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Downtown plans are catching on
Diverse crowd turns out to hear group’s ideas
Posted By JENNIFER PELLEGRINI
A grassroots movement to revitalize Queen Street – one gallery and cafe at a time – is gaining momentum.
Two weeks after a group of artists met to discuss the lack of artistic and cultural venues in the city, approximately 85 people packed into Perspective Art School and Gallery Monday night to talk about ways to bring new life downtown.
“This is fantastic,” event organizer Melanie Mullen gushed as she looked around the room at the diversity of faces representing a broad cross-section of the city’s population.
From senior citizens to parents with preschoolers on their knees, the chairs in the gallery were filled. Several people had to stand in the back to listen to Mullen explain what the group of artists hopes to accomplish.
“I just think it would be nice to take into account not just economic development, but the people living down here,” said Alan Willick, who described himself as a lifetime resident of the city interested in seeing the downtown full of life again.
“People living in downtown have been so marginalized.”
That’s something Sal Blech realized when he moved to Niagara Falls from New York City 2 1/2 years ago.
“When I came here, Queen Street was full of crime, dangerous,” said Blech, who is property manager for Historic Niagara, the company that once planned to bring $100 million in new development into downtown.
All that has changed in recent months, he said.
“There’s not much going on, but it’s a platform for the future.”
Blech acknowledges Historic Niagara may have originally misinterpreted Niagara Falls residents’ desire to have a clean, safe and thriving downtown as wanting to have a downtown equivalent of Niagara Square.
He said after spending the day at NiagaraPalooza last week, Historic Niagara staff came back with a refocused vision of downtown.
“We’ve realized the only way this can be a success is if it happens 12 months out of the year,” Blech said.
Article ID# 887975
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