Published: July 04, 2008 02:39 pm      

DELUCA: Gems can bring glitter to the bridal crown

This past week, I stumbled across a sweet little corner of Niagara Falls that I had never seen before, an old brick-lined street off Buffalo Avenue called Hillcrest.

It doesn’t even really look like a street, but if you drive down it‘s ivy-sided lane, it has the feel of a prosperous, quaint nook in the village at Niagara-on- the-Lake.

Hillcrest probably isn’t a surprise to Falls residents. And surely, the residents in surrounding cities like Tonawanda and Lockport probably don’t care much that it exists, but they should.

Hillcrest feels like a little nugget of gemstone. If you’re mining desperately for it, like many folks are in this area, you should always know where they are hidden.

I was on the street because I had been invited to see a new bed and breakfast located at the end of it called the Hillcrest Inn. It’s an old mansion, purchased by a young couple who moved here recently from Japan.

The wife, an American woman, Cassidy Gillespie, whose mom and grandparents live in this area, and her husband, a Japanese man called Mitsunori Fukushima, spent three months renovating the place and have created and impressive, comfortable retreat that can surely be added to the city’s list of five-star places to stay. It certainly helped that Cassidy’s mom is an decorator from Niagara-on-the-Lake.

Although it doesn’t quite have the recreated aged and rich patina of a place like the new Barton Hill Hotel in Lewiston, it has the feel of a sophisticated and beloved old mansion. Perched on a hill with its backyard facing the Niagara River, it certainly adds a little bit more class to its corner of the city.

It made my day, looking at the hard work the young couple had done, but the best part of the story is that their work has paid off. They had planned to market the bed and breakfast to people in Japan, but they haven’t had time to do that yet because business has been brisk. When was the last time you heard anyone say that who wasn’t a bartender or gas station owner?

Here’s the really good news. Gillespie says that part of the reason for their early success is the Niagara USA chamber.

“We just got a call from a man in Hawaii who said he read about us in his local newspaper,” she told me and added that the same thing happened the other day with a caller from Pennsylvania. Somebody is doing a really good job of getting the word out. That somebody is ...

“They even put us on their Web site for free, and that is a real boon for a small business,” she said.

What we have here is a marketing campaign that really works. Somebody knows what they are doing, and that somebody is bringing attention to the gems of the region.

The reason their success makes me feel so good is that I believe our little ships are all somehow tied together in this complex economy. It may be tediously slow — so slow that you have to watch carefully to see it — but the tide is slowly rising in all the cities in the Niagara region.

The main streets in Lockport and North Tonawanda, which had been languishing, are both coming back to life just a little bit. Much more exciting development is planned in all three cities. In the Niagara countryside, the wineries are growing and thriving.

Dare I say it, could things be looking up just a little, teensy bit? What if we were actually able to turn this area around?

As for me, I have a little idea for Niagara Falls to base its comeback on. I’ve written about it once before and I think it’s time to throw it out there again. Niagara Falls needs to reach back in time grab hold once more to its title as “Honeymoon Capital of the World.”

Maybe the idea has popped up again because my anniversary is coming up and I have been toying with the idea of asking my husband to think about renewing our vows. There are a few lovely little chapels in the Falls to consider. But nobody seems to really get the idea of the untapped market of couples like us looking for romantic, inexpensive ways to celebrate their relationships.

I wish there was a walkway in the Falls, lined with lovely little stones, each one purchased by a pair who has been married or remarried in the Falls, inscribed with the date and the names. I know couples would come back and visit those stones over the years and so would their children many years from now.

People from all over the globe should be invited come to the Falls to renew their vows, and there should be all sorts of ways for them to do that. There should a special wedding table in every restaurant for newlyweds or re-newly weds, and sweet little spots all over the downtown where people can engage in the vows of love and commitment.

The wedding spots could be created and maintained by area businesses and organizations who could compete to see who builds the best one. There should be an annual festival of romance, and the city should name find a famous romance ambassador.

Can you see it? People will start whispering that the city that was nearly destroyed by “love” will be rebuilt by love.

Love will become our commodity. People will start getting married all over the region, at the vineyards, on the canal, on the boats in the Niagara River.

There are little gemstones businesses like the Hillcrest Inn all over the Niagara Region. They were created by people who took something wonderful — often something aged and worn — and used their wits and a little elbow grease to reclaim it.

We need to reclaim the title of "Honeymoon Capital of the World." We need to polish it so that the gemstones shine and then we need to, collectively, crown ourselves once more.

Dare I say it, love will keep us together. Forever.

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Have a happy, sunny, day-dreamy July. If you have any thoughts or ideas to share about bringing back the romance to Niagara Falls, please express yourself on my blog at niagaraliving.wordpress.com.