SEN. CHARLES E. SCHUMER:
Going to bat for the Falls
“Downtown Niagara Falls needs some shots in the arm.” Schumer vows action to fill vacant properties, buildings downtown
Published: November 17, 2009, 12:30 am
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NIAGARA FALLS — Sen. Charles E. Schumer said Monday he will meet with New York City real estate mogul Howard P. Milstein to discuss acres of vacant properties Milstein controls in downtown Niagara Falls.
Schumer, speaking to reporters outside the vacant Rainbow Centre mall, also committed to working to find federal money for a proposed project to move Niagara County Community College’s Culinary Arts Institute into the Rainbow Boulevard mall.
Schumer said the culinary proposal would have the potential to have a “ripple effect” on other under-utilized properties in the Falls.
“Downtown Niagara Falls needs some shots in the arm,” Schumer said as construction crews hired by the state and city worked in the background. “It’s improving, but it needs more improvement still.”
Schumer, however, played down his hopes for what might come out of his planned meeting with Milstein.
Milstein is one of the principals of Niagara Falls Redevelopment, a real estate investment firm that has long been seen as sitting on dozens of acres of prime downtown property in the Falls — much of which it purchased from the city.
Schumer said he called Milstein on Friday and that Milstein agreed to meet with him and Falls Mayor Paul A. Dyster to discuss “getting involved again and moving all those properties forward.”
“There’s no promise that he’s going to do anything,” Schumer cautioned. “I don’t want to oversell, but there is a promise that he’ll listen, and maybe when we put our heads together, we can come up with something very good for Niagara Falls.”
Anthony Bergamo, chief executive officer of Niagara Falls Redevelopment, was unavailable for comment.
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. Those include a vacant turtle-shaped building near Niagara Falls State Park, the vacant former Nabisco plant and dozens of acres of land east of the Seneca Niagara Casino & Hotel.
“With other developments now breaking loose here downtown, we thought it was time to circle back and to talk with Howard Milstein,” Dyster said. “He’s obviously an important player. The senator becoming involved in that process, I think, will help us get Mr. Milstein focused on his Niagara Falls holdings in a way that we can’t do just by ourselves.”
Schumer’s pledge on a separate project, Niagara County Community College’s proposal to locate its hospitality, tourism and culinary arts programs in the Rainbow Centre mall, drew cheers from culinary students and local officials gathered at the news conference Monday.
City, college and state officials have been in negotiations since this summer with mall developer David Cordish of Baltimore to strike a new agreement that would allow the college programs to operate out of about a third of the mall facing Old Falls Street.
Cordish’s company holds a long-term lease on the city-owned mall that will have to be rewritten for the college to be able to use the space.
College officials had previously considered locating the Hospitality and Tourism Center and the Culinary Arts Institute at the Crowne Plaza Hotel on Third Street and a nearby lot, but that proposal stalled after foreclosure proceedings started against the hotel earlier this year.
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.
Schumer pledged to do “anything” he could to secure federal dollars for the Culinary Arts project.
“I’m going to keep my word,” he said, “and do everything I can to make this happen.”
djgee@buffnews.com
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