Restoring the 19th century Erie Canal locks to working order would bring in enough tourists to make an annual $17 million economic impact on Niagara County, a new study says.
The study by Camoin Associates of Saratoga Springs was commissioned in hopes its results could be used to convince someone to give the City of Lockport the roughly $7 million needed for the restoration of the Flight of Five, as the original stairstep set of five locks are called.
One key target audience is the New York Power Authority. Its president and chief executive officer, Richard M. Kessel, toured the locks May 20 and was asked for $6 million by Mayor Michael W. Tucker.
Kessel said Friday he hadn’t seen the Camoin study yet, but he said, “I think it’s a great project. It is certainly under serious consideration as part of a Niagara County package we’re putting together.”...The numbers are substantial even if assumed to be only half. A 19th century engineering marvel is worthy of full stewardship. Seeing that it is located right in the middle of our city opens even more opportunity to create a special place for not just the visitors, but those of us who actually live here. We need a plan so their inertia can feed off each other in our aim to create somehwere special to live and visit. The infrastructure is here.
It's always a pleasent surprise seeing all the different license plates parked on the Pine St bridge during the summer.
1 comments:
Greetings~
It definately will be nice when(if) this comes to happen here.
There are not many places(that I know of ) that can boast that they would still have older(1800's) working locks.
Much of the attraction will depend on HOW they do it .. will they give the people the opportunity to "lock through" or will they just put gates up and demonstrate ? Or a combination of both ?
MJ~
In reagrds to the diffrent licence plates.. have you seen where MOST of them are comming from ??? (hint the "staycation" theory is hapening .. meaning much of the majority is comming from the NE states)
Still in all when we see the "out of area" plates.. it's nice to see people that are visiting Niag Falls ARE comming here to see what we have to offer.
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