I bought a property with a one-acre hole.
This hole was blasted and dug 35 feet deep into the dolomite, in downtown Niagara Falls, in 1999, almost at the top of the gorge, just outside the world-famous Niagara Falls State Park.
This one-acre hole, more than any other facet of the property, which includes an office building and 2.7 acres of land, made a lot of people think the whole property was worthless.

The hole also had a harmful effect on the people of Niagara Falls, New York, as if it were a symbol of community decline. We were in a hole, stuck in a hole, literally -- a notorious, ridiculed, even hated hole.
Before it became a hole, the land above it was the manicured entranceway for an office building for Occidental Chemical -- the only occupied office building in the USA with views of Niagara Falls. I had, therefore, the distinction of buying a nine-story building with pristine views of park and falls, and a one-acre hole, 35 feet deep.
In fairness, initially, it was a hole of golden promise, dug for a planned, world-class, underground aquarium which would have attracted millions, but was never financed.
For half a decade, there was a foolish, blue, vinyl fence around one of the prime pieces of real estate in Niagara Falls. On the fence, it said, "Coming Soon, AquaFalls Aquarium." But it never came.
But is was not just the hole that was mis-developed. The building itself was utilized wrongly. It is, after all, the closest building to Niagara Falls. Adjacent to the famous park, it is on the direct pathway of the Rainbow International Bridge. An architectural wonder; it is, remarkably, a perfect cube (144 x 144 x 144 high). All-glass, state-of-the-art, historians have called it "the father of all 'green' buildings."
It made the Guinness Book of World Records in 1987 and has been mentioned in prestigious publications, in articles on design and architecture, as a landmark. It was the first building, for instance, to use the double glass skin -- which affords it solar-energy opportunities, perhaps more than any other building in the northeast.
More importantly, it is the gateway property to Canada, the Niagara Falls State Park, and downtown Niagara Falls, New York. This great gateway building, the most visible on both sides of the Niagara, should have been used, at least in part, for tourism and not solely as an office building.

Millions pass around it annually, many who, after coming from afar and after seeing the falls, are looking for something to do. They see this grand, awe- inspiring building, and, peeking through the glass, hope to see something equally wondrous inside. Security guards drove them away. Inhospitable, we were in Niagara Falls.
The building became a fortress to tourists leaving the park, or entering the United States, almost blocking them from exploring downtown.
But I never saw such a place as Niagara Falls, New York, the only place in the history of the world where they get 17 million tourists a year and are broke.
Niagara Falls did something truly remarkable. Adjacent to the most famous natural landscape in the world, with the most visited and oldest state park in the United States, they managed to create a ghost town right next to it, with a boom town just across the river, in Canada, a city with the same name.
Still, Niagara Falls never had an all-glass building where people were welcomed inside. Nowhere in this city could you see from indoors the famous cataract from which the city derived its name.
When people entertained visitors, and wanted to show them a birds-eye view of the grand panorama -- maybe the most famous in the world -- the rapids, the gorge, and the American, the Luna, and the Horseshoe Falls, from an indoor observatory, they'd cross the bridge to Canada, and view it there.
With the acquisition of this nine-story, all -glass building -- at the veritable corner of the upper and lower Niagara, at the intersection -- I realized we could, with proper development, offer to the United States what Canadians had for so long. We, too, could view the falls from above -- from indoors, in downtown Niagara Falls.
Looking through the glass of our building, now renamed "One Niagara," time and again people exclaimed, it was the greatest view they had ever seen. Once you have seen it, you will never forget; you will be hard pressed to name a grander vista: The view of Niagara Falls from One Niagara. If the ninth floor were a restaurant, and the eighth floor a banquet and conference center, the public could enjoy their natural wonder whenever they wanted, year round.
If the top were for viewing, then the first two floors might be a welcome center, with information, stores, a food court, attractions. Millions of tourists pass our doors; we live, literally, and figuratively, in a glass house -- by the side of the road, along the Niagara -- so let us try, at least, to be a friend to man.
Our One Niagara could partner with local people who could use their skills at this prime location to earn money and serve our tourists. The strangers in our midst need many things to make them happy and comfortable. We could become hospitable -- welcoming friends from around the world who have come here with such high expectations -- and help them appreciate, enjoy, even reverence, and certainly to learn, not just about the falls, but about themselves, which is why we travel, I suspect, in the first place.
Why not make a grand welcome for the millions, as if Niagara Falls was home away from home, an external emblem of an ever-present inner purity, both the cataract, itself, and our genuine, amiable, even loving nature. There are friends you have not met yet in Niagara Falls.
Besides the restaurant, and retail space, I would also wish to lease office space -- with world-class views. Ironically, when I first got the property, I learned the building was to lose its anchor tenant. The SBA was relocating.
The Rainbow Mall, owned by a billionaire, is vacant. The Turtle, owned by another billionaire is vacant. There is the United Office building -- controlled by another of the super-rich -- also vacant. Now One Niagara was facing vacant status, with 300 jobs moved by the government from Niagara Falls to Buffalo, a "done deal" before I got here, adding gloom.
I had to act fast, to rent some floors with their gorgeous views to tenants who might desire such offices. A number of prospective tenants approached; some have taken space; we still have excellent space available.
But what to do with that hole? Who will rent a property overlooking, on the one side, Niagara Falls, and, on the other, a desperate, dank, and hopeless hole?
My first thought was to build an underground parking ramp. The cost, however, proved to be prohibitive. In fairness to the oft-criticized leadership in Niagara Falls, the lackluster state of development certainly should not be attributed to the current mayor, Vincenzo Anello. He has been Mayor for merely a year and a half. The problem has been ongoing for decades. Mayor Anello went out of his way -- as did his staff -- to help One Niagara, identifying funding possibilities for an underground ramp (cost $5-7 million) and his staff, particularly Ralph Aversa of Economic Development -- helped crunch out numbers and determine which course to take.
In the end, I decided to fill the hole (with about one million US dollars, plus some shot rock, gravel and clay (the latter, generously provided by the town of Niagara, and, here, too, Mayor Anello helped, by making the request to procure it for our project from Niagara Town Supervisor Steve Richards).
What is now the hole will soon be a surface parking lot, along with green space, with fountains, a pool, and a wishing well. In the wintertime, I hope to add an ice skating rink. The grounds should look like a continuation of Niagara, the park.
For me, it's been the best of times, and the worst of times. I look out my window and see vacancy and poverty all around, and wonder, "how can such a place, and such a building, with such a view, have come to this?"
Then again, I see the falls, and feel its power, and know that our destiny is to a very real and great extent in our own hands. We can will to succeed.
Maybe it all starts by filling the hole.