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Poor Mayor Irene Elia. As her chances for re-election grow dimmer and dimmer, the glaring differences between her words and her actions grow larger.
After coyly teasing gullible reporters about a news conference last week -- "you're going to like it" -- she showed no hint of embarrassment when the news conference turned out to be the announcement of a $36,000 state grant to Hunter Interests for the purpose of finding vacant space in downtown Niagara Falls.
Finding vacant space downtown seems like a pretty easy job. It shouldn't take three months and it shouldn't cost $36,000. For starters, there's the Rainbow Centre Mall, the Turtle, the Nabisco Building, the United Office Building, the Wintergarden and the Falls Street Faire. A million square feet of unused space.
There's also a building at 23 Rainbow Boulevard South that the mayor, her family and their attorneys seem intent on keeping vacant.
Some years ago, Pete Stranges bought what was then a vacant lot in front of the Comfort Inn from the city, and started to build on it. Mayor Elia was then running the Comfort Inn, which is owned by Sevenson, her family's business.
The family attorney, Patrick Berrigan, sued both the city and Stranges in an attempt to block construction. The legal argument was thin, to say the least. In the past, it seems, Comfort Inn employees had mowed the grass on the lot and planted flowers there. This, they felt, made it theirs. Years of courtroom wrangling ensued until, finally, a judge had sense enough to dismiss the case.
Stranges' original plan for the $800,000 building he put up on the property was to open a wax museum, but the lengthy and expensive litigation with the Elia family put the kibosh to that. Plan B, announced last week at a meeting of the Urban Renewal Agency, calls for the opening of a haunted house attraction for tourists.
And haunting Stranges like a vengeful wraith was Berrigan, who told URA officials that any use of the vacant building would be illegal, and would likely prompt further legal action on the part of the Elia family.
You figure it out. The mayor says she will "outreach to anybody" in her efforts to spur downtown development, while at the same time quashing Stranges' attempt to open a viable tourist attraction, torpedoing Niagara Falls Redevelopment's plan for a summer festival, stalling on a proposal to turn the Wintergarden into a butterfly conservatory and doing everything she could to keep an X Games-style snowboarding event out of Lackey Plaza. In a few months we'll get a $36,000 report from Hunter Interests telling us there is a lot of vacant space downtown. Duh.
What the report won't say is that -- as long as the administration continues its obstructionist policies -- the situation is unlikely to change any time soon.
A sore loser who apparently spends most of his time looking people's numbers up in the phone book and writing idiotic letters to area newspapers, Porter Town Councilman Thomas Baia is now facing a criminal charge of harassment.
Lewiston-Porter School Board Member Margaret Laurie filed the charge, claiming Baia ambushed her at Wegman's, made harassing telephone calls to her home and has forced her to sneak out of public meetings in order avoid additional confrontations.
"This is just ridiculous," Laurie told reporters. "I'm not going to stay put on that type of nonsense."
A troubled soul with a persecution complex the size of Mount Trashmore, Baia's increasingly erratic behavior has largely played itself out on the pages of local newspapers.
In a surreal letter to the editor a couple weeks ago, Baia claimed that he, Lew-Port School Superintendent Walter Polka and Niagara Gazette Editor Terry Shaw had been targeted by a conspiracy orchestrated by School Board President Edward Lilly. The letter described his exhaustive attempts to locate the authors of other letters which had criticized Polka in print.
I've never met Baia, but his recent public record would indicate he seriously needs to get a life.
Or some counseling.
| Niagara Falls Reporter | www.niagarafallsreporter.com | March 19 2002 |