Niagara Falls, NY: Mayor Robert Restaino addressed the public via YouTube, promoting his Centennial Park project—a proposed $200 million arena.
The vision was compelling—ice rinks and concerts, a city reborn under bright lights.
A mayor. A vision. A rink in the middle of a town. He appeared on screen, earnest, poised.
He talked. I listened.
The Mayor said, “We continue to move forward with our efforts relative to the event center and park.”
Centennial Park, he called it. A two-hundred-million-dollar ice box in the middle of a broke city?
It looked like progress. But something in the back of the mind whispered: “Is this real?”
The pitch was smooth. A mayor with a dream: an arena of ice and light rising from the rust. He spoke with conviction, his voice dulcid across the YouTube channel. He made it sound inevitable.
I almost clapped.
Until I realized there is no team—a $200 million ice palace with no anchor tenant.
I looked down at the switch. The Bullshit Detector was blinking red.
The Feasibility Fog: How the Mayor Explained the Money
The Mayor continued: “The feasibility study highlights some really incredible economic development out of this proposed project.”
A feasibility study? Does the study show how to pay for a $200 million arena?
The Mayor spoke:
“Those who are asking questions …how does the construction get financed—those are all the right questions to ask. It’s just that these things are done in sequence, right?
“Now that we have an understanding of the cost, (via the feasibility study) now we begin the process of lining up the resources that we need to do it.
“You know, some people have misguided folks…. on this idea that the city is going to fund the project in its entirety and put it on the backs of taxpayers.
“Well, that’s more fear-mongering. And unfortunately, fear-mongering is looking backwards. It’s not looking forwards.”
The Mayor said the city wouldn’t pay all of it. He never said who would pay the rest. He provided no breakdown detailing state, federal, or private contributions.
He spoke of care for the taxpayer.
So why did my Bullshit Detector blink?
The Mayor said:
I think that this government has shown a real concern for making sure that those developments that we promote are done with the least amount of impact on taxpayers.
Take a look at the street light improvements—no taxpayer dollars. Take a look at the improvements in our various departments with regard to equipment and technology—no taxpayer burden. Take a look at the improvements that we’re putting in several parks around our community—also no taxpayer burden.
We genuinely concern ourselves with making sure that what we can do to improve our community is done with an eye toward making sure that it doesn’t impose a burden on taxpayers. And we have that same approach to the event center and park.
Mayor Restaino cites streetlights, department upgrades, and pocket park improvements. He says some people are misleading others by fear-mongering. Fear. And a question. What part of the $200 million arena will the city pay for?
We can safely say not the streetlights. That’s almost for sure.
Fictional Figures and a Team That Doesn’t Exist
The Mayor shifted to benefits. The feasibility report shows it.
The Mayor said, “I think that everyone—everyone who takes a look at the possibilities of this event center and the fact that it’s… an economic driver.”
The feasibility report backs his statement. It projects $8.1 million in arena revenue right from year one.
The Bullshit Detector seemed to be overheating.
You could build a rink. You could hang the lights, polish the glass, and open the gates. But you won’t get $8 million.
Not unless you have an NHL team anchoring the facility, paying $2 – $4 million per year.
No minor-league team, no collection of weekend tournaments, and band concerts will get you $8.1 million.
The report itself said: “feasibility… depends on the financial forecast of the business and the ability for it to achieve results that support the Client’s long-term financial goals.”
The deception is subtle. But someone forgot to disable the Bullshit Detector and it rang out clearly.
The report implies financial sustainability but only if the arena can meet the Mayor’s goals—no matter how impossible—while omitting a central fiction: its $8.1 million arena income figure requires a professional anchor tenant that does not—and will not—exist.
Mayor Restaino knows there is no professional team. He told the Niagara Gazette that he has received a verbal commitment from the Ontario Hockey League OHL. The league will consider the arena as a possible site for a future expansion team.
A League of Their Own—OHL Fantasy vs. Financial Reality
Forgetting the vapory nature of a verbal promise, the OHL has 20 teams. It has had 20 teams since its last expansion in 1998 – 27 years ago,
But let us assume the city got a franchise. OHL teams pay about $200,000 annually to use an arena. That’s 2.5% of the study’s $8.1 projected income. Where’s the other $7.9 million supposed to come from?
An OHL team with average attendance figures under 2,500 and ticket prices around $20 will not bring an economic windfall. They are just kids. Sixteen, seventeen, sometimes twenty. Skating on dreams.
The Mayor saw hotels and restaurants full of Canadians, but the fans who come are neighbors. Parents. Friends. Not tourists. Just boys and their small, loyal crowd, skating circles in a too-big arena.
Cross-border attendance will be lower due to passport or enhanced license requirements, customs delays. The Mayor imagined buses crossing the border. Families waving flags. Diners full. But the people already have four OHL teams right there in Canada, just fifteen minutes north.
And the players? They’re high school kids. No one crossed a border for that.
Concerts, Tournaments, and the Illusion of Volume
Concerts.
The Mayor’s feasibility report does not state explicitly that it assumes 60 concerts annually. It doesn’t need to. The revenue projection implies it. Assumptions are laundered into forecasts. You’re not booking 60 concerts in a 7,000-seat shoebox next to Buffalo and Toronto.
A review of mid-sized arenas in North America reveals that a venue typically hosts 12 to 20 concerts annually. Even top-performing venues in ideal markets typically host around 25 concerts a year.
Centennial Park is not Madison Square Garden.
Tournaments
While the feasibility study suggests that tournaments will significantly contribute to arena revenue, a 7,000-seat facility without a proven event pipeline would likely host 10 to 20 tournaments per year. Tournament events are labor-intensive and yield modest net revenue.
The study imagined weekends filled with children in jerseys, parents in hotel rooms, and the sound of whistles echoing through million-dollar rafters. Teams from far and wide. Busloads of dreams and duffel bags.
Tournaments every weekend, spending a fortune, leaving nothing but tax revenue and good vibes.
However, tournaments are scheduled years in advance, booked in arenas in towns that have earned them. The projections imply 60 a year, which is impossible.
Debt Service: $13 Million Before the First Ticket is Sold
So what will it cost?
Assuming a $200 million construction cost, standard municipal bond financing over 30 years at a 5% interest rate results in annual debt service payments of approximately $13 million per year.
That’s before the lights go on. That’s before the hot dogs are warm. That’s before the Mayor makes his speech at the ribbon cutting. You’re paying for it whether you buy tickets or not. Whether it rained, whether it sold out, whether it sat empty. The arena doesn’t care. It just waits, quietly accumulating interest.
The feasibility report hides this. No OHL team, no tournament, no concert schedule covers that.
A city locked into a 30-year commitment. The lights dim. The ice melts. The crowds never come. But every spring, the bill arrives: $13 million.
Whether there’s a concert, a game, or tumbleweeds blowing across center ice, this won’t be an arena. It will be a mortgage with seats.
The Bottom Line: $850 Per Household, Every Year, For 30 Years
Let’s calculate. The per-household impact:
When accounting for debt service and operational shortfalls, (absent an NHL team) the proposed arena in Niagara Falls would result in an estimated $17 million annual fiscal burden. Distributed across the city’s approximately 20,000 households, this translates to $850 per year in new taxes —$70 a month—for every home, in a city – where half the residents can’t afford car repairs, for 30 years.
That’s $850 per household, to cover the shortfall—never mind improvements, emergencies, or inflation.
A city of 49,000. A building with no team. A ribbon-cutting remembered only in debt.
He said, “Build it, and they will come.”
He provided a feasibility study—unsigned by reality—promised youth hockey jamborees and weekend cheer invasions. The city, desperate for revival, listened. What it didn’t hear was the silence after the tournaments didn’t call back.
A 49,000-person city is being asked to subsidize a $200 million project based on imaginary events that take years to plan, relationships to secure, and infrastructure to support.
He promised out-of-state plates, goal horns, and laughing children. The smell of popcorn and the rhythm of music would fill the city streets. But what came was a game here. A concert there. Locals fill a few seats.
The tournaments don’t come. The bands pass them by. And the town remains what it was, except it owes more money.
Restaino built it, but no one came—except for a regional dodgeball championship and a REO Speedwagon tribute band. Economic impact? Sure. A few boosted Uber receipts. One very happy nacho vendor. And a happier mayor who drove down the street passing an empty arena and says, “I built that.”
And the bullshit detector blinking red said ‘”I told you before you built it and plunged the city in debt by a mayor with an ego as big as it is reckless and maybe – just maybe a hidden agenda—maybe something in it for him even if there is little for anybody else. I told you this stinks.”
Someone forgot to remove the Bullshit Detector. It wasn’t suppose to listen to the mayor’s YouTube discourse. but it die and it didn’t just beep—it lit up like a Christmas tree. But it wasn’t fear-mongering. Not like the mayor said.
It was just doing its job.
