By Tony Farina
Until something else comes along, if it does, the Save-a-Lot grocery store in the City Market has now joined the exodus from downtown Niagara Falls that leaves grocery shoppers in the neighborhood scrambling for someplace else to fill their cupboards at affordable prices. As of now, there is nothing nearby to fill the void despite promises from the state for a makeover deal for the City Market that right now is just a promise.
Low profits and crime doomed Save-a-Lot to leave, according to Upstate Supermarkets, and they made good on the imminent closure that Mayor Restaino
announced last week, apparently without his blessings, saying they had stopped paying rent the last two months and were looking for taxpayer money to help. But the company denies Restaino’s claim they asked for help.
Some observers of City’s Hall’s marketing officials said the Restaino team should have found a way to keep Save-a-Lot from leaving instead of blaming them for the departure which has people in the neighborhood absolutely devastated at losing an affordable grocery store with few options.
Development is not the government’s cup of tea and the proof continues to grow. Stalled projects, empty buildings, and multi-million dollar gambles with no return is overwhelming evidence of the city’s failure, with government spending millions of public dollars on risky real-estate ventures which it doesn’t have the
experience or know-how to manage, leaving frustrated residents out in the cold.
Save-a-Lot is just another nail in the coffin.
Even pros struggle making anything work in Niagara Falls, and not just in the poor areas—and there are certainly many of those. TM Montante, certainly a pro, was heavily subsidized to help revitalize Third Street and has yet to finalize a deal with any of their properties and proposed tenant in the three properties they own. If a firm with that experience can’t make it work in the tourist core, what chance does City Hall have managing real estate on its own. And there is much evidence of failure to see.
While the city and state argue over the Rainbow Mall site, the property remains undeveloped, producing nothing in the way of jobs or revenue. It just sits empty, another landmark of failed development efforts.
And the Niagara Falls Train Station, built with huge fanfare a few years ago and which the city lose over $130,000 a year to operate the white elephant! Even
Food Truck Thursdays couldn’t survive there helping create another taxpayer- funded monument to mismanagement and failed development.
The city took over operations of the City Market, pouring in over $20 million in subsidies only to see the anchor tenant, Save-a-Lot, close its doors and get out of town. Another huge and most recent disappointment on the list of failures.
And how about the public safety building on Hyde Park Blvd., empty for 20 years since the operations moved to Main St., leaving both facilities to struggle and
Main St. expensive to operate. It is a lose-lose for taxpayers again, a familiar theme.
Perhaps the city’s biggest gamble yet is the mayor’s Centennial Park arena, projected to cost taxpayers $30,000 a day to operate despite having no committed tenant, no state funding, and no plans to pay for ongoing costs. And the plan doesn’t include the mounting legal fees tied to eminent domain to acquire the property making it an extremely expensive gamble with very long odds of success.
Even if the arena is built, most positions will be low—paying and part-time, not much in the way of a livable income. How much of an economic anchor will this
gamble return?
And the Seneca Casino, with still no agreement in site on extending the gaming compact with the state, would likely just want to keep its patrons on site with
little incentive to support or use the mayor’s arena. Just a poor play for them.
The city, according to many observers, should be sinking money into neighborhoods, infrastructure, and real jobs, and not pouring millions of taxpayer dollars into speculative development with no accountability and no results.
The government maybe needs to act like a government, taking care of people’s needs, and not pretend it’s a developer which history has proven it is not. The
city should take care of the city’s needs and work with real investors to make their interest worthwhile and cut the bureaucracy and development roadblocks.
Niagara Falls must look in a different direction to find its way out of the development quagmire that it finds itself in. There is little hope for any real progress if the city can’t get out of the way and find real development investors to come to town and try to save what’s left besides the four-month tourist window that leaves eight months of winter with not much else.
