Published: October 12, 2008 11:13 pm      

Q&A: New economic director bringss 30 years of experience to job.

Working in Niagara Falls is sort of a homecoming for Peter F. Kay.

A native of Western New York and graduate of University at Buffalo, he left the area decades ago to begin a career in economic and community development. Now with more than 30 years of experience, he’s returned to the area and is the city’s new economic development director.

Kay recently sat down with the Niagara Gazette to discuss what he thinks the main challenges are here, why the city may not want to duplicate exactly what’s happened across the border and how he plans on getting land speculators to move forward.

QUESTION: What do you see as the mainchallenge in the city?

ANSWER: The most important single factor I think that I have found in my career is that it’s not location, it’s not the climate, it’s not the money. It’s the attitude of the citizens and in the city. If the attitude is positive, almost anything is achievable. If the attitude is negative or apathetic, it’s very difficult to get anything done. Here in Niagara Falls, looking at the last 15 or 20 years of history, it’s clear why it’s challenging to maintain a positive attitude. This has been a tough place to be for quite a while economically. I think we are on the verge of turning that around, in the last couple of years there’s been some good development happening and there’s a lot more in the pipeline. People need to see some progress in order to feel better about the place. One goal that I have is to reach a point where the balance tips and investors go from trying to avoid Niagara Falls to finding the place interesting. We will be able to do that when other developers are successful, when businesses start to be successful and you start to get a critical mass of business.

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Q: Are you going to be involved in discussing development with any current landowners, such as Niagara Falls Redevelopment and Cordish Co.?

A: Yes. I have not spoken to Mr. Cordish or anyone from his organization yet, but I have spoken to Niagara Falls Redevelopment a couple of times and I’ve had a meeting with Joe Anderson on a project he was working on. I’ve had multiple meetings with USA Niagara, we try to get together once a week to keep each other informed on what’s happening. To be successful here in economic development, it requires a collective community effort. No actual developer wants to just sit on property and not develop it because it costs money to do that. It’s not in their interest to not develop it. It just makes economic sense and the city wants them to develop it. I do know the developers I’ve talked to feel this is a new day in Niagara Falls and they’re also hopeful that we can move forward and everyone I have talked to has agreed to do so, with the help of the city.

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Q: How would you deal with the problem of land speculators downtown?

A: Speculators are different from developers. A developer is someone who is seriously pursuing a project driven by a timeline. Speculators, however, are really land banking. They’re investing on buying property on the hope it rises in value in the future and that’s the way they make their money. What that does, the longer that the speculator holds the land, the more it slows development in the area, so it’s a little self-defeating. Speculation occurs in a lot of areas, like in large cities that are growing and in areas like Niagara Falls where there’s a huge attraction and a thought that the future is going to be much brighter. What we have to do is work with the speculators and encourage them to more actively pursue development of the properties or decide to move forward. We will be doubling our efforts to work with land owners and developers in the Falls. We want to continue to move forward and find out how we can reach a mutually acceptable conclusion so that we can move more of the properties into redevelopment faster than what has occurred historically.

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Q: People compare us to Niagara Falls, Canada and question why we haven’t been able to have the same development success over here. How do you start working to reverse that trend?

A: I think we need to look at all the data that’s available for business and a feasibility analysis for what makes sense and what doesn’t. We are collectively assembling all of the data and finding out what needs to be updated in order to make a scientific assessment of what will and won’t work here. Obviously, it took Canada a couple of decades to build what they built, unfortunately it was the same time that Niagara, USA was in decline. Now we’ve got to reverse the decline, but I don’t necessarily think we need to repeat what Canada did, nor do I think if we did it would be particularly successful. If we have the background data, we can make a better analysis when proposals come up of what will have the best chance to succeed. I like diversity in an economy, but having said that, when we have a venue like the falls themselves, it makes a lot of sense to look into the idea of maintaining some type of theme in the city. We can certainly have a diverse of attractions, but they certainly shouldn’t be a disjoint of attractions, there should be some way to relate a lot of them together.

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Q: Does Niagara Falls have the luxury of turning down development if it doesn’t fit with an overall theme?

A: We have a lot of area here. Niagara Falls is a pretty big city to walk around, and there are a lot of open available tracts within that walking distance range. We can work with the owners and place things where they belong. We should have things that are attractive to all kinds of demographic groups, such as kids, young adults, seniors citizens, casino visitors and convention visitors. ... If you are trying to build a theme area that is of a high quality, you need a certain intensity of consistent quality retail and eating and drinking opportunities to do that. There are certain uses that you do not want to put in the middle of that because it disrupts that, but that doesn’t mean it wouldn’t be great a couple of blocks away. It’s not a matter of turning anyone down, it’s a matter of finding the right home.

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Q: How do you strike a balance between attracting small business and large development?

A: It’s good to have a mixture, and actually in a venue like this, they can co-exist. Hotels are big item, but at the same time, if you think of retail opportunities on the street between the hotels, there is room for individual entrepreneurs, like small specialty shops. Visitors who will stay in the hotels are delighted to go into small shops. It also gives employment opportunity to a whole-range of people. You don’t have to be a mega-millionaire developer to enjoy a positive result from the Niagara economy. You can be a resident and have a small business in there that will do well.

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Q: In the next 3 1/2 years, what do you hope to accomplish for the City of Niagara Falls?

A: I would like to see the community attitude continue to be hopeful and increase in positive nature. I would like to see the mass of retail that we need in the downtown area occur, so developers are now attracted to coming to us and not looking for a subsidiary. Really, we would reach a tipping point to where it goes from us really trying hard to attract people to come in here, to a point where people are coming in by themselves, that’s what I’d like to see in the next 3 1/2 years. Once we get to that point, then the downtown redevelopment starts to drive itself.