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"It has been more than 22 years since the Sacred Heart School in Niagara Falls closed, but the school, convent and rectory are now back in use – as affordable housing.
Belmont Housing Resources for Western New York, in partnership with True Bethel Baptist Church's True Community Development Corp., has completed its $15 million renovation of the vacant complex at 1128 South Ave., creating 39 apartments for low-income, elderly and disabled residents.
True Bethel Commons features 28 one-bedroom, nine two-bedroom and two three-bedroom units – including four two-story townhome units carved out of the school's gymnasium.
"The completion of this project marks yet another step forward in the revitalization of the city of Niagara Falls," said Belmont Executive Vice President Brad Packard. "True Bethel Commons not only provides quality affordable housing for area residents, but it also preserves significant historical assets."
The apartments are aimed at households earning at or below 60% of the area median income, but the City of Niagara Falls will also provide 24 "project-based" Section 8 vouchers for residents. Eight apartments will be fully accessible and adapted for people with individual physical challenges.
The school and adjacent buildings are part of the larger Sacred Heart Church complex, which dates to 1855, when Bishop John Timon authorized the establishment of a mission church called St. William's and then St. Raphael's, according to the Uniquely Niagara website.
The church building burned down in November 1888, and was replaced with the current Sacred Heart over the next two years. Sacred Heart then purchased an adjacent Lutheran church in 1895, and demolished it to construct the school and convent in 1899 and 1909, respectively. The entire complex, which was renovated or expanded several times, is listed on the State and National Registers of Historic Places.
However, declining enrollment and population changes took their toll, prompting the closure of a school addition in 1979, and the full school in 2001. The church closed in 2008, and the entire complex was acquired by True Bethel in 2011, with plans to expand the Buffalo church's mission into Niagara Falls. True Bethel proposed the redevelopment of the school into housing in 2017, after beginning discussions with Belmont two years earlier.
True Bethel still operates the church.
The project was funded with $8 million in federal low-income housing tax credits, and a $2.4 million subsidy from New York State Homes and Community Renewal, plus $2.4 million each in federal and state historic tax credits. It also received $390,000 from the Federal Home Loan Bank of New York, through Evans Bank, and $50,000 in Community Development Block Grant funds from Niagara Falls.
"It's really an example of what can be accomplished when multiple partners come together to advance this work," Packard said."
"A waterpark. A sledding hill. International putt-putt.
For years, Niagara Falls pinned its hopes for a silver bullet to revitalize the downtown area adjacent to its famous cataract.
But recently, the state has taken a much simpler approach.
Build a new welcome center. Improve viewing areas. Show people where to park.
And now, it is investing in the Aquarium of Niagara. Not as another silver bullet – not trying to create a sprawling showstopper like the Baltimore Aquarium in Maryland or the Monterey Bay Aquarium in California – but in manageable phases, improving on what Niagara Falls already has, providing more amenities for families and making room for rotating exhibits that will bring visitors back.
“We welcome around 200,000 visitors annually, and there will absolutely be an opportunity for increased visitation with the expansion,” said Christine Stephans, a spokesperson for the Aquarium of Niagara. “Every time we open a new exhibit or expansion we see a 5% to 8% increase in annual visitation, which is consistent with what we see at arts and cultural organizations nationwide.”
It’s a formula that has worked before – perhaps most notably in downtown Buffalo at Canalside. Rather than pinning its hopes on a silver bullet like Bass Pro Shops, plans in Buffalo started small. Grass on the waterfront. Adirondack chairs. Walkways. It took the project one small parcel at a time – the Commercial Slip, the reflecting pools – paving the way for private investment and anchoring it all with the Explore & More Ralph C. Wilson Jr. Children’s Museum.
For decades, city officials have been trying to figure out how to get Niagara Falls visitors to stay just one more day, spending their time and money with local attractions, eating at its restaurants and staying at its hotels.
Now the state believes it has found that formula, in the same chunk-by-chunk approach, helped along by public land acquisitions – investing in the park itself, then branching out into the surrounding areas, removing blight and giving guests decent reasons to stay.
“Any time you have an existing product, any time you can rehabilitate it, enhance it, change it, improve it, all those elements are going to have a positive effect on visitation,” said John Percy, president and CEO of tourism bureau Destination Niagara USA.
“Our main goal at this organization – and I think everyone in this community – is we want to extend the stay and extend how much they’re spending at the destination, and these new products allow us to work on that goal of doing just that,” he said.
It’s those incremental changes – not a silver bullet – that Niagara Falls officials say is the winning strategy for success.
“I applaud USA Niagara Development Corp. and the governor really trying to strategically develop things that will have a long, sustaining future in this destination,” Percy said. “You have to look at it long term and very strategically.”
Monday, the state announced it had chosen the Aquarium of Niagara to redevelop a block of 11 properties on Second Street, starting with construction of a new two-story building across the parking lot from the current aquarium building, which itself has undergone construction and added exhibits.
The new 16,000-square-foot building will double the aquarium’s space and give it more room for permanent and traveling exhibits. It incorporates an adjacent park and playground, comprising roughly a third of the area to be redeveloped. Eventually, there will be another building on Second Street, expanding toward Main Street.
The proposed expansion is in addition to the planned Great Lakes 360 project – a “living museum” featuring wildlife found in the Niagara River and Great Lakes, located in another standalone structure, the former Schoellkopf Geological Museum.
“What Canalside shows people in Western New York is that this recipe, which is going on all across New York State and other states, that it works. If you put the right ingredients, so to speak, into the recipe, something good will come from it,” said Niagara Falls Mayor Robert Restaino. “It’s not like you have to reinvent the wheel. We know what works. We’ve now seen that it does work.”
What hasn’t worked for the city is the number of properties that have been tied up by land speculators.
“Properties got devalued, but at the same time, we are located next to one of the most iconic destinations in North America. So you had this dichotomy where investors would scoop up land on the cheap, and then expect to have unreasonable returns on those investments,” said Anthony Vilardo, president at USA Niagara Development, the Niagara arm of Empire State Development.
“The fact that we were afforded the opportunity, as an agency, to try to remove those barriers to the private sector is just paying really big dividends for the City of Niagara Falls, moving forward,” he said.
A turning point came in 2017, when Gov. Andrew Cuomo announced the state would buy distressed properties adjacent to Niagara Falls State Park for redevelopment with his Strategic Land Acquisition Program, as part of a plan to spur economic growth and revitalize downtown Niagara Falls. Then, in 2018, the state spent $25.7 million of Buffalo Billion II money buying 32 downtown properties from Tuscarora businessman Joseph “Smokin’ Joe” Anderson that run through the heart of downtown Niagara Falls’ tourism district.
The state has already been hard at work beautifying areas within Niagara Falls State Park and building a $46 million visitor welcome center. A crucial section of the former Robert Moses Parkway along the Niagara Gorge has been removed, along with a pedestrian bridge over the parkway near the Aquarium of Niagara and an abandoned railroad trestle.
The public acquisition of lands has paved the way to extend that work into areas outside the park – areas where tourists will hopefully venture – and inviting a mix of public and private investment, redeveloping the parcels one chunk at a time.
TM Montante has been tapped to develop four sites on Third Street and Main Street. And the governor is planning a $12 million Heritage Gateway project that will create a public plaza, observation deck, a pavilion for outdoor performances and an interpretive park at the Cataract House Hotel historic site to tell the story of the Underground Railroad in the region.
But it still can be challenging. In 2019, the state officially threw in the towel on Wonder Falls, a $150 million plan to convert the former Rainbow Mall into a water park and hotel.
Moving forward, the city is working to take prime downtown properties owned by New York City developer Howard Milstein by eminent domain, to start redevelopment. Milstein’s Niagara Falls Redevelopment has held the land for more than two decades, standing in the way of the city’s envisioned redevelopment.
“A lot of times what you see with some of the folks, they have these efforts, and they want to build out the tourism core,” said Bridget Niland, dean of the College of Hospitality, Sport, and Tourism Management at Niagara University. “But things like not having full control of the land, people get discouraged and they go elsewhere.”
"A panel of Appellate Division judges upheld on Friday the City of Niagara Falls’ decision to authorize condemnation of 12 privately owned acres that it wants to obtain through eminent domain and develop into a $150 million indoor and outdoor public events center.
The long-vacant property, located 970 Falls St. and John Daly Boulevard, is owned by Niagara Falls Redevelopment LLC, a company controlled by Howard Milstein of New York City.
The Appellate Division judges dismissed an appeal by Niagara Falls Redevelopment LLC and an affiliated company, Blue Apple Properties Inc. It rejected the companies’ contention that the condemnation will not serve a public use or benefit. It also denied their request to annul the city’s determination because the city has not established how it plans to pay for the redevelopment project called Centennial Park.
After holding public hearings in 2022, the city adopted a resolution authorizing the condemnation."
“More than a year after winning town approvals and county tax breaks, Amazon’s mega-warehouse project in the Town of Niagara may finally be moving forward.
The Seattle-based company confirmed Wednesday that it has purchased the sprawling property where it plans to construct its $550 million regional distribution center. That was considered a major holdup in starting the project, which is expected to bring more than 1,000 jobs to the site.
“We feel fairly confident that it’s moving forward,” said Mark Gabriele, counsel for the Niagara County Industrial Development Agency, which had granted $123 million in tax breaks for the project last August and approved a six-month extension on Wednesday. “They own the property now. We haven’t had much contact with them, but we anticipate this project moving forward.”
Amazon did not say how much it paid for the 217 acres of vacant land along Lockport, Packard and Tuscarora roads, adjacent to the Niagara Falls International Airport and Niagara Falls Air Reserve Station. But the late July purchase of the site at 8995 Lockport Road from a New York City-based investment group headed by Morris Fateha at least clears the way for construction to begin.
That would represent a big relief to county leaders and economic development officials. Similar facilities have opened or are in process in Rochester, Syracuse and Wilmington, Del., among other places.
But the future of the Niagara project had been in doubt after Amazon began pulling back on its aggressive years-long expansion last year because it had overbuilt its capacity and needed to reduce costs. A much smaller last-mile facility in Hamburg is still empty.
Amazon spokesman Steve Kelly said the Niagara project is still in the planning stage, and could not give an update on when it would start.
“This extension is administrative in nature, and the status of the project remains the same,” he said. “We are grateful for the support of the town and the Niagara County IDA, and we will continue to work closely with all stakeholders as plans progress.”
Amazon and its developer, Atlanta-based JB2 Partners, plan to construct a 3.08-million-square-foot warehouse and distribution facility on part of the northern 111 acres of the vast site. The site has been designated as “shovel-ready” since 2012.
Located on the south side of Lockport and Packard roads, it’s also bounded by Haseley Drive and Tuscarora Road, as well as the airports to the east and south. The former Niagara Drag Strip – closed since 1974 – cuts across the southern portion of the site, but very little remains from that operation.
The property had been acquired by Fateha’s company in June 2021, for $2.4 million. About 150 acres of the site are currently used for growing corn, while the property also includes shrubs, fields, woodlands, ditches and wetlands.
The Amazon.com Services operation would function as a first-mile fulfillment center to receive bulk shipments of products from vendors, suppliers and sellers, and then package them for the first leg of delivery. The proposed five-story building would consist of a 650,000-square-foot ground level and four additional floors of 606,750 square feet each.
The first floor of the concrete-and-steel building would contain a rectangular warehouse of 580,000 square feet, aligned to match the footprint of the upper floors, with material handling and sorting equipment. The perimeter of the ground level would feature offices, a staging area, a receiving area and a shipping area.
Each of the upper floors will be mostly occupied by about 450,000 square feet of consumer products storage area surrounded by a fence, with employees located in the remaining space around the perimeter of each floor between the fence and the walls.
The facility also would include 55 loading docks, while the exterior parking area along the west, south and east sides of the building would include 469 parking spaces for trailers, 1,755 spaces for cars and 16 for motorcycles.
The project was approved by the town a year ago, and the IDA backed a package of sales, mortgage-recording and property tax breaks. Construction is expected to take 18 to 24 months. In all, the operation would eventually employ more than 1,000, working in two shifts 24 hours per day, and earning an average salary of $18 per hour.“
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