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Wednesday’s Niagara Falls City Council Agenda includes a resolution to settle all litigation with Niagara Falls Redevelopment and approve a “stipulated settlement order” to all pending litigation.
This could potentially pave the way for the Urbacon Data Center, a $1.5 billion new facility NFR wishes to build on land it holds east of the Seneca Niagara Casino.
It also likely resolves the city’s eminent domain suit over the acquisition of land on which Mayor Robert Restaino would like to build Centennial Park.
No supporting documents are available yet. It is possible this means both projects have a chance to move forward.
NFR, funded by the Milstein family of New York City has owned 145 acres of downtown for more than 30 years and done nothing with it. You can tell which properties it owns by the red and white no trespassing signs tacked on boarded up houses and buildings. NFR pays its taxes and mows its lawns but doesn’t do much else, allowing properties it holds to deteriorate and be demolished by neglect.
Downtown, it holds the historically significant Turtle, the significant indigenous architectural masterpiece designed by Dennis Sun Rhodes. NFR, after taking possession of the former cultural center, whitewashed it with tan paint.
Centennial Park was justified as feasible last year in a press conference the Restaino Administration held showing maintenance and staffing costs could be matched by revenue and that the project would have a positive impact on hotels and businesses more than a half-mile away in the tourism district.
The feasibility study did not address how the city would pay for the $250 million construction project. It discussed siting only so far as to say the Rainbow Mall parcel, a shuttered downtown mall the city owns, was not viable.
