(Image 79 Canal St on Google Maps)
The LUSJ has
an article on the city filing for a Niagara River Greenway grant on behalf of Beautiful Visions LLC to create the "Wine Emporium"
The city is asking Niagara County for $100,000 to help launch a Wine Emporium on
Canal Street.On behalf of Beautiful Visions LLC, the city earlier this month filed an application for a Niagara River Greenway grant to complete the purchase and furnishing of 79 Canal St.
Beautiful Visions, a separate company by J. Fitzgerald Group partners Jack Martin and Carmel Cerullo-Beiter, would rent the building to Margo Bittner’s Appleton Creek Winery LLC as a satellite winery.According to Martin, the Wine Emporium would sell all Niagara County-produced wines and a host of other locally grown and created goods.
His ambitious vision has the emporium serving both tourists and residents,
jump starting redevelopment of the long-dormant Canal Street block and
strengthening Niagara agribusiness all at once....
I had a similar thought as I was contemplating a
Niagara Wine Trail post for later this spring. I envisioned a start/stop point in downtown Lockport for the Niagara Wine Trail. People would be able to grab maps, purchase the all access passports and find out about special events.
The big plus would be the one-stop-shop for all of the wines on the trail. Personally I would enjoy being able to mark down wines I enjoyed on the trail and then having a location to pick them up at the end. Some of the hardest choices are deciding to buy or not at initial winery stops before you have had the chance to sample others. Also to pick them up at a later time, etc.
I'd love to see an outdoor patio off to the side if there were to be tastings etc on site. Though in the long run infilling the area between this building and the old Harrison Building with new development would allow more development to natural work its way down the street. Lockport needs to continue to fill in its missing teeth.
I'm torn on the use of the
greenway grant. The original vision of the greenway grant was to use the money pried from the hydro plant relicensing to create a Niagara River greenway from Youngstown to Buffalo similar to what exists on the Canadian side of the river. As the process went along special interests off of the river started to dilute the chances of reaching the original goal by allowing "inland" projects. I guess if they're going to be allowed, we might as well "get ours"...
Good luck. I'd love to see this come to fruition.
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