NIAGARA FALLS — The DiCienzio family has been doing hotel business on both sides of the border in Niagara Falls for years.

   In 2007, the family business, Canadian Niagara Hotels, sold the old Holiday Inn at the corner of Third Street and Rainbow Boulevard to make way for its demolition as part of the expansion of the footprint for the Seneca Niagara Casino and Hotel.

Three years later, the Dicienzios, who own several hotel properties in Niagara Falls, Ontario, returned to the American side with an investment in the former Crowne Plaza Hotel. The Third Street property has since been renovated and re-opened under the Sheraton flagship. Last month, the company opened a TGI Friday’s restaurant inside the hotel on the side facing Old Falls Street.

Michael DiCienzio says favorable Canadian currency rates and other market factors played a role in the family’s decision to invest downtown. He said improvements to the appeal of the area helped as well.

“It’s better since they took out the Wintergarden and developed the Old Falls Street promenade,” DiCienzio said. “You have the anchors at each end with the casino and the park and now everything else can line up in between. It’s absolutely moving in the right direction. There’s no doubt about that.”

Moving downtown in the right direction has been the job of the state-run USA Niagara Development Corp. since its inception in 2001 under former Gov. George Pataki. The quality of work accomplished by the agency to date has been the subject of debate for many years among local business owners and elected officials. Critics charge that after more than a decade of operation, USA Niagara should have more success stories by now.

USA Niagara President Chris Schoepflin admits there’s still a lot of work to be done, but he stands by the agency’s accomplishments, especially in recent months.

“If you rewind to a decade ago and to the condition of the streets and the vacancy of certain key buildings and just the overall setting, I think unquestionably it’s a very different look and feel today,” said Schoepflin, who took over as the head of USA Niagara in 2005. “That’s not to say there isn’t a whole lot of work ahead of us. That work has to be done at all levels of government with our partners. Without question, there’s a lot of work ahead. It has to be completely a team effort — city, county, state, federal and private sector.”

The agency’s current focus remains on the redevelopment of one of the most prominent buildings downtown — the former Rainbow Centre Mall. Schoepflin said contractors are putting the finishing touches on the first phase of abatement and demolition work inside the section of the building that will eventually house Niagara County Community College’s new culinary arts institute. Schoepflin said crews are expected to complete work on the culinary center section of the building by early next month and will move on to clean out the remaining 200,000 square feet that will become a “build ready box” for future investors.

USA Niagara is also working on the development of a request for proposals that will solicit bids for projects for 310 Rainbow Blvd., a parcel that formerly housed a tethered balloon ride. The parcel was turned over to the city as part of the release of the mall for the purpose of developing the culinary center. Schoepflin said the agency envisions a mixed-use development, new-build on the site. All together, he said, the property when combined with available commercial space inside the mall will offer a little more than a half a million square feet of potential development space downtown.

The mall project also involves the redevelopment of the old city parking ramp attached to the building. The structure will undergo a $9 million upgrade. Once completed, Schoepflin said it will add 1,600 secure parking spaces in a downtown area in desperate need of them.

“I think to make it a true, urban, municipal parking ramp, access has to be much easier,” he said. “We’re working on that. We’re dealing with safety, lighting, aesthetics and access. We think that the ramp will again be a major positive as we move forward.”

Schoepflin said his agency is continuing to work on finding an investor for the Power City building, a former bank building located at the corner of Old Falls and Third streets. He said he’s encouraged by the recent sale at auction of the former Hotel Niagara building, which was purchased earlier this year by Vancouver developer Jamil Kara who expressed an interest in reviving the structure as a boutique hotel with condominiums.

“We have five or six good things going on on the edges of Falls Street,” Schoepflin said.

The agency’s progress downtown remains a sticking point for some local officials. State Senators Mark Grisanti and George Maziarz and state Assemblyman John Ceretto have advocated for changes within the organization, arguing that it is not making satisfactory progress. Grisanti said he and Maziarz were involved in a private meeting recently with downtown business owners and Ken Adams, the president and chief executive officer for the Empire State Development Corp., USA Niagara’s parent agency. Grisanti said local officials and business owners made it clear to Adams that they expect to see more production from the agency in the future, especially in the area of attracting new investors to downtown.  

“It was a very productive meeting and I’m going to keep on top of it,” Grisanti said.

Grisanti and Ceretto co-sponsored legislation that aims to expand the agency’s boundaries from outside its current two-mile radius downtown to cover the entire city. The measure passed the Senate, but did not win approval in the Assembly. Grisanti said he intends to work with his colleagues and Adams in re-working the boundary to at least cover the Aquarium of Niagara, a key attraction that he believes deserves additional attention.

“We told him that USA Niagara needed to be amended and needed to be expanded and I think that’s something that he is going to work on with myself and others for Niagara Falls,” Grisanti said. “There’s going to be some revamping there to make it more business friendly in recruiting businesses for the area.”

Wine on Third owner Shawn Weber, who attended the meeting with Adams, said he’s OK with an expansion that would include the area surrounding the aquarium, but isn’t so sure it would be wise to expand the agency’s boundaries citywide. Weber, whose business was one of the few that was around when USA Niagara undertook the renovation of the Third Street business district, said he’d prefer the agency maintain its focus on the downtown area.

 “We’re not doing so well,” he said. “You don’t expand when you are not producing. We have to finish something.”

Weber agreed with Grisanti that he’d like to see USA Niagara do a better job of selling available properties downtown and compelling long-standing owners of commercial property to do more with what they own.

“There’s vacant storefronts on Third Street,” Weber said. “Let’s get them filled. It shouldn’t be that hard.”

 Schoepflin said the agency is continuing to work on its core mission — attracting new investment into the downtown area. He pointed to new investments in the Sheraton Hotel and the Hotel Niagara as signs that opinions are changing when it comes to the investment potential on the American side of the Falls.

“It is starting to get momentum where international and Canadian investors are finding us and regional investors are taking the city more seriously,” Schoepflin said. “The great things about Niagara Falls is that it is truly an international destination. If it can attract international investment over time it’s all cumulative and it’s all a net positive.”

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