Buffalo Moving Forward on Investment; Niagara Falls Still Doing Nothing

By Tony Farina

As we have written recently, the City of Niagara Falls has a pretty much empty development pipeline in large measure to the unwelcoming and often politically adversarial and combative reflexes of city leadership, a problem that presents many unnecessary obstacles to incentivize deep-pocket investors from coming forward. The development pipeline is in a negative state.

The ghost-town picture paints a gloomy forecast for the city and its beleaguered residents, but not far away, in another struggling city, there is a change in the wind. Incoming Buffalo Mayor Sean Ryan has recently rolled out a business development plan that will hopefully transform what he refers to as a ghost town (i.e., Niagara Falls) into a city on the rebound from years of business neglect.

The way forward, according to Ryan, a longtime state senator, is to give investors a welcome mat to the city, opening the door to development interests by creating an inviting and helpful administration willing to promote investment, not provide legal and political hurdles.

Whether Ryan’s development plans succeed won’t be known overnight, but at least it sounds like he’s trying to take away the ghost-town image and create an environment that may pave the way for the city to move forward. He deserves credit for recognizing that development is badly needed to help Buffalo.

Unfortunately, there is no development encouraging plans on the horizon for the other ghost town in the area, Niagara Falls. No welcoming mat to deep-pocket investors who might like the land and other opportunities in Niagara Falls but are turned off by the city’s investment hostility environment.

Score one for Buffalo on this one.