I guess it just goes to show, “You never know.”

When I originally left Niagara Falls in the mid-1960s I was still in high school at what was then known as Bishop Duffy, now Niagara Catholic. With few exceptions, I have not seen or heard from most of my classmates since then. Some went off to war in Vietnam, others scattered across the country to go to college, or to chase their dreams elsewhere, and some stayed in the area.

One of those I went to school with who stayed behind and continues to do well, is my friend Mike Redding who grew up on the East side, attended Bishop Duffy, graduated with a masters from Niagara University, taught school, dabbled in politics (he served on the City Council, ran for mayor, and county clerk) worked for the Power Authority, retired and then took on another job as executive director of Harborfest in Oswego. He admits, “I’m a better administrator than I am a politician.”

Oswego?

Besides being known for the its HUGE annual snowfall totals, and raucous local politics (the former mayor is in jail) Oswego, just 150 miles east, straight up Route 104, is famous for its annual Harborfest, a festival which has grown over the past 19 years to become central New York’s premier waterfront based cultural, music, history and arts event of the year.

Basically a college town, hosting a nuclear power plant and about 9,000 students at the State University of New York at Oswego, the quaint town is located on the southeastern shore of Lake Ontario at the mouth of the Oswego River, about 35 miles north of Syracuse and 68 miles east of Rochester.

The community name derives from Iroquoian for “flowing out,” a description of the river that pours into Lake Ontario. The estimated population in 2003 was 18,223.

Oswego was once a bustling Great Lakes port and a hub for the New York Central, Lackawanna/Erie Lackawanna, and NY Ontario and Western until the completion of the Erie Canal.

Aside from the jobs in the public sector including the schools, and local government, the Power Authority, National Grid and ALCAN provide the employment base for many of Oswego’s working age population. Like much of the Northeast, though, its population is aging and shrinking as jobs continue to move south and out of the country.

Fortunately 20 years ago next year, a few people realized the value of their waterfront on Lake Ontario where the river and the lake converge, and Harborfest was born, and it has been something of a boon to the local economy ever since according to the data analysis provided by Cornell University’s Department of Applied Economics’ Economic Impacts of Harborfest 2005 on the Oswego County Economy.

Today, the economic impact of the annual event is nothing short of HUGE as nearly 300,000 people flood the tiny town every day for one weekend per year leaving behind $32 million in overall economic benefit, supporting 637 local jobs as the result of average family spending of $542 resulting in $14.1 million in direct benefit to the local economy.

Like many Rust Belt communities, Oswego has been struggling for years to find a way to bring its economy back to life, and Mike says the festival is one way to introduce central New York, where most of the visitors come from, to the other resources Oswego has to offer.

But he admits the festival is no panacea. “Oswego still needs to find other ways to create a sustainable, year round economic base.”

After years of posting losses, Harborfest 2005 garnered a surplus, and this year, bad weather lowered turnout, but he says the upward trends are good as solid sponsorship and volunteer participation are what really drive the festival.

As a not-for-profit corporation, he says Harborfest does not exist for the bottom line, but like any other business, he wants to, at the very least, be able to cover costs and come out with something when its all said and done.

Corporate sponsors like Entergy which produces the gigantic fireworks display, the biggest in central New York, a cornerstone of the three and a half day festival, and national marketing campaigns by major companies like Gillette, Time Warner, Geico, Oscar Meyer, and Disney along with hundreds of smaller and local sponsors and memberships, contribute the bulk of the costs of the $1.5 million it cost to produce the event.

Redding points out that the festival no longer receives any direct financial support from the city, although they do receive “in-kind” support from the municipality in the form of parks access, traffic and crowd control, security and other public sector support.

He says the city was very supportive with financial assistance in the beginning, but now that they have been able to gain the private sector sponsorships, they no longer rely on public financing.

While sat having lunch in the belly of what was once a fish market, now a cozy Irish pub on the river, we reminisced about the days long ago when we were boys at Duffy before President Kennedy was assassinated, before Bobby and Martin Luther King were murdered, before everything changed.

We recalled how much simpler life seemed to be then, and how prosperous our hometown used to be. We never dreamed things would turn out the way they have.

We chuckled at the irony that we are now both back where we started, he on one end of Route 104 and me on the other, trying like Humpty Dumpty’s men, to put the pieces back together again.

“Who knew?” he sighed.

“Who knew?” I echoed.

Bill Bradberry’s columns appear Fridays in the Gazette.



NOTE: Michael Redding, executive director of Harborfest, received the 2006 Tourism Ambassador Award from the Oswego County Tourism Advisory Council. The annual award recognizes “extraordinary support and commitment of time and energy to the Oswego County tourism industry.”