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…