Niagara Reporter
By Winston Velvet
In the heart of Niagara Falls, a debate is brewing, with two visions for the future of a ten-acre plot of land.
A taxpayer-funded arena, or a high-tech data center with private investment adding to the tax rolls.
Here are the mayor’s taxpayer-funded sketches of his arena.
Introducing the new Flush Bowl Stadium: Where every seat’s a throne!
Mayor Robert Restaino, with his unfunded arena aspirations, is pitching a house of cards beside a brick mansion – the entirely funded and ready-to-start Niagara Digital Center.
A digital center is planned for Niagara Falls and has only one opponent — Mayor Restaino.
To this observer, Restaino’s plans are like betting on a mirage when you have an oasis in hand.
It seems the mayor chose the glow of a firefly, so long as it shines on him, while ignoring the sunny brilliance of a tech center offered by NFR — a $1.5 billion data campus that will employ more than 500 people and pave the way for Niagara Falls to be a leader, an exporter in high tech — and not a distant follower.
But Restaino can’t claim the credit for the innovative plans of the digital center. The owners don’t need him. NFR only needs regular legal cooperation with the city for standard approvals of a tremendous and necessary project.
But Restaino cannot claim it or name it after himself.
NFR’s high-tech center is a roaring development lion compared to Restaino’s paper tiger tactics of trying to block an actual project for his holographic monument to himself.
Yes, this is one of Restaino’s many sketches for his arena
I can hear it now “Catch the action at Bowl Stadium, home of the championship ‘Plunge’ers!‘“: The stakes, and the seats, are always up!
Welcome to Restaino’s Porcelain Park: Dive in before the game swirls away! And every match is a flush of excitement!
Our home team’s strategy? Wipe out the competition!
No, it isn’t funny. Mental health issues are never funny. And I know people question Restaino’s mental health, with his various breakdowns and temper tantrums. But I think he is sane enough to discern the difference between an actual project and his only-on-paper dream.
His stubborn destructiveness reminds me of an Aesop Fable…
The Dog and the Pond
In a quaint village where summers were fleeting and wisdom seldom found, creatures would journey miles for a mere sip of water. News wafted through the wind about a shimmering fish pond nestled in someone’s abode, a generous haven where dogs could quench their thirst.
To this pond ventured Resty, a dog renowned not for his might, but for his pride. Gazing upon the crystalline waters, he felt no thirst. Yet a pang of selfishness gripped his heart, which he felt he could quench. Determined that if he didn’t benefit from the bounty of the pond, no one should, so he positioned his arse carefully over the water and left behind what many whispered as “mayoral deposits.”
In his mind, he sneered, “If this water doesn’t serve me, it shall serve no other.”
Today, the city stands at a crossroads. Will they choose a balloon over an airplane for their transatlantic journey to the future?
The Niagara Digital Campus will bring us a new era of high tech jobs.
Which vision will shape Niagara Falls’ destiny?
NFR, backed by investors and a development company, Urbacon, which has built successful high-tech data centers, is ready to create a project of national significance that will put Niagara Falls on the map for high-tech companies around the nation and the world.
Restaino instead wants us to buy a unicorn’s promise.
My Centennial Park plan is real.
Without money, he dreams goldfish will do dolphin tricks; if they won’t, he will do something truly mayoral in the pond.
The election is November 7.
