Lots of music, less harmony
NIAGARA FALLS — When the city’s Tourism Advisory Board first met more than two years ago, its members lamented a shortage of concerts and events in Niagara Falls since the Festival of Lights ended.
Attempts to revive the Maid of the Mist Festival and a three-day event on Third Street the year before had fallen short of expectations.
Since then, the lineup for free concerts and events in the Falls — nearly all of them at least partially funded by the city — seemed to multiply.
The city agreed to pay $114,645 for entertainment at 47 events throughout the city between April and November this year.
Not every event was a success. A free Eddie Money concert hosted by the Hard Rock Cafe drew an estimated 4,000 to 6,000 people downtown, at cost to the city of $33,000, but some events drew only a few dozen spectators.
An ambitious, but scattered array of summer events in the Falls this year has some thinking that city leaders and community volunteers need to spend the winter months harnessing that energy to create a long-term strategy for developing events that can compete with popular summer concert series held in Lewiston, Lockport and Buffalo.
“We’re coming from one pretty big year where we kind of got our feet wet. I think it’s very important for us to sit back and take stock,” Mayor Paul A. Dyster said. “Niagara Falls, we did not get into this business of outdoor concerts early on. It’s now a competitive, crowded field, but I think we’ve laid down a market. We don’t want to take a back seat to other communities who may have the advantage of starting early.”
Unlike other communities, many events organized this summer in Niagara Falls lacked key elements like corporate sponsors or yearlong planning.
Bill Bradberry, a former city administrator who has served on the city’s Tourism Advisory Board, urged community leaders more than two years ago to create a nonprofit group to help organize and plan major festivals in the Falls that could rival ones like the Newport Jazz Festival in
Rhode Island or Sunfest in West Palm Beach.
The group never got off the ground, but Bradberry and others believe it’s still an idea worth pursuing.
“I think it’s important to continue the tradition that we’re building here for the various neighborhoods to celebrate their heritage, their culture,” Bradberry said. “That signals to me an awakening by the people that we want to celebrate something, but it also tells me that we need to do a better job of coordinating and determining how do we use these limited resources.”
It’s a model other communities have successfully followed to grow events.
Oswego, a city of 17,705 people on eastern Lake Ontario, has built a four-day festival known as Harborfest over two decades that has drawn nearly 300,000 visitors in some years.
Former Harborfest staffers say elements that have contributed to its success include hundreds of volunteers, a nonprofit organization with paid staff, major corporate sponsors and its location on lake, and the Oswego River.
Harborfest started with a phone call to the New York Power Authority in 1988. Organizer Charlotte M. Sullivan wanted to hire a Long Islandbased company that had produced fireworks displays for several presidential inaugurations, Olympics and World’s Fairs, but soon found the cost was more than the then-small festival could support.
“She liked to tell the story that when she called to find out how much they were, she set down the phone and cried,” said Tim Nekritz, who handled public relations and marketing for Harborfest for seven years. “She ended up calling the New York Power Authority, and they obviously said yes.”
Since that first major sponsor was secured, Harborfest has blossomed to a regional event with national musical acts, fireworks and other attractions that draw spectators from all over central New York.
Mike Redding, former executive director of Harborfest, believes the Falls could take a similar path — but noted that the field of festivals across the state has grown considerably since Harborfest started.
“Niagara Falls is ideal for festivals,” said Redding, who grew up in the Falls and served a term on the City Council before moving to the Oswego area. “You already have the people coming. It’s a matter of capturing them and getting them to spend a little bit more time.”
Volunteer event organizers in Niagara Falls have dreamed of restarting a large event with national acts, corporate sponsors and hundreds of thousands of spectators, but attempts have been slow to materialize.
A plan to turn the Ontario House Jazz Reunion into a regional product has been taken longer than anticipated. Attendence at the north Main Street concert suffered last year because of poor weather.
City leaders see success in the myriad free concerts and events held this year. Tourists and residents could attend a free concert in the Falls every Wednesday, Friday and Sunday.
Council Chairman Sam Fruscione, who also sits on the Tourism Advisory Board, said a Friday night downtown concert series that last year drew only about 50 people on a good night grew this summer to several hundred visitors in its new location on Old Falls Street.
“I think it’s a start in the right direction, because we went several years without entertainment in the city,” Fruscione said. “Tourists were just wandering around, and the best that they found was a guy with an accordion on the corner of the street.”
Several larger events, including two blues festivals, the jazz reunion and the Eddie Money show, cost the city $18,000 to $33,000 this tourist season.
Aside from Eddie Money, none of the concerts drew the big names of three free concerts hosted by the Seneca Niagara Casino this summer: Puddle of Mudd, Joan Jett and the Blackhearts and the U. S. Air Force’s Tops in Blue.
Some of the money spent this year on entertainment came from a tourism budget surplus that may not be renewed, Dyster said. That could mean more organizers will be fighting for fewer dollars next year.
“It’s always nice to have a lot of things going on, but I would just say that the pot has only been so large,” said Kevin Cottrell, who organizes the Ontario House Jazz Reunion. “The pond is only so large, and if you keep adding fish to it, pretty soon there won’t be enough oxygen in the pond to sustain the fish. I don’t want to rain on anybody else’s event, but there are limited resources in the city and we need to pick and choose which events are doable.”
Fruscione said the Tourism Advisory Board has functioned as a clearinghouse to “weed out” poorly conceived events and to make sure concerts don’t overlap.
Meanwhile, Dyster and City Administrator Donna Owens plan to create a task force of city staff who can help coordinate the logistics of public events, from securing permits to ensuring a police presence.
But not every event should be measured by attendance, Dyster said. Some neighborhood festivals and concerts, he said, are simply about improving the quality of life for residents. Others are about attracting tourists to the city.
Two more festivals — the Niagara Falls Blues Festival scheduled Sept. 13 on Third Street and the Freedom Trail Festival scheduled Sept. 20 on Main Street — will round out the summer season. Once those are done, Dyster would like business owners, community leaders and city staff to begin discussions for future years.
“We need to have a plan,” Dyster said. “What are we trying to accomplish? What are the goals? How are we going to apportion the resources, and how do we assess whether it was a success or not.”
