Support for the Falls
Schumer promises to help college, lean a little on reluctant developer
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Niagara Falls needs more clout to lift itself out of its economic stupor, and with Sen. Charles M. Schumer’s visit during the week, the city got it. Schumer pledged to find money to help move Niagara County Community College’s Culinary Arts Institute into the Rainbow Boulevard mall and, perhaps even more significantly, to work with a developer who is sitting on land that could be put to valuable economic use.
Despite some high-profile efforts—the Seneca gambling casino, the refurbishing of Third Street—the city remains the nation’s premier example of how to squander a sure thing. With a world-class tourist attraction to boast, Niagara Falls should be firing on all pistons—as its sister city across the river does. Instead, it sputters and clatters and gets nowhere.
Schumer wants to help change that, in a couple of high-profile ways. Most immediately, he is working to find federal money to move NCCC’s Culinary Arts Institute into the Rainbow Boulevard mall. The move to downtown Niagara Falls has been complicated by a foreclosure and other legal problems, but it remains a terrific idea. Not only would it attract diners to the downtown area, but it would give the institute itself a shot in the arm. And, as Schumer observed, it could have a “ripple effect” on other properties.
The holdup is tied to the need to draw up a new lease with developer David Cordish of Baltimore that would allow the college to operate out of about a third of the mall. The college has commitments of about $17.5 million from city, county, school and state sources for the project, Schumer said. Officials estimate they need $20 million to get the project started. A senator of Schumer’s stature and abilities could be just the ticket, and he pledged to do “anything” he could to find federal dollars for the project.
Meanwhile, Schumer plans to meet with developer Howard Milstein and Niagara Falls Mayor Paul A. Dyster to discuss “getting involved again and moving all those properties forward.”
Milstein’s company, Niagara Falls Redevelopment, and its affiliated companies own nearly 70 acres of property in the city, according to city property records as of early this year. Among them are a vacant turtle-shaped building near Niagara Falls State Park, the former Nabisco plant and dozens of acres of land east of the Seneca Niagara Casino&Hotel.
For years, Milstein has excelled at doing nothing with the property he controls, so Schumer is appropriately cautious about his prospects for success. Again, though, it can’t hurt to have a U. S. senator take up your cause, in person, with the person who has a key to the city’s redevelopment, but who has apparently swallowed it. Here’s hoping Schumer can get it delicately.
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