Land dispute slows Niagara Falls' effort to attract junior hockey league team

NIAGARA FALLS, N.Y. (WIVB) — A land dispute between the City of Niagara Falls and a development company is slowing the city's effort to attract a major junior hockey league team to the city.

The dispute is over part of the land located on the corner of 10th Street and Falls Street, located one block east of the Seneca Niagara Resort & Casino.

The land was supposed to have been deeded in a 2003 deal with former Mayor Irene Elia to Niagara Falls Redevelopment, LLC, a private company that is not affiliated with the government, which is planning on using a large portion of land -- part of which is the area on 10th and Falls -- to build a $1.5 billion technology and data campus. The land used to be a park and a playground. It is part of a large portion of land that extends out as far as Portage Road, but the property is mostly vacant homes and empty lots where homes have been torn down.

However, Niagara Falls Mayor Robert Restaino says that there are no records to indicate that that part of the land on 10th and Falls belongs to NFR. He says that NFR never completed the process of taking over the land by gaining approval from the New York State Legislature, a requirement under state law.

"The agreement in 2003 spells out that this is public land, public land may require the need to get state approval. It's all written right in the contract," Restaino said this week. "So it's not as though the parties didn't know about it, they just didn't do anything about it."

The property is being sought through eminent domain, which is defined as the government having the power to take over private property for public use, with the owner of the private property being compensated. Its current iteration has been law in the U.S. since 1875 following a Supreme Court ruling.

The crown jewel of Niagara Falls' plan is to build a 5,000-6,000 seat arena that could host a team in the Ontario Hockey League, one of three major junior hockey leagues that make up the Canadian Hockey League. Restaino said he spoke to OHL commissioner Bryan Crawford last week, and Crawford said they have multiple potential ownership groups ready to bring a team to the city.

The league is mostly based in Canada and already has a team on the other side of the U.S.-Canada border in St. Catharines, but has U.S.-based teams, including one in Erie, Pa.

"To have the commissioner of the Ontario Hockey League openly suggest the delivery of a conditional franchise," Restaino said, "was actually somewhat surprising because I didn't realize it had gotten that much traction."

In a statement to WIVB News 4, the league acknowledged the possibility.

"The Ontario Hockey League continues to explore opportunities for expansion, including avenues to broaden the league’s footprint in the United States," Crawford said in an email. "With the appropriate facility in place, Niagara Falls, New York would offer an intriguing center for the OHL both in terms of community support and geographical proximity. We look forward to better understanding what kind of opportunities there might be for the OHL in the region."

The arena, which would host at least 34 home games between September and March plus any playoff games, would also host year-round concerts and other entertainment events. The goal is to help the city's tourism industry during the winter months. Each year, one-third to one-half of around 10,000 seasonal tourism workers get laid off, which works out to around 4,000 people, Restaino said. He said about 75% of them are women and 78% are people of color.

"If you want to build a community, if you want to create stronger neighborhoods and all of those things, you have to have people capable of buying homes," he said. "If you're working a seasonal job, a job you know [ends at a certain time], no bank is going to give you a mortgage to buy a house. So for me, this action, the eminent domain action, is about creating indoor venues here in the city that will allow us to stretch the season, to go past November."

Now, the goal is to get NFR to deed the property back over to the city.

"Which I think is unlikely," Restaino said.

If not, the city is prepared to use "quiet title" against NFR, which would be getting a court order to force the organization to deed the property back to the city based on facts that stem from the 2003 agreement and the events following that.

NFR has dedicated an entire website to respond to the city. The group claims that they own 100% of the land and has proposed the city build the events center on land already owned by the city on 3rd Street and Niagara Street, which is currently a surface parking lot.

In addition, NFR has proposed donating $350,000 annually for the next 10 years for upkeep and maintenance, as well as other economic developments. They said that the project will bring 5,600 construction jobs and over 500 permanent jobs once the campus is built.

Restaino said that proposal would not work due to it taking away an already existing parking lot, on top of it being too far away from other parking areas. Part of the city's plan would call for a parking facility for the arena.

"There is substantial parking for the construction here," he said. "You take it out and the only parking you have is the Rainbow Mall. The Rainbow Mall parking lot already has contracts for users of it. A couple of the hotels use it. Border security uses it ... and the college uses some of it because the culinary institute is there."

In an email, NFR spokesperson James Haggerty referenced a court document where "the City of Niagara Falls admitted to the NYS Supreme Court, Appellate Division, that NFR owns the land. The City states this in paragraph 1 of its 'Answer and Objection in Point of Law' in the parties' eminent domain litigation."

"These are the City's own words," he wrote. "Beyond this, we have no comment."

Haggerty also brought up President Trump's announcement this week of the Stargate Initiative, a $500 billion private sector deal designed to expand U.S. artificial intelligence infrastructure. The deal is led by tech giants OpenAI, SoftBank and Oracle.

Restaino questioned why NFR has not done anything with the property despite claiming ownership for over two decades.

"The typical approach by this property owner is to deflect and confuse the conversation by suggesting that somehow they know better," he said. "My only question is this: if you know better, why haven't you built something in 30 years?"