75° and Sunny
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Back in town. I still have a bunch more travelogs to write and a dog to walk but for now, time to get back on the horse.
A few things I was following while gone and my thoughts:
The settlement between NFR and Niagara Falls over the site for the proposed data center and Centennial Park:
In the months leading up to this, I focused on writing about projects that have signed agreements/construction/funding in place. I will continue to do so. The city has completed a feasibility study that was, at best, dubious: It did not address debt service or siting. I still see that as a gaping hole.
As for the Data Center, I like the idea but: In 35 years, Niagara Falls Redevelopment has done nothing. There is a political move afoot on Albany to place a 1-year moratorium on data center development. I will continue to let Mark Scheer take the lead on writing about the past. When something looks real, as in funding in place, shovels in the ground, permits issue, I will pay attention.
The end of the Gazette: Death by a thousand cuts continued while I was away. It was a spin in a column from Publisher Cheryl Phillips, a competent, generally nice leader ground to a nub by Alabama-based corporate overlords.
She announced some things like comics no longer appearing in the print edition of the dwindling paper and that the Lockport Union, Sun & Journal will be dropping to 3 printed days weekly.
The papers have been declining for years, dumping real estate in Lockport and the Falls to lower facility costs, shuttering daily papers in North Tonawanda and Medina and casting staff aside.
Sometimes they catch a break, like technology evolving so the luxury of Jim Neiss, a wonderful photographer, can be replaced by smart phones and freelance submissions from Rob Bennett.
Other times, it is a lucky break like the Buffalo News pandering to Lee Enterprises and shipping printing to Cleveland so there is print work available to keep the pressroom running in North Tonawanda even if the press is held together with baling wire and duct tape.
If the state legislature removes the quirk that requires hard copy publication of legal notices it will be the death of many papers. Another impending doom is the death of people who don’t care about the price but insist mom’s obit needs to appear in hard copy.
What I will focus on: Things really happening. For example, $525 million being spent over the last 10 years and the next 10 in and around the tourism district.
$20 million being spent on Pine Avenue and the city market.
$40 million or so being spent on the Suspension Bridge District even with only 5 projects announced, even before any construction related to Niagara University begins. (A big new dorm and the 822 Project at the church on Cleveland are happening. Those things are worth following.
About boat dock seepage at Griffon Park: Mayor E. Dent Lackey and cronies minimized, denied and did whatever they could to get Luella Kenney, Lois Gibbs and their supporters to sit down, shut up and stay in their lane. Lackey should have taken it seriously from the start.
“Paradise Falls” was a great book written a few years ago by Keith O’Brien. I am naive enough to believe what the State Department of Environmental Conservation says about the seepage being harmless is, indeed, likely true.
“Likely” does not cut it whether it is Chris McKimmie or Bob Restaino saying so. It is the rare case where the emotions of the community require an admitted over-reaction before anyone agrees to calm down.
