Niagara Falls, already Number One in so many categories – is now poised to take the top spot in a competition to see which American city has squandered the most valuable real estate for use as surface parking lots, which often sit empty for large parts of the year. StreetsblogRead More

There are two sides to every story, so they say, and if you want to hear the side that completely goes against the grim portrayals of Niagara Falls that regularly appear in the national media or the statistically based rankings that show the city to be at the top ofRead More

  The Niagara Falls Reporter makes no comment on the actual case, however are posting as we received as a press release.

What were they thinking? Back in 2002, when the state of New York, under the leadership of then Gov. George Pataki, handed 50 prime acres of downtown Niagara Falls real estate to the Seneca Nation of Indians to settle the Grand Island land claim and allow the Seneca to openRead More

Stupidity and corruption of the part of city officials in Niagara Falls isn’t a recent development. It is a tradition that goes back to even before the founding of this great metropolis, on March 17, 1897. In fact, things started going downhill as early as 1885, with the creation ofRead More

The Hamister Hotel deal is exactly the sort of fiasco that makes Niagara Falls such a special place. Choose a politically connected “developer” who apparently doesn’t have any money, hand him a parcel of prime real estate for pennies on the dollar, along with tax breaks and other incentives, thenRead More

At the behest of the Niagara Falls City Council, the New York State Legislature created the city Water Board back in 2002. Locally, the primary cheerleader for spinning off the city’s water and wastewater treatment services was Paul Dyster, then a freshman Council member and now mayor of the city.Read More

By Emma Gibbs As another tourist season approaches, the New York State Parks Office is trying to fine tune a sale pitch explaining to some eight million annual visitors why the American side viewing area of the Horseshoe Falls is off limits. Terrapin Point, located at the western end ofRead More

In addition to calling for the termination of Niagara Falls Water Board Executive Director Paul Drof, city Councilman Ken Tompkins has introduced a resolution with Councilman Ezra Scott asking that all five members of the Water Board by approved by the mayor and the Council, so as to regain cityRead More

Please see the following statement from State Senator Rob Ortt (R,C,I – North To-nawanda) regarding the State Senate’s Budget that seeks to prohibit local governments from adopting laws or policies that impede the enforcement of federal homeland secu-rity laws. “New Yorkers are sick and tired of working hard, playing byRead More

By Emma Gibbs Nowhere in either his proposed or adopted 2016 Budgets did Niagara Falls Mayor Paul Dyster have the courage to introduce the plan he now wants to ask the City Council to approve sometime in April. You read it here first. Niagara Falls’ Chief Executive has plans toRead More

By Emma Gibbs The drama surrounding the NCAA basketball Final Fours, both Men’s and Women’s, approach what promises to be a frenzied finish. On the Men’s side Oklahoma faces Villanova, while the surprising ‘tainted’’ Orange of Syracuse University meets up with the number one-seeded Tarheels of North Carolina. The Women’sRead More

In perhaps his finest hour in his first year as a Niagara Falls city councilman, Kenneth Tompkins announced Wednesday night there will be a Memorial Day Parade this year only hours after the Veterans Memorial Commission had announced the parade had been suspended due to lack of funding.  And theRead More

The Niagara Falls Republican Leadership is planning to honor their lone elected representative in city government, Councilman Kenny Tompkins, on Thursday, April 7, from 6 p.m. to 8 p. m. at Gagsters, 708 E. Market Street. Tompkins, who campaigned on taking a business approach to running city government, has alreadyRead More

  Is the decision by the city’s Underground Railroad Commission to broaden the scope of what was to have been the Underground Railroad interpretive center at the Whirlpool Street train station a tacit admission that Niagara Falls has little if any Underground Railroad history of its own to begin with?Read More

Before the Civil War, the Ohio River meant freedom. Even though it was the primary water route for the still-thriving American slave trade, the river was also the border between the slave states of the South and the free states of the Northwest Territory. This attracted escaping slaves and abolitionistsRead More

The Castellani Freedom Crossing exhibit at the Niagara Arts and Cultural Center and the Underground Railroad interpretive center at the new Whirlpool Street train station won’t just be competing with each other, they’ll be competing with museums all around the country designed to lure tourists interested in former slaves escapingRead More

For Bill Bradberry, history is both an avocation and a passion. A decade ago, he became deeply involved when the Castellani Art Museum at Niagara University undertook its Freedom Crossing exhibit, and when Niagara Falls Mayor Paul Dyster announced the formation of an Underground Railroad Commission to mount an exhibitionRead More

Two years ago this month, Reporter publisher Frank Parlato exposed in these pages what appeared to be a blatant case of bid-rigging perpetrated by the Saratoga Springs, NY-based LA Group, a landscape architecture firm chosen by the New York State Office of Parks, Recreation and Historic Preservation to implement portionsRead More

It may be bloody and highly controversial, but mixed martial arts will be coming to New York in the not too distant future, and the popular sport will then face the challenge of lining up promoters to meet the re-quirements contained in the bill passed by the Assembly this weekRead More