We are the Niagara Region

My favorite drum to bang is that we are the Niagara Region. Buffalo doesn't matter when it comes to giving our region a voice. The sooner we see that, and embrace it, the better off we will be. We also need to embrace youth sports travel as an economic engine in Niagara Falls just not in the form of a $250 million hockey rink

Travel to London, Tokyo, Mumbai or Dublin and tell people you are from Buffalo and you get blank stares or maybe a comment about snow or football. Tell them you are from Niagara and they think you live in Disney. Every couple days I get a "Welcome to Canada" message on my phone while sitting in my living room just to remind me we are a suburb of Toronto.

As a tour guide, I point at the honky tonk that is Niagara Falls, Ontario and say "that is what you get 90 minutes from the the 4th largest city in North America. It may as well be Vegas or Atlantic City."

Then I ask the inevitable question and US citizens never get it. "Toronto is the 4th largest city in North America. Can you name the other three." The response is "NY, LA and . . . " sometimes Houston, Chicago or Dallas. We are so jingoistic that almost no one ever knows immediately the largest city in North America is Mexico City.

Friday, a dad from the Dallas area who hadn’t visited Buffalo since coming here to visit a close friend who was coaching for the Bills, knew the trick question instantly. That family was here before Cooperstown. We get visitors headed for Williamsport as well.

Youth sports destinations bring visitors. They also come for soccer in Amherst, or youth hockey. There is no documented need for additional ice sheets in Western New York or Southern Ontario.

Youth sports are big money. I will leave the economics of a hockey rink to someone else but we have 12 rink complexes within a 40 minute drive even without crossing the border.

As the soon-to-die Niagara Gazette’s Mark Scheer keeps endlessly documenting the never-gonna-happen plans for Centennial Park and the Urbacon Data Center, why not instead build the largest outdoor basketball/soccer/lacrosse/baseball facility in the State. Heck, with some imagination, you could put it at Beech Avenue Park and make it a key to revitalizing Highland Avenue. That way you can leave Niagara Falls Redevelopment alone to do nothing.