CITYCIDE: As winter breaks, life beginning to return to Rainbow Boulevard

By Dave Staba

March 28, 2005

It's not the sort of development that causes politicians to crowd behind a podium, trying to stay within range of television cameras or post boastful signs taking credit for things that haven't actually happened yet.
But it's the sort of news that downtown Niagara Falls, the long-seized engine of a much larger economy, needs much more than yet another back-slapping news conference at Prospect Point.
Lynda Gibas ran The Green Onion at the Rainbow Centre for 18 years. The collectibles shop opened along with the mall that came to embody how off-target the goals of Urban Renewal really were. She stayed there as the facility, mismanaged from afar by absentee landlord David Cordish, slowly bled to death, and was one the last tenants to move out.
Needing a new home for her shop, Gibas wound up leaving the city entirely, landing in Prime Outlets on Military Road in the Town of Niagara. But now, the woman who grew up on First Street next to the Hotel Niagara hopes to return to her roots.
Gibas is planning to relocate her operation into the building known around town as the old Oxy building, "The Flashcube" and, most recently, as "the building next to that (expletive deleted) hole in the ground."
Frank Parlato, who purchased the former Occidental Chemical headquarters late last year, wants to fill the building's immense two-story lobby with retailers and vendors catering to the millions of tourists who cross the Rainbow Bridge every year. That's the same market that once made downtown an international destination before Urban Renewal strangled it.
It's also the market Gibas wants for The Green Onion, one very different from Military Road.
"It's like coming home again," Gibas said.
With the ongoing resurrection of the former Wintergarden across the street and Parlato's efforts to revive the building he's renamed "One Niagara," the edge of the city closest to the world-famous cataracts may be on its way to again rating as a home worth coming to.
Parlato's approach stands in marked contrast to the last set of plans for a property long underutilized.
Late last century, amid breathless hype, a group of foreign investors and local politicians hailed a proposed underground aquarium as the savior of downtown and the tourist economy. Instead, AquaFalls proved the punchline to what quickly became a very old joke, a 35-foot-deep pit that seemed to suck hope from the entire city, even as the fencing surrounding it taunted tourist and locals alike with the words "coming soon."
Soon never came, of course, and the building continued to deteriorate. The abysmal conditions led the Small Business Administration to make plans to move, leaving Parlato without an anchor tenant when he purchased both mortgages on the property in December.
Parlato said engineering studies on the pit that was to house AquaFalls have been completed. The post-filling plans include green space, parking and areas for vendors. No firm timetable has been set, but he said he's been talking to potential contractors and hopes to have work underway by tourist season.
In the meantime, he's working on filling One Niagara.
Parlato is banking on the building's location and the building itself to draw tenants, both to the retail space in the lobby and office space on the third through seventh floors. He said the federal Environmental Protection Agency, a stockbroker and several attorneys have either committed to moving in or are in negotiations. He said he'd like to provide space for a police substation as a home base for foot and bicycle patrols in the area.
"Tourists like to see police," Parlato said. "Most people, that is."
The view of Niagara Falls, the gorge and the state park are most pronounced from the upper floors of the glass building. Parlato said making the eighth and ninth floors, as well as the rooftop, accessible to the public is central to his plans. A couple weeks back, a group of elected officials from Sicily took in the view from above the falls, getting a spectacular view while avoiding the elements of a frigid late-winter day.
Capitalizing on the cataracts outside the traditional Memorial Day-to-Labor Day window is a central theme of Parlato's still-developing plans. One possibility for raising the building's profile involves making it into a giant, four-sided billboard. Parlato said he's had discussions with the creators of the Fremont Street Experience in Las Vegas about creating a similar light show at One Niagara.
Such a move would be contingent on preserving the view from within the building and would help draw attention, and ideally tourists, from across the Niagara River.
"We could use it to beckon people from Canada. If we can get people to extend their stay and spend time on both sides, we can truly make it 'One Niagara,'" Parlato said, invoking the phrase he's applied to his building and the philosophy for its operation.
Giving people something to do outside the park has been the focus of Joe Anderson's work at the Wintergarden and the Quality Inn adjacent to it. Anderson has spent about $2.2 million converting the onetime giant greenhouse into "Smokin' Joe's Family Fun Center." The facility has hosted three well-attended amateur boxing promotions and is gearing up for tourist season, with kid-friendly attractions like bounce houses and a mammoth jungle gym, as well as food kiosks.
So far, there are about 50 events scheduled outside the building on the East Mall, where Anderson has a lease arrangement with the city, including a weekly concert series.
Business already is up at the Quality Inn since Anderson took over, with occupancy ahead of expectations so far this year.
The one-step-at-a-time approach embraced on both sides of Rainbow Boulevard offers a contrast to the grand promises of Urban Renewal. Both the Wintergarden and the Occidental building sprouted from the ruins of what was once downtown. Both are innovative structures that, upon opening, earned praise for their architecture, but never lived up to their design.
Urban Renewal operated on the theory that "if you build it, they will come," which makes a nice line in a movie about dead baseball players and a ballpark in a cornfield, but proved an utter flop as a planning philosophy.
After years of stagnancy in the area, both Parlato and Anderson are working with the wreckage left by that failure, looking for ways to get people to come back to an area they've avoided for decades.

David Staba is the sports editor of the Niagara Falls Reporter. He welcomes e-mail at dstaba13@aol.com.