Session: Heritage Development Planning Across Jurisdictions

March 30, 10:15 AM

Thomas J. DeSantis, AICP
City of Niagara Falls, NY

Welcome today and thank you for this opportunity to address you this morning.

You should know that I work for the City of Niagara Falls, NY a municipality of approximately 56,000, concerned with significant social and economic dislocation as well as considerable environmental problems. I work for city government in a strong home-rule state that happens to be in the middle of a closely linked Bi-National region—The Niagara Region.

Everyone here knows the challenges that face our cities, and they certainly are staring me in the face, in Niagara Falls. One thing we know is that despite (not-so-good) current conditions, cities with a long and rich past, like Niagara Falls, also have unique opportunities for building a better future. The economic benefits of heritage planning and development are well documented. Planning in Niagara Falls is trying to implement progressive economic development strategies that can take advantage such an opportunity offers. These strategies are not an end in themselves, but a catalyst and a foundation for what comes next.

For us, tourism must lead the way generally if we are to grow new forms of economic activity in the community and by extension in the region. In particular, heritage tourism appears to provide us with the most comprehensive framework for developing additional tourism opportunities. But like many of you know all too well, saying it doesn’t make it so. Planning goals and government policies are usually great if not lofty sounding the truth is strategy execution typically requires thousands of decisions, made by individuals, corporations, and several levels of government. Because of this, grounded and vetted projects are what can often focus these many diverse actions in the direction of desired outcomes. This is where collaboration between like-minded "actors" must build a capacity to effect community and regional development policies and in this instance—bi-nationally.

While professional planning assistance and government coordination should be seem as key ingredients in achieving successful tourism development. It is the constituents affected that have the most to gain or lose if they do not collaborate and share responsibility for planning tourism development. Local government agents, like myself, must attempt to influence these local decision makers by illustrating the many heritage resources available to them and how the development of those resources as heritage based attractions can serve to positively affect economic opportunity for them as well as others.

For me, it was a long struggle to convince officials to create a historic preservation commission, and that doing so would not be an impediment to new development. Less than two years after the Commission legislation was adopted there has been three new properties listed on the national register, one I’ll say something about later. Another previously listed property will soon be transformed into a multi-function rail-centered intermodal transportation center. A citywide recon and extensive level surveys are under way and the attention generated is all positive so far.

Having said that, remember that city or area planning agencies, like the one I work for, have NO declared mandates, policies, or practices that explicitly define its role as it relates to tourism development. Typically local planning is too narrowly focused to contribute to tourism development much beyond the scale of site or neighborhood. Yet experience and literature will tell us that tourism planning needs to be approached: at the site, destination area, and regional scales. I guess that this means you and I must work at different scales whether we find it organizationally easy or not. Again, one way to do that is through collaborations with others.

So how does one—work at these different scales? by acting on local cultural projects but projects with very clear linkages and implications for impact and effect at different scales.

Another way is to maintain a consistent approach to developing tourism as a catalyst for economic growth and opportunity. In preparing your typical planning documents, always stress natural resource protection, developing additional tourism assets for your given market segments or developing new markets, and community integration.

Natural resource protection or environmental enhancement probably seems obvious but it is often the first thing overlooked and sometimes on purpose, yet without it there is no possibility for tourism development that is sustainable or that will have the intended outcomes (remember those lofty goals).

Developing new marketing assets or new markets implies a focus on physical development—new attractions, golf parks, or transportation infrastructure. By focusing on increasing the "supply" of new tourism infrastructure and on resource protection issues, should ensure that project plans have coherent motivation, together with strong public support.

In Niagara Falls this has evolved through what is now 20 years of waterfront planning. All of which can be organized by four basic principles: Naturalizing the waterfront and public lands; Connecting the City’s business districts and neighborhoods physically to the waterfront and public lands; Re-connecting Niagara Falls State Park lands with the City’s downtown tourist district; and Developing programs that promote community heritage and projects that create new vehicles for heritage interpretation.

An outgrowth of applying these principles has resulted in a redefinition of waterfront to encompass the much broader "river corridor" expanding the application of those principles to contiguous business and neighborhood districts. This broad corridor now becomes the physical framework for local tourism projects and heritage projects in particular. Heritage (development) has become the prominent thematic and programmatic framework for new development proposals. The principles also offer a means to evaluate and prioritize all of the projects and proposals that may follow, and hopefully they will serve to guide continuing planning.

Two example projects: the installation of the waterfront trail system from city line to city line and the creation of a Niagara Falls History Museum, aka the Niagara Experience Center. It represents the brightest star within an expanding constellation of heritage and cultural interpretive facilities and sites that were initially referred to as Niagara Discovery Centers. The History Museum would be the hub of a system of attractions and a point of orientation and embarkation for all of the heritage opportunities throughout the bi-national Niagara region.

This recommendation is rooted in past plans and responsive to powerful global trends in travel and education. More simply put, however, it is time to let the world discover the stories of this region, starting with the Park-City by the great cataracts. There is no better place to begin than beside one of the world’s best-known places, to tell the stories of the geology that formed the cataract, the Iroquois Nation, the marriage of power and industry, great feats of civil engineering, Frederick Law Olmsted’s vision for the Falls, City, and Park, and of the landscape and ecology that sets a context for all these stories and more.

In the past, Niagara Falls has been the inspiration for some very strange ideas about cities and economic development. (Hopefully, that doesn’t include the present company.) In 1893, an entrepreneur named William Love proposed construction of a "Model City" at Niagara. Powered by clean hydroelectric power, it would be a planned community of a million people, with thousands of acres set aside for parkland. The State gave Love power of eminent domain to seize lands and divert waters for his project. He built a few houses and dug the first mile of a seven-mile power canal, then ran out of money. Kids swam in the trench until the chemical industry found what it regarded as a more "productive" use for the empty canal. The rest of that sad story I’m sure you know. One of the first insights I can share is that reversing often-unfair negative images is perhaps the most difficult of the many challenges we face in redeveloping cities.

Niagara Falls seems to have a long history of utopian ideas. Perhaps we should be encouraged that the power and natural beauty of Niagara continues to attract visionaries who want to help plan a better future, even though our recent experience with grand development schemes is not very encouraging. Another important insight, development ideas that flow from the people are almost always the most visionary and the most practical. Through a process of collaborative planning based on public input, we think we’re back on the right track. Here’s where were headed and why.

By all accounts, the coming of the New Economy is—or should be—a great opportunity. It means the cards in the economic deck are being reshuffled. For the past few decades, Niagara Falls has been in a long and painful transition out of the heavy industrial period that dominated our economy for a century. Of course, the city will have heavy industry for some time into the future, and for the sake of balance in our economy there will be continued support for them. But with each passing year it is abundantly clearer that our long-term future lies in locally based, environmentally friendly economic development. This means economic/tourism development initiatives that build on the human, cultural, and physical attributes within our communities.

We’ve learned from our neighbors in Canada that tourism must certainly be taken more seriously as an engine of urban redevelopment, and that tourism will lead the way in our economic revitalization of Niagara Falls. But tourism must be balanced with initiatives that will also create stable, long-term, well-paid employment in other economic sectors. This is at the heart of the City’s strategy?

Study after study has shown that the traditional methods of enticing businesses to urban areas aren’t working in the "New Economy." An important key in trying to reverse negative growth trends is by attracting high-tech, information age companies. One way to do that is to seduce the educated young people these companies need to work for them. David Luberoff wrote recently in Governing magazine.

"…potential workers in developing high-tech industries didn’t put much stock in the traditional tools of downtown redevelopment. Instead, they sought regions that offered good opportunities for outdoor recreation and interesting neighborhoods full of thriving cafes, restaurants, music venues, art galleries, etc."

Small-scale quality-of-life improvements meant more to this demographic than the big-ticket items that often capture the fancy of policy-makers.

The good news for places like Niagara Falls is that we should not have to worry about conflicting priorities. The same things that will make our tourist economy more competitive will also make us more attractive to high-tech industry. The old dilemma between what’s good for the Niagara environment and what’s good for the Niagara economy that has haunted us for a century has been broken by the ascendance of the information economy and eco and heritage tourism. We can have it both ways. That’s the central thesis behind both the State’s "New Vision for State Parks" and the City’s waterfront study, "Achieving Niagara’s Future (2002)," which outlines 40+ projects we hope to implement over the next ten years. Doing a better job protecting and restoring the Niagara River waterfronts and other public lands is a capital investment in our future prosperity. It improves the quality-of-life for residents and it not only gives the City a tool to lure young people here from other places—it gives our own young people a reason to stay.

That’s why we’re working so hard to improve access to the Niagara River Gorge for both residents and visitors alike. Exposure to this level of spectacular scenery in far-away places is a luxury reserved for the most affluent among us. Most residents can’t afford that type of recreation, but along the great Niagara River, they can experience one of North America’s most awesome landscapes, and that can’t help but make them feel better about themselves and the city they live in. Educating the many visitors about our heritage is also another integrative strategy that develops local pride as much as it does capacity.

Other cities have used their waterfronts as the rallying point for revitalization efforts—Baltimore, Chattanooga and of course, Cleveland comes readily to mind. In your city, it may be a different asset that plays the key role. Maybe it’s cultural institutions, entertainment opportunities, or great food. A city has to find its unique identity, and play to the strengths it knows it can sustain in the long haul. We’re doing that in Niagara Falls with the help of outside actors, The ‘Urban Design Group’ at University of New York at Buffalo’s School of Architecture and Planning, partners in New York & Ontario governments and tourism industry, and many others in the community that also see the connection between heritage activities (preservation, research, interpretation, etc.) and developing economic opportunities.

One example where heritage has played a key if indirect role in revitalizing a part of Niagara Falls, a citizens group working to create an arts and cultural center in our historic former Niagara Falls High School—a neo-classical revival building that was to be demolished as little as two years ago. Today it is well on its way to creating a critical mass of creative people at the city center. The building was successfully nominated and placed on the National Register that enabled access to $500,000 capital grant. More than 50,000 of its 80,000 SF is full of gallery and performance space, artists, and dance companies and businesses. So, you have the historic preservation people, the economic development people, the arts people, the music people, and others, all in partnership to create a new asset for our center city. Old buildings are like our older cities need special people working together. Other people saw only an empty school building, these citizens understood the nature of possibilities, and they got excited because this represented a part of their collective history.

The key is to create partnerships between government, business, civic organizations and other institutions, each contributing their unique piece of the puzzle, and all committed to the goal of revitalizing our cities—that’s the wave of the future.

American cities will succeed in the future to the extent that they are successful in developing their unique assets in ways that make the experience of urban living pleasurable again. Our cities have a lot of undervalued assets, not least of which are the many people out there who want to make revitalizing our cities part of their own life story.

Our new vision will succeed because it flows from the people’s love of the City’s natural environment, history, and culture, from their desire to make their city beautiful, and from their commitment to improving the quality of their own lives. If our visions for our cities fall short, it is because they had nothing to do with the values and aspirations of the people who lived there or because we could not empower residents to enough to realize them. Let’s pray that we are able to do both.

Author and Copyright Information

Thomas J. DeSantis, AICP
Senior Planner
City of Niagara Falls, NY
Office of Planning
745 Main Street
Niagara Falls, NY 14302-0069
Ph: 716-286-4477
Fx: 716-286-4485
desantis@nfez.org