NIAGARA FALLS — What’s next for the concept known as the Niagara Experience Center? Having been rejected as a project worthy of funding under the first round of Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s new regional economic development initiative, supporters of the plan to create a one-of-a-kind visitor center in Niagara Falls aren’t quite sure.

After languishing in limbo for several years, it appeared as though the experience center concept was about to gain renewed life in the form of financial support through Cuomo’s regional council program. Members of the Western New York Regional Economic Development Council, which put together the local strategic plan for development projects to be funded under Cuomo’s initiative, identified the center as one of its 12 “priority” projects. On Thursday, local leaders learned that while the council’s overall plan ranked as one of the “best” of those submitted by the 10 regional councils statewide, the experience center would not be receiving $5 million in seed money requested by project supporters.

“It was identified as a priority project in one of the four award-winning plans, but it isn’t being funded,” said Mayor Paul Dyster, a former member of the board of directors for the experience center and a long-time supporter of the project. “I’d like to think the experience center meets the definition of a transformative project as it was explained to us. Obviously, we’re disappointed that it didn’t get funding in this cycle.”

Without the state revenue, City Planner Tom DeSantis, a member of the board of directors for the non-profit group, Niagara Experience Center, Inc., said it appears at least for now that the project will remain where it has been for several years — on the drawing board waiting for the right level of funding and support.

“I don’t think anything has really changed,” DeSantis said. “I think we are in the exact same holding pattern we were in before.”

The experience center idea was first pitched by local historian Paul Gromosiak back in the late 1990s. In 2002, state officials, led by then Gov. George Pataki, offered the first formal endorsement of the project. In 2004, the state-run USA Niagara Development Corp. hired a consultant to develop cost estimates and conceptual plans, including designs for various interactive exhibits.

Gromosiak who quit the Experience Center’s board of directors in 2008 out of frustration, says he still believes the idea has merit. He thinks state officials are the ones who need to get their priorities straight.

“When I quit the board a few years ago, I didn’t quit the idea,” Gromosiak said. “I was just frustrated that things weren’t happening faster. I’m, of course, very, very proud to have been a part of this thing. Just to see it happen would be enough for me because I really think this is our answer.”

The initial design work is still available on the experience center website which describes the proposed facility as the region’s first immersive “experience museum.” The center was to serve as a local tourism “hub” where visitors to the Falls would be able to learn more about various local points of history and interest across Western New York, thus promoting the idea that the region is more than a one- or two-day destination.

“I see this project as that singular project that connects everything else to where you can market the entire region as a multi-day destination,” DeSantis said.

Already completed designs, developed by the company BRC Imagination Arts, called for a series of interactive exhibits inside the center that would be both informative and entertaining. Preliminary plans included exhibits like The Brink, a “dramatic connection corridor featuring a cave-like environment that would create the illusion that visitors are walking behind and right over the falls, and The Gorge, a central garden space with multi-story projection towers that would “immerse visitors in the epic scale and story of Niagara Falls.”

The experience center was originally envisioned as the keystone of the larger Niagara Falls Heritage Park, which called for the transformation of under-used commercial property near Niagara Falls State Park into an “attractive, world-class resort destination.” A feasibility study was performed by Economics Research Associates, which analyzed local and comparable attractions in other cities and developed projections for typical attendance and spending characteristics, concluded that the experience center, if built, could sustain itself without the need for annual operating subsidies from the public sector. The analysis also suggested the center and the park project would have a positive fiscal impact on the community while creating several hundred jobs.

DeSantis said initial projections estimated the center would cost between $80 million and $90 million to build. He noted that those projections were based on earlier plans to develop a museum, lodging component and outdoor performance venue as part of a complete package. DeSantis said some of those elements could be changed in the future and final cost would depend heavily on the board’s ability to define and acquire a site downtown on which to build the center itself. The board had hoped to acquire the $5 million to further refine the project by performing additional design and site selection work and updating the cost-benefit analysis which is now several years old.

 DeSantis said he remains “very bullish and positive” about the concept, but admitted it may be time for the board of directors to reconsider the way it has attempted to sell the merits of the project to potential private and public sector investors, especially those outside of Western New York.

“There’s obviously a disconnect between the local people and the regional people and the people we are asking for money,” DeSantis said. “We still haven’t convinced the wider audience that this is the thing that will work and this is what we should be doing.”



Contact Mark Scheer at 282-2311, ext. 2250.