NIAGARA FALLS
Improvements, renovations bolstering downtown Niagara Falls
An electric drill whined below Christopher J. Schoepflin’s seventh-floor corner office.
Workers below in the 20-story art deco United Office Building were converting long-vacant corporate space on the first six floors into a boutique hotel.
But Schoepflin, president of the state’s Niagara Falls economic development agency, USA Niagara Development Corp., had long ago tuned out the noise. He was busy explaining why investors should take a new look at the city’s downtown tourism district.
“The amount of investment, both public and private, in the last five or six years is unmatched in any recent time,” Schoepflin said of downtown Niagara Falls. “There has been a tremendous amount of money invested in infrastructure, and it has clearly changed the physical and visual landscape.
“Are we done with that yet? No. Will it continue to get more attractive? Yes.”
Several projects expected to advance this year will add new hotel, restaurant and retail space to the neighborhood between the Seneca Niagara Casino & Hotel and Niagara Falls State Park.
Among the projects already under way or expected to begin this year are:
• A $7.9 million state plan to raze the shuttered glass Wintergarden on Rainbow Boulevard and to extend Old Falls Street from the casino to the state park. The reconstructed street will feature a cobblestone surface, public plazas and a mist water feature. Planners hope the street will become a neighborhood spine that will once again support street-level retail space.
• The first phase of an estimated $15 million project to locate Niagara County Community College’s culinary and hospitality school a block away from the casino, where it can cater to tourists.
• The construction of a $2.4 million visitors center and headquarters for the Niagara Tourism and Convention Corp. at Rainbow Boulevard and First Street.
• The renovation of two 1920s brick towers — the Hotel Niagara and the United Office Building — that were both built when the city was on an upswing but have languished for decades in prime locations.
Schoepflin’s six-person development office, a subsidiary of Empire State Development Corp., is smack in the middle of one of those investments.
The state agency was the first tenant to move into the former United Office Building on First Street in two decades. The art deco high rise is still undergoing a $10 million renovation by Ellicott Development chief Carl Paladino of Buffalo.
On the top floors of the building, now named the Giacomo, two dozen upscale apartments with granite counter tops, whirlpool baths and steam showers went on the market in September.
It was a project, like many in Niagara Falls, that critics speculated would never be completed.
Paladino expects to open a 38-room boutique hotel on the first six floors this year.
Schoepflin points to Paladino’s investment as a prime example of how downtown Niagara Falls is changing.
“This building, that five years ago people were talking about demolishing, has now seen $10 million of investment by the private sector and is going to be a really unique mixed-use building,” Schoepflin said. “Four years ago, it was still closed and it was off the tax rolls.”
Across the street, work to revive another 1920s high rise, the Hotel Niagara, began last fall. James and Judith Cook, owners of Amidee Capital Group of Houston, bought the building for $4.6 million plus $300,000 in fees at auction in 2007. They plan to reopen the hotel after an estimated $15.2 million renovation.
A third hotel just outside the state park could also be poised for renovation. A subsidiary of the Maid of the Mist Corp. closed on a deal to buy the Comfort Inn The Pointe in late December for $3.7 million.
Maid of the Mist President Christopher
M. Glynn said the company is currently reviewing its plans for the six-story building.
“We fully expect it to be updated,” Glynn said.
The hotel property includes a strip of retail space that lines the city’s West Pedestrian Mall, an area that will be rebuilt this year under the state’s project to extend Old Falls Street to the entrance of the state park.
On the eastern end of Old Falls Street, a block from the casino, the first phase of a project to relocate Niagara County Community College’s culinary institute in downtown Niagara Falls is expected to begin this spring.
The owner of the Crowne Plaza Hotel, a partnership between Arizonabased Namwest and Sentry Hospitality, will renovate 10,000 square feet inside the hotel to add a new restaurant, an exhibition kitchen and bakery, book and wine stores to accommodate the culinary school.
The college plans to lease the space from the hotel and then construct a second building that will house other classrooms and administrative space.
It is these types of projects, Schoepflin and others contend, that are slowly changing the landscape of downtown Niagara Falls.
“In the last six years, if you take into consideration the casino, we’re well over $325 million of work being done in the Falls,” said Doug Williams, project manager for Namwest. “That includes gaming work, but that’s more work that I’ve seen in the last 50 years. Niagara Falls is turning around.”
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