Mayor Restaino's $200 Million Arena: A Monument to Himself, a Bill for You

By: Frank Parlato

Special to Niagara Action

     Please stop an insane mayor from destroying the city with a hockey arena that the city cannot afford. He'll do it if he can. He wants a legacy, maybe.

     It's hard to even explain. Mayor Robert Restaino of Niagara Falls, in a city that can't afford it, wants to build a two-hundred-million-dollar-plus hockey arena.

     He doesn't have the money to build an arena with no team to play in it. An arena that will cost fifteen million dollars per year in deficit spending. Operating losses because arenas lose money, plus the financing costs. And he wants to go ahead with it because he wants a legacy, maybe. Mayors in the past have tried to build some legacy, some monument to themselves.

     This one's the worst of them all because it will be more expensive than the train station for Dyster and the courthouse for Anello - both projects the city did not need.

     But you could at least pretend to need them.

     But why would you build an arena when you don't have a team? That's the question everyone should be asking.

     There is a worse piece to this — something far worse because it's not just the cost of the arena that's ahead of us if he succeeds in this insane plan. He's blocking at the same time because he wants the land, another development that the city needs.

     He wants to forcibly take the land he plans to build his arena on from the owners through a process called eminent domain.

     A couple of New York billionaires actually own the land where Restaino wants to build his arena. They want to use their land to build an AI data center. In case you haven't heard about it yet, AI is the future, and we can be part of that future, but for one stubborn mayor.

    We happen to have the right climate. The billionaires happen to have the land. We have the electricity, and it isn't going to cost anybody a dollar. In fact, they're going to pay taxes. Isn't that a novel idea? Something brand new for this region — instead of developers coming and asking for handouts, they're going to come and spend their own money and build an AI center. You know why they can do that? Because the demand is so great right now. And we happen to have the ideal location because it's cold — that helps keep the servers, which naturally run hot, cool. We have water; we have a river that's not running out anytime soon, and we have hydropower-generated electricity. We may have the best location in the whole world for AI. It doesn't cost us anything; it will bring 500+ jobs.

     It will bring in $20 million in taxes a year, instead of costing us $15 million a year for an arena. We're going to make $20 million a year from electrical taxes, property taxes, county taxes, and city taxes. It'll pay school taxes. It'll bring jobs — not hot dog vendor or janitor jobs, but one-hundred-thousand-dollar-a-year average jobs, five hundred fifty of them.

     A $1.5 billion dollar project, and Restaino just happens to want the land where the owners want to build an AI data center.

     Restaino chose the land without a feasibility study; he just decided on the land, ten acres of the 70 acres where the developers want to develop this AI center, which they're calling the Niagara Digital Center. He just wants that one piece of land for his arena. It can only be chalked up as madness.

     It can't be anything else because there is a whole city, a whole downtown. There are plenty of locations to build an arena — a seven-thousand-seat arena that nobody's asked for, with no tenant.

     The mayor says, "Oh, we'll do more than have empty nights where no hockey's played. We'll have a hockey arena but we can also repurpose it and have concerts." He's invoked the days when Frank Sinatra, Elvis Presley, and Johnny Cash used to come to the convention center. This poor mayor hasn't even heard that all three of them are dead. Concerts are hard to come by, and they can't pay for a two-hundred-million-dollar arena.

     So he says, "Well, let's have conventions and tournaments." Remember the tournaments we had in the seventies when we had the convention center? We'll have those again. We'll go get them. They'll fill up in the wintertime.

     This poor mayor, he really doesn't know what he's talking about. Tournaments, we'll have tournaments and conventions. Conventions in the wintertime? Look, let me ask you a simple question: Where are they going to go for a convention in the wintertime? Niagara Falls? Or Orlando, Houston, Phoenix – the warm places –Los Angeles– all competing for tournaments. So you are telling me that you are going to see tournaments in the wintertime, and that's going to carry us over — tournaments and hockey games without a hockey team. Who's going to play, Little League? We're going to have an empty arena with a name — Restaino all over it — and a ribbon cutting. A great day for Restaino. And he'll be out of office. And we'll be sitting here with an empty arena, and it's going to cost us fifteen million dollars every single year.

     Meantime, he's hijacking this AI project, preventing it from being built —a project that could be an answer to Niagara Falls. Having a reputation as a tech corridor, as the center where high-paying jobs come, where people can learn, where your children can learn to have jobs if you want them to stay. There is a reason why Niagara Falls' population continues to go down. It's leadership like his. You may think that a fancy arena sounds fun, but who's going to pay the bill?

     On the other hand, we know who'll pay the bill. You will.

     Another thing. Restaino is not an honest man.

     He likes to say that the developers, the Milstein brothers, owners of NFR, only came up with the idea of an AI center in response to his brilliant plan, so they could sell their land for more money.

     The record is clear. NFR had planned to build the AI data center before Restaino decided to locate his arena right where they wanted to build it.

     It's pretty clear this is a vengeance move. It may even be corrupt. Restaino wants to stop them; he wants to control the land because he's a rule-or-ruin type of mayor, and it's going to be a terrible cost, a terrible mistake.

     When the other cities that are competing now for AI centers finally lure the Milsteins away, Restaino will say, "You know, see, I told you so. They were never serious about building in the first place." It's very dishonest, and it's costly. And if people don't wake up soon, we'll lose $20 million a year in taxes.

     I think NFR is about at the end of their rope. They've been trying patiently, and as proof that they weren't lying about building this, they've spent — plans show it clearly — more than three million, maybe four million dollars now in plans, architecture, planned unit developments, electrical engineering work on the transformer that they'll use to make sure we all have more power in our city and probably lower rates.

     A new kind of destiny could be here for Niagara Falls. We can reinvent ourselves, not just as a tourist town. We used to be an industrial town; we used to be the power city. Now we could be the tech city, if only we didn't have a crazy mayor who, rule or ruin, would destroy us so that he can have his fanciful arena with nobody in it.

     And one last word: It is crazy. Nobody builds an arena — nobody builds a two hundred million dollar arena - without a tenant - a sports team (I don't mean little league).

It'll cost every household in this city a thousand dollars. You will see a spike in your taxes. Nobody builds an arena when you don't have an anchor tenant. Just nobody. It can only be called one thing: insane.

     And nobody except one kills the future — an AI center — one that will not cost the taxpayers a dime, but rather will pay the city millions.

     Nobody but an insane person throws away millions in income to spend millions more on something nobody needs.

     Not unless he is insane, of course.

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Mayor Restaino's $200 Million Arena: A Monument to Himself, a Bill for You