NIAGARA FALLS—Mickey Singh can look out the window of his family’s Niagara Street restaurant and measure the kind of day he’s going to have by the number of cars in the parking lot across the street.

If cars are packed in like sardines and wrapped around the One Niagara building, he knows its going to be good.

“Parking, it’s a big business here,” said Singh, whose father opened Punjabi Dhaba restaurant near the foot of the Rainbow Bridge 10 years ago.

Welcome to Niagara Falls, where paid parking is one of the few commercial enterprises showing signs of prosperity.

Within one city block, drivers can choose from four paid parking lots.

Workers competing for business wave fluorescent orange flags from early morning until dark. Parking attendants whistle, beckon and shout to coax drivers into privately owned lots.

At $10 a car, there’s good reason for what has become, at times, fierce competition that has drawn in police to settle disputes. Parking can bring in thousands of dollars in cash on a summer day.

All this in a city where, technically, paid parking as a primary business is illegal.

At least nine paid lots operate within a few blocks of the famous falls in summer. Three are in Niagara Falls State Park. Three are owned by the City of Niagara Falls, and three others are run by private businessmen.

Five years ago, the owners of a nearly empty glass office building just outside Niagara Falls State Park filled in a gaping hole left from a failed plan to build an underground aquarium on the property and started parking cars. Today, the lot at One Niagara brims with cars nearly all summer long.

But the addition of a new privately owned lot near O’Laughlin Drive this year has upped the ante. The new lot, on land owned by a subsidiary of the Cordish Co. and leased to a local operator, squares off with the One Niagara lot run by Frank Parlato Jr.

Flaggers for the two lots face off

daily in competition for luring in parkers.

One Niagara uses attendants with flags in its battle for parking customers with Niagara Falls State Park, its neighnor across Prospect Street.

Sharon Cantillon

 

Tourists have noticed.

“They are kind of pushy-like,” said Randy Campbell, of Sparta, N. J., who was in Niagara Falls the Friday before Fourth of July on an annual trip to Western New York. “They’re whistling loud.”

Campbell, who chose to park his van in Niagara Falls State Park because he needed a wide, handicapped-accessible spot, said the tactics used by flaggers in some lots make out-of-towners feel compelled to follow their directions.

“I know everybody has to make money, but everything is money, money,” Campbell said. “I mean, $10 to park?”

Nevermind that the Seneca Niagara Casino & Hotel offers hundreds of free parking spaces a few blocks away. Or that the City of Niagara Falls has not been able to figure out a consistent way to enforce its two-hour parking limits on most downtown streets.

Prime real estate in downtown Niagara Falls fills up on weekends with cars, vans and SUVs, all paying $10. Some spots turn over several times a day.

At One Niagara, where an ongoing legal dispute between owners recently revealed new revenue figures for the property, roughly 250 parking spots can pull in up to $7,600 on the busiest summer days, according to documents submitted to the court. Revenue drops off dramatically once late fall hits before it closes for the winter.

Private businessmen aren’t the only ones making money.

The City of Niagara Falls — although it loses money on its downtown parking ramp — makes a profit at its surface lots. When the summer season hits, the city raises its rates from $5 to $10 a car along with its competitors.

Parking fees in Niagara Falls State Park generate revenue for the park system, along with park concessions.

But it’s the privately owned parking lots that seem to draw the most complaints.

Niagara Falls police recently met with operators of the downtown lots to discuss the conduct of parking attendants who flag down drivers.

“I think earlier this year there were some problems,” said Tony Farina, president of One Niagara. “But I think they’ve been ironed out. I’ve had several discussions with the people across the street, and I think we’ve resolved things.”

The operators of the lot at 310 Rainbow Blvd. — across from One Niagara—did not return messages left to comment.

Farina said workers at his building are told that the policy is not to step in the street or use overly aggressive tactics to attract drivers.

“Does somebody stray now and then? I’m sure it happens,” Farina said. “I’m sure from time to time there’s been people that have gone a bit too far and gotten a little too aggressive, but that’s just competitive juices flowing. We try to rein that all in.”

Richard Whitney, who works occasionally in the lot across the street, agreed that the lots have quieted down since the spring.

“We have a quiet zone there now, so no one yells and screams,” Whitney said.

The lot at One Niagara, like other privately owned parking lots in downtown Niagara Falls, operates in a sort of gray zone of city ordinances.

Technically, city zoning codes in downtown neighborhoods allow paid parking lots only as an “accessory use” — meaning they have to be providing parking for a business on site.

In One Niagara’s case, the parking lot — which came before a welcome center and food court on the building’s first floor –serves the tourist operations inside the building. Across the street, the lot is attached to a small parcel with carnival rides.

Two blocks away, another lot operated for years at Niagara and First streets without a connected business. Last year, a 50-foot snow tubing hill opened on adjacent property. The lot, which sits farther from the falls, charges a discounted rate of $5 per vehicle.

But on a busy summer holiday weekend, drivers aren’t thinking about zoning codes and accessory uses. They’re just looking for a place to park.

On a recent Friday, Brenda Hamilton and Susan Aitken circled downtown Niagara Falls after finding the lot full at Niagara Falls State Park.

The City of Tonawanda residents drove around and around looking for a space until they came to the corner of Rainbow Boulevard and O’Laughlin Drive. There, they chose One Niagara, where workers appeared to be part of the park system.

“They had the patch with a khaki shirt, and at the first glance, you just assume it’s the park service people,” Aitken said.

After later learning that the lot was not, in fact, owned by the state, Aitken was a bit dismayed.

“We’d rather give our money to the park service,” said Aitken, noting, however, that the workers were polite.

A few minutes later, a couple from Charlotte, N. C., Heather and Jeff Riese, had little trouble finding a spot in a private lot on their way to the Maid of the Mist. Parking, Heather Riese said, was “easy.”

“I thought it was pretty reasonable,” said Heather Riese, a teacher.

Her husband motioned to downtown Niagara Falls and added, “For something like this.”