Dyster Losing all Grip on Reality: Claims $800 Million in New Development HereBy Mike Hudson SEP 08, 2015 |
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In just two weeks, Niagara Falls Mayor Paul Dyster went from claiming there had been $400 million in new development around the city during his eight years in office to asserting that $800 million had taken place. The $400 million figure can be dismissed as a bold lie told by a candidate desperately seeking reelection to the only real job he’s ever held. The $800 million figure suggests mental illness. Dyster made the $400 million claim in a flyer mailed to city households two weeks ago. It is instructive, “It took 40 years for our city to fall apart. After 8 years of Mayor Dyster it’s coming back together,” it alleges. The colorful flyer depicts a number of building sites, none of which are identified, and boasts that “More than $400 million of development” has taken place in Niagara Falls under Dyster’s watch. We quickly did the math. The North Main Street courthouse cost $46.5 million, the new train station cost $44 million and the NCCC Culinary Arts Institute cost $26 million. All three of these projects were built with taxpayer dollars and have not resulted in the creation of a single private sector job. While such projects might constitute “development” in the mind of a politician, they are actually viewed as negatives by business people, since they take valuable real estate off the tax rolls, increasing the tax burden on everyone else. Two other major projects are even more problematic. Do nothing Buffalo developer Mark Hamister’s downtown hotel project, valued now at $36 million, and the $150 million Wonderfalls project are probably also on Dyster’s list. The trouble is that neither of them may actually be built. Hamister was named as the “preferred developer” for the hotel more than two years ago, but has yet to close on the property and is doesn’t appear to have the financing in place to actually begin construction. As for the Wonderfalls project, which was announced with great fanfare in August of 2014, has seemingly fallen off the map entirely. The two major developers, Uniland and Delaware North, have been at odds over another, unrelated project, litigation has been threatened and not a single update or progress report has been issued since the project was announced. The total value of the courthouse, culinary arts institute, train station, the Hamister hotel and Wonderfalls comes to just $302.5 million of the $400 million claimed by Dyster in the flyer. All that changed last week, when the Dyster campaign issued a television commercial in which the mayor himself claims there has actually been more than “$800 million in new development.” Close to a billion dollars in new development here in the last eight years? Where? If the $400 million claimed in the flyer is absurd, the $800 million touted by Dyster in the commercial is delusional. That would be $100 million in new development for each and every year he’s been in office. With the cost of a new hotel built by anyone other than Mark Hamister coming in at around $18 million, one could reasonably expect that as many as 40 hotels could have been built. You can build a super nice restaurant for $5 million, where are those 160 four star restaurants? If it was job creation Dyster was after, $800 million would fund 32,000 new jobs paying $50,000 a year! Dyster’s $800 million claim is $506.5 million over anything that could be reasonably verified checking through eight years’ worth of Dyster administration “new development” announcements. In a word, it’s insane. While the commercial is entitled “Real Progress: Real Results” in its YouTube iteration, Dyster himself has clearly lost touch with reality. It’s a good thing the election is Thursday. Two more weeks and he’d be claiming $1.6 billion in imaginary new development.
Paul Dyster appears in a commercial on YouTube asking for your vote.
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