the best is yet to come.
The ultimate key to economic recovery, though, rests not with the people who bring dozens of millions of dollars to town, but those who arrive eager to spend a thousand.
Tourists have grown accustomed to looking at the falls and getting out of town as quickly as possible, usually to eat, sleep and spend as the guests of our Canadian neighbors. The casino will provide a much-needed second anchor for the tourism industry, with connected development making staying on this side of the Rainbow Bridge a more attractive option.
Of course, political ineptitude, civic shortsightedness and corporate greed have joined forces before to dash hopes in Niagara Falls.
Over the past year, elected and appointed officials have answered concerns and questions from the media and the citizenry with advice to "be positive," meaning "don't pay attention to what we're doing."
More than ever, those same people need the scrutiny they so avidly discourage. Otherwise, all this new optimism will wind up dashed, opening deeper, more painful wounds than ever.
Of that, we're absolutely positive.
| Niagara Falls Reporter | www.niagarafallsreporter.com | November 26 2002 |