Published: April 17, 2008 06:16 pm            

HAMILTON: Right-size Niagara Falls

So then, it is true. An expert is someone who has a briefcase and comes from more than 50 miles out of town.

So thinks the area folks who will gather at the WNED studios in Buffalo at 2 p.m. today to host Harvard University economics professor Edward Glaeser, a renowned expert on the recovery of U.S. cities in the northeast.

Earlier this week, WBEN newsman Tom Puckett asked Glaeser the question of the day: “Can Buffalo Ever Come Back?” and none of his thousands of listeners should have been shocked by Glaeser’s negative answer. We have heard it before from a real expert, but the only problem was that Robert G. Wilmers is not from 50 miles out of town and, as cited by Irish playwright George Bernard Shaw, “Those who can do, do; those who can’t, teach.”

But we can learn a lot from both of these gentlemen.

Glaeser understands that Buffalo’s greatness was based upon it being a Great Lakes shipping point that connected to New York City and by the Erie Canal and the electrical power that was, and is, generated at Niagara Falls with the developing west. Now that Buffalo’s waterfront is no longer industrial, and it is far cheaper to ship products by railroad, and even trucks, than it is to ship by, well, ship, Buffalo’s glory days are long behind it.

More than a decade ago, Wilmers said pretty much the same thing at a “Smart Growth” meeting at the Birchfield-Penney Hall on the campus of Buffalo State College. There, Wilmers listened patiently to the presentations of several experts in the field of how to effectively grow a city in such a way that it has livable, walkable communities and so on. Near the close of the presentation he chimed in, profoundly saying, “Growth isn’t something that we have to worry about here in Buffalo — because we are not growing! We may need to find a way to ‘right-size’ Buffalo, instead.”

Wilmers knows about smart growth. That’s actual “smart growth,” with small letters, and not necessarily the namesake program with the capital letters. See, you just can’t be a dummy and become chairman of the board of M&T Bank, as well as its CEO and chairman of its Executive Committee. So his $85 billion credentials, those are bank dollars and growing, “goes without saying,” but needs to be said anyway: the bank has a stadium in Baltimore named after it. In a world that is increasing sliding into cold, international banking, M&T, which started in Western New York a century and a half ago is considered one of the nation’s finest regional banks.

Despite that, the panelist, that included politicians like then-Erie County executive Dennis Gorski, seemingly paid little attention to Wilmers’ words of wisdom. After all, unlike in the private sector, we pay politicians to make us feel good by doing things that get their names in the paper, and not by actually get anything really done. Frustrated with his Assembly colleagues, former assemblyman Rob Daly said it best when he told me that, “In the private sector, we produce towards a goal; in the public sector, the goal is production.”

But Wilmers’ words resonated with me and still echo through a thought-filled head. Niagara Falls, like Buffalo, is not growing either; nor should it. As Wilmers suggested about Buffalo, we too need to right-size. After all, with the exception of Las Vegas, who has ever heard of a successful tourist town with 50,000 people anyway?

While it is true that we have this huge hydroelectric plant, within a half century it will be small by comparison to energy produced by nuclear power plants and power created by natural and alternate sources.

Vegas is likely to soon collapse under the weight of its own success; but genuine tourist towns, like the minitropolis Branson, Mo., and its 18,000 people, entertain more than seven million tourists a year and is managing its snail-paced growth quite well.

Can you imagine a Niagara Falls that is right-sized? A city with a dense population where residents actually live along Main Street and Pine Avenue in apartments and condos above the businesses on those streets with the need for fewer cars, because most things are within walking distance? Can you imagine that same Niagara Falls with nicer homes on fewer, but well-maintained, streets and where the intra-urban sprawl now exists, clean, water-based manufacturing concerns and other businesses take up most of the tax base?

Can Niagara Falls ever “come back” to reality? Yes — and better, if only the politicians weren’t so fixated on size.

Ken Hamilton is a Niagara Falls resident. Contact him at kenhamilton930@aol.com.

        

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