From the Niagara Falls Review:
Niagara Falls Tourism was on a mission when it travelled to New York City the week before Christmas: To sell Niagara Falls as a year-round vacation place. The Review went along for the ride. Here’s the first of five parts. Part 2 runs Friday.
Four-year-old Sophia Griffo sits at the acrylic and ice-blue bar inside Celsius restaurant at Bryant Park on a Sunday afternoon in December, sipping a hot chocolate with her father.
Her family lives in a townhouse in Manhattan’s Upper West Side, where rents range between $1,600 for a studio apartment to $6,000 for a two-bedroom co-op. The neighbourhood is home to Jerry Seinfeld, Dustin Hoffman and Yoko Ono, some of whom, like the Griffos, own a home in Long Island’s East Hamptons – a cottage country of sorts for celebrities and well-heeled Manhattan residents eager to beat the searing heat and grime of summer in Gotham.
Bill Griffo has yet to bring his own two children to Niagara Falls, but he did travel there when he was a kid. He can’t remember if the family crossed the border or if they stayed in their own country.
“I saw the falls, so I guess we came to Canada,” he says. “But really, I don’t remember it at all.”
If Niagara Falls Tourism’s manager Anna Pierce could describe her ideal new visitors to Niagara Falls, it would be Bill Griffo and his family: Affluent, professional, in possession of passports and willing to travel.