Falls Festival Frustrations

Since the end of the Festival of Lights, Niagara Falls has had little success in replicating regional events

By Denise Jewell

In the 1960’s, there was the Maid of the Mist.

When the long-running festival and parade ended, the Festival of Lights was created. Next came the Community Faire, the Niagara Wine, Food and Jazz Festival and then, once all those had languished, the Maid of the Mist returned.

She likely won’t come back to town this year after sparse crowds attended the revived event last August.

Despite attempts to restart a regional event to draw back hundreds of thousands of visitors that once came to Niagara Falls for the Festival of Lights, the crowds have not materialized.

Aside from localized fairs, like Pine Avenue’s Italian Festival or the St. John de LaSalle carnival, Niagara Falls has had little success launching a regional event.

Yet eight miles down river, Lewiston has been able to grow a jazz festival that will draw 150 musicians this summer and a Peach Festival that is one of Niagara County’s largest fairs. In North Tonawanda, Canal Fest brought bands like Collective Soul and Everclear to the city’s waterfront last summer.

Despite its famous name and world-class attraction, Niagara Falls has fallen behind in creating a product to build on the city’s existing tourism industry. What has gone wrong?

Some blame sponsorship sources that have dried up along with the city’s industrial base. Others point to fragmented neighborhoods that each want a festival in their own backyard and a lack of resources required to sustain long-term planning.

“One word: commitment,” said Jason Murgia, owner of the Orchard Grill on Main Street and a Niagara County Legislator.

Murgia tried to start a festival on Main Street in 2000, but the event waned after several years. Beyond a handful of volunteers, Murgia found that “people weren’t really that enthused” about helping run the event.

In the five years since organizers abandoned the Festival of Lights, there have been several attempts to jump start the city as a venue for a large-scale event, but few have taken hold.

At its peak, the Festival of Lights drew a million visitors a year in the late 1980’s. In its nearly two-decade run between 1981 and 2000, the festival relied on 1,500 volunteers and one full-time organizer who worked year-round to pull off the 44-day winter festival.

When the Festival of Lights started, Niagara Falls and Simcoe, Ont., were the only two cities in the region that held a winter lights festival. The event “took off like a firecracker” after just a few years, recalled Tom Darro, a former Convention and Visitors Bureau spokesman who served as the master of ceremonies for several of the festivals.

But by the end, 17 communities — including Niagara Falls, Ont. — were holding similar light shows and luring visitors from the Cataract City. Organizers were left wondering whether the work was worth the dwindling number of spectators.

By 2000, seed money and sponsors that had once funded events in the city had dried up.

“The Carborundums and Oxys are gone,” said Darro, who later worked for the city to coordinate events before his position was eliminated. “The people and the organizations that would provide you with funds, they don’t exist.”

Sponsorship has lent a hand to the success of building the three-day Lewiston Jazz Festival. In just four years, organizers said the event drew more than 30,000 people during the weekend and had an economic impact of a $1 million in Lewiston.

Sandy Hays Mies, executive director of the Lower Niagara River Region Chamber of Commerce, said a $70,000 sponsorship from the New York Power Authority helped kick start the event.

“Cash always helps make a festival grow,” Hays Mies said. “You can market it more.”

While grass-roots efforts to revive the Falls’ festival schedule have had limited success, the Seneca Niagara Casino has drawn crowds with an outdoor concert series that has hosted the Beach Boys and Three Dog Night.

Organizers behind some of the region’s major festivals have offered some advice: start planning early, tap a major sponsor and have paid workers that are responsible for planning the event.

Hays Mies, who helped start the Italian Festival in Niagara Falls when she worked for the Pine Avenue Business Association, said her staff starts planning the next year’s jazz festival as soon as it ends. While volunteers help pull off the events, the paid staff are ultimately responsible if things go wrong.

“Volunteers are just that. And they squeeze things in when time permits in their work and home lives,” Hays Mies. “I think that continuity of staff is extremely important. Once in a while, you get really lucky with volunteers. The Kiwanis put on the Peach Festival with no staff. It’s flawless.”

The annual St. John de LaSalle Carnival in Niagara Falls is also organized entirely by volunteers.

While Niagara Falls has had only limited success organizing festivals in recent years, a new board of volunteers working for the city is looking to create a new jazz festival in Hyde Park that will celebrate musicians that once performed at the Ontario House.

William Bradberry, who chairs the Tourism Advisory Board’s cultural heritage and entertainment committee, hopes the event can build on the success of the Lewiston Jazz Festival and eventually grow to the size of the Sunfest in West Palm Beach.

Bradberry believes the festival could become a product for the city as the region rebounds.

Volunteers who have worked on other events believe that may just be what the city needs.

“You can’t have 20 different festivals,” Murgia said. “You’ve got to regroup. You’ve got to have two or three major events in the summertime so that everyone in Niagara Falls benefits.”