So, here is your chance to vent about what is missing from Niagara Falls. The question of the week is:
What does Niagara Falls need?
Locals may wonder does Niagara Falls need a better downtown, an arena, a conference centre? Tourists may wonder does Niagara Falls need more restaurants, attractions, or hotels? Let us know what you think.
Visit previous questions of the week…
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I don’t think I could pick one thing, I’m greedy
I would say the convention center would be best since the one proposed won’t cost the city any money up front and will best make Niagara Falls a year round destination. The spin-offs as well would be the largest with this kind of project. We would see more hotels, restaurants and attractions as a result and the downtown plan would complement this so well.
http://www.stcatharinesstandard.ca/webapp/sitepages/content.asp?contentid=440974&catname=Local News&classif=
I thought I’d throw in this article. It’s an overall Niagara picture, but comments on what different areas of Niagara should do to be more of a wine tourism destination. There is a good summary at the bottom of the article.
This is a bit pie in the sky, since stuff like the convention center is obviously needed in the immediate future… but Niagara Falls needs some credible places for musicians to play.
This is probably part-and-parcel with a downtown plan.
There are currently very few options for small-to-medium sized bands that would like to play shows in the city, and if there are then the venues are doing a poor job at promoting the city as a tour stop on the road from Buffalo through Hamilton to Toronto. If the act isn’t big enough to fill the Avalon at the Casino where would they go?
Furthermore, there’s nothing in place to really help foster local talent. Where are the clubs, even the hole-in-the-wall bars, where young bands can put on all-ages shows? That whole support framework is something that would develop with a healthy downtown I think, and it would help retain people here instead of bleeding the youth away to St. Catharines and elsewhere.
Niagara Falls NEEDS this land crossing passport law to go away. Or be changed into something besides a passport. That is more important than anything else.
What I think Niagara needs is for the proposed Clifton Hill amusement park to get started. Passports be damned, we should give the tourists as many reasons as possible to go to Niagara. This amusement park would definitely see me visit quite often!
Depends if your talking about the canadian side or the american side, since the canadian side is obviously better off than the american, and since I live in America, I will focus on that.
Yes the passport issue does need to go away as it will hurt tourism tremendously, but that is another issue altogether. I do hear a lot of projects are on hold until they figure out what is going on with the passport thing.
First of all, we need to CLEAN UP THE TRASH!!! Do you all realize that the downtown area of Niagara Falls on the American side smells like nothing but rotten trash. Its really nasty, no one wants to smell rotten trash. I wish I would have had a camera with me the night last summer that I was walking around downtown, so I could have photographed the trash bags that were sitting on the walkways for… who knows how long.. and they SMELLED REALLY BAD and they made the whole area stink. The fact that the garbage cans had lots of food in them and had obviously not been changed all day on a hot summers day did not help either. There is also lots of trash scattered on the ground around the general area, and this is not the typical trash, since I have taken many walks downtown for excercise I can verify that the trash that I saw has been sitting and sitting there for forever. The area where you go to view the falls is generally pretty clean, it is a state park after all and it does have workers, so that part is fine, however its the immediate surrounding areas that tourists flock to that seriously need some help.
The one restaurant downtown on the American side has the same problem, I am not sure what its called but it has a gift shop and fast food place in it, its right near the former rainbow centre mall. That whole restaurant also smelled like rotten trash. The problem in the restaurant seems to originate from the fact that they do not empty the trash cans, as the smell was coming from the cans. If the restaurant smells bad, I could only imagine the quality of the food! Tourists be warned!
You have to believe me, I am not even exaggerating about how bad it smells, because it really does smell bad. Its not the smell of the falls that you typically get from being downtown for that is different, its the distinctive smell of rotten trash!
Clifton hill or any place on the Canadian side does not smell like this, I did not smell rotten trash once while visiting the Canadian side.
Honestly, anything on the American side would be an improvement on what we have. First thing that needs to be done over everything else though is to get the trash cleaned up! But in addition to that, we need to give people something to do other than a casino. Anything would help, anything at all, just give people something to do!!!
What do I want, or what does the area need?
I want that HOCO amusement park… but that’s not a “need” of the area.
What the Canadian side needs is a couple of more professional venues to truly turn this area into the “Vegas of the North” type of area. Someplace where we have some more pernament acts year-round.
While Greg Ferwin is great, as well as the Aladdin Jr show (at the same venue)… the Cirque de Niagara was a great addition, and a couple of more pernament venues would be spectacular. Of those venues, it should be built into part of a new hotel, akin to Vegas.
Although the area doesn’t need that many more hotels… if any more proposed hotels do go up… they should have some kind of “theme” to it, aside from looking asthetically pleasing. As more & more hotels pop-up, they’re going to be fighting for business from customers, and to stand out from the crowd you’ve got to be “different” while being good at the same time. A way of being different, is setting a ‘theme’ for the hotel… both in presentation on the exterior & interior.
Nothing like that has been brought to the area yet.
Although a convention center would be nice… would they really attract the vendors they need to bring in guests & turn around a revenue?
To continue the theme from previous questions - a new and improved Maple Leaf Village-type place. Something near the falls, with NICE exclusive Canadian boutiques. Stuff you can’t find in America. Not the same stuff you saw in the last 4, 8, 12 gift shops you visited - and the same stuff you saw last year.
Niagara has casinos - take the cue from Vegas and AC - when people win money they like to spend it. People who are willing to lose money like to spend it as well - but not on weird little souvenirs.
The area will see alot of existing things close up shop if the passport law (at land crossings) happens. I dont think many new things will be built after that.
Yeah, its really going to hurt the American side of the falls too, since I would assume most people stay on the Canadian side just because its nicer overall and many many more things to do, plus St. Catherines and Toronto are not that far away. Most people who come walk across the border over to the American side to see the falls from both angles and to visit the casino’s on both sides.
I am upset about it because I may not be able to go to the Skylon Tower arcade anymore, and visit a friend, and I am now going to have to go there and tell my friend that I may not be able to get up to the tower anymore to visit. I do not have 100$ to spend on a passport either.
I think that if they pass the law, they will overturn it soon after it is passed once they realize how much hassle it is going to be and how much its going to hurt tourism on both sides of the border.
Its also REALLY going to hurt the economy here in Niagara Falls, NY. Most people who shop here and spend money in the city are coming over from Canada to buy our groceries, food and in general shop at our retail stores. This is true for both the Niagara and the Buffalo areas, judging by the amount of Canadian license plates that I see in our shopping areas on a daily bases. Our area is extremely economically depressed and these Canadians that are coming over the border and shopping here are essentially fueling our economy when otherwise people wouldn’t even be spending money in our stores simply because no one in Niagara Falls has money to spend in retail stores or they spend their money on…. other things. This will lead to the closure of many retail stores on our side of the border, as if enough didn’t close already.