Removing the Robert Moses scar

(Editor's Note: The drive to remove the scar of Robert Moses Parkway, which divides most of Niagara Falls and southern Lewiston from its waterfront, is ongoing.

Concerned Citizens like Jim Hufnagel are out there, tilting against windmills, trying to get the powers that be to do the right thing and create a design that would pay homage to visionaries like Frederick Law Olmsted rather than create some sanitized vision that safely protects car culture.

State Parks loves to claim it reveres the Olmsted legacy but it does not really do so. If it did, it would remove vehicle traffic from Goat Island, move parking lots off site into the city of Niagara Falls and use shuttles to usher people in and out of the park.

Instead, it welcomes about 4 million visitors a year into the park, ignores its host city, and allows Delaware North to sell DiCamillo’s pizza for $13 a slice when it is $4 on Linwood Avenue. Hufnagel wrote this email on May 1.

He received a response on June 22 from State Parks Regional Director Mark V. Mistretta on behalf of Gov. Kathy Hochul. Here is Hufnagel’s letter. Mistretta’s response is attached.)

Dear Gov. Hochul,

The Robert Moses Parkway has separated the city of Niagara Falls from the Niagara Gorge for over 50 years. The obsolete, underutilized roadway has detracted from the local tourist-based economy and acted as a concrete blight on the treasured landscape for all that time. Now your State Parks department, in conjunction with other state agencies, is poised to rebuild it, so it can curse us for the next 50 years.

As a native Western New Yorker, and as our governor, you must be aware that citizen groups have advocated for removal of the Parkway since the late 1990s. A small section was removed and the area replaced with trails and green space several years ago, and the most important section, north of Findlay Drive, was originally slated for removal and natural restoration as well. Then backroom political machinations undoubtedly took place, courtesy of commuters to the city from the all-white bedroom suburb of Lewiston, probably exerting pressure through Sen. Ortt and Assemblyman Morinello's offices, transforming the plan from "removal" to "reimagining."

Now only two remaining alternatives have been identified by your State Parks department. Both involve modernizing the road and adding a traffic circle at the Power Project, ensuring that citizens will have to contend with vehicular traffic when accessing or hiking or biking or otherwise enjoying the Gorge, enabling the ghost of Robert Moses to plague us for yet another two or three generations.

It doesn't have to be this way, but it's going to take your direct intervention, Governor Hochul, to prevent a tragedy.

Not just the tragedy of the Parkway's negative impact on our livelihoods and the environment, but the tragedy of a terrorist attack on the Niagara Power Project.

The Moses Parkway traverses the very heart of the Power Project, allowing unrestrained vehicular access to the facility 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. This represents an open invitation for terrorist attack. Any bomb-laden vehicle could detonate in the middle of the complex, knocking out electricity for most of the northeastern United States.

We repeatedly brought this to the attention of your predecessor through articles in the newspaper, to no avail.

Now the risk is greater than ever, given that we are waging war against a known sponsor of international terrorism, Iran.

Please intervene before the Parkway mistake is repeated... we need the trails, meadows, native flora and overlooks as established between Main Street, Niagara Falls to Findlay Drive, extended north of Findlay to the Power Project without being marred by a new, upgraded Parkway.

Thank you for your consideration of this matter.

Sincerely,

James Hufnagel

4725 Miller Road

Niagara Falls, NY 14304

716-930-1043

https://www.niagarafallsreporter.com/Stories/2013/Sep24/high.html

"Not only does the Moses Parkway expose the Niagara Power Project to terrorist attack by international terrorists such as those who recently attempted to blow up a Niagara Falls bridge and passenger train, but also domestic terrorists like McVeigh or a similarly demented malcontent who gets it in his head to load a pick-up truck with explosives and write their own sordid chapter in history."

https://www.niagarafallsreporter.com/Stories/2013/Oct15/govc.html

"... here in Niagara Falls, Gov. Andrew Cuomo and the White Plains, NY-based New York Power Authority allow an underutilized and redundant stretch of road, the Moses Parkway, to traverse the heart of the Niagara Power Project and provide access to random vehicular traffic 24 hours a day, seven days a week, exposing the most critical areas of the facility to direct terrorist attack."

https://www.niagarafallsreporter.com/Stories/2013/Nov19/terrorist.html

"... after closing down the Robert Moses Parkway during 9/11 by blocking it with large State dump trucks, (NYPA) now keeps the parkway open across the entirety of the Power Project 24 hours a day, seven days a week."

"Someday, an Al-Qaeda terror squad or Timothy McVeigh-wannabes could very well barrel down the Robert Moses Parkway in pick-up trucks and detonate a couple of tons of TNT in the middle of the Niagara Power Project. Obviously, this is a risk NYPA and Gov. Andrew Cuomo have decided they are willing to take for us."

https://niagarafallsreporter.com/parkway-removal-speech-trigger-power-project-terror-drills/

"And besides the possibility of a bomb being transported on the parkway and detonated, blowing the Power Project to smithereens, imagine some radical element discharging gasoline the length of the facility along the parkway and then setting it alight. You’d be able to see that from outer space. The possibilities for terrorist attack on the Niagara Power Project via the Robert Moses Parkway are endless."