‘Hope can’t be our only strategy’; Niagara Falls mayor weighs in on new gambling plans for the city

Government officials are circling Niagara Falls, as the municipality’s economic engine is said to be long overdue for serious rehabilitation.

In a press conference earlier this week, Ontario Premier Doug Ford was in Toronto engaging the public about incentives for a new municipal subway line.

During the event, the press questioned Ford on rumblings surrounding infrastructure and gambling overhauls in Niagara Falls. In response, Ford quickly noted that he had been engaged with provincial gaming authorities and the Mayor of Niagara Falls, Jim Diodati, about changes to the city.

INsauga.com reached out to Diodati to get a handle on what the future holds for Niagara Falls and just how far back these proposed plans for the city go.

“We’ve been dealing with this since 1996,” Diodati told INsauga.com. “We’ve been asking successive [provincial] governments to create a competitive environment in Niagara Falls. Essentially, what we’ve been doing is asking them not to create a monopoly.”

However, a monopoly is exactly what the city has been maneuvering around, as the two dominant casinos  — The Fallsview Casino and Casino Niagara — have been owned and operated for several years by the US-based Indigenous company Mohegan Gaming and Entertainment, an extension of the Mohegan Tribe of Connecticut.

As a result, Diodati has been trying to outpace the looming presence of economic stagnation, as, in his eyes, a competitive environment with multiple casinos with multiple owners is one of the only ways to stimulate the economy and earn Niagara Falls’s place back on the world stage.

“If you have a monopoly, you end up with a fat cat and that’s not healthy in any business environment, so that’s the number one thing. The second thing is, that, this isn’t even strictly about gambling, it’s about using gambling to leverage tourism, specifically, gambling investment dollars,” says Diodati.

Diodati went on to reference locations like Las Vegas, which he says has seen a significant boom in investment and tourism revenue as a byproduct of the competitive environment.

However, despite the comparison, Diodati quickly noted that his impending plans for Niagara Falls were not meant to be a copy-paste of Nevada’s famous gambling metropolis.

“This is not about becoming ‘Vegas North,’ we don’t want to be Vegas North, we’ll never be Vegas North. We’re unique and we are one of the great natural wonders of the world,” says Diodatti.

This then leads to the secondary economic elephant in the room, as despite its decades-long run as a global tourist destination, Niagara Falls severely lacks an international airport.

“We are the largest population in Canada without any regularly scheduled daily flights at our airport, and by adding a couple of thousand feet of landing space, we can change that,” says Diodati.

Diodati further indicated that Niagara Falls’s placement between airports like Pearson International Airport in Mississauga and the Buffalo Niagara International Airport in New York State has made the city hemorrhage millions of potential tourists.

However, despite the mad dash to de-monopolize the city’s casino market and break ground on a functional airport, Niagara Falls has already made significant moves to overhaul its inner workings in the background.

Specifically, the two skyscraping hybrid condo/hotel buildings overlooking the falls were greenlit over the past month and earlier this year, residents found out that the old Toronto Power Generating Station will be transformed into a five-star boutique hotel.

When asked about the nature of these initiatives, Dioati indicated they are small potatoes compared to what has been in the chamber for over a decade.

“We’ve got probably 30 approved hotels in the books but nobody has built anything in 17 years,” says Diodati. “None of them have been built and when you talk to any of the proponents, they all tell you the same thing, and that is the fact that you cannot get financing for hotel construction anymore in the City of Niagara Falls.”

As a byproduct of this industrial stagnancy, even Ford couldn’t help but mention that Niagara Falls could use some polish, and stated to the press during this week’s press conference that when visiting Niagara Falls, “That first kilometer, it’s all beautiful, but when you get further in, it’s not very appealing.”

A sentiment that is not lost on Diodati.

“I would say he’s not wrong, and I would say that overall, we are good but not great. We can do better.”

Diodati pointed to several factors that have made the city a barren environment for investment, such as the COVID-19 pandemic and the subsequent spike in Canadian interest rates that followed.

This, in turn, brings the region’s economic woes full circle, as Diodati firmly believes that with an open gambling market and a fully realized airport, would-be investors would see the city for the prospect that it is.

“Hope can’t be our only strategy, and we need leadership from the province. That’s why, right now, we got excited when the premier made those comments. It wasn’t lost on us, in that moment, he caught the ears of lots of investors,” says Diodati.

At the time of publication, Diodati, Ford, the Ontario Gaming and Lottery Corporation (OLG) and Mohegan Gaming and Entertainment are currently locked into a cycle of negotiations on how to usher in this new era for Niagara Falls.

Specifically, in this case, one that doesn’t leave Mohegan Gaming and Entertainment in the dust.

“We are now having those exact discussions on what it would take to open up the market because we don’t want to punish or hurt [Mohegan Gaming and Entertainment] in any way. We are talking about growing the pie essentially, so every piece of it gets bigger,” says Diodati.

Diodati went on to highlight that, despite the current negotiations behind closed doors, it will be a while before Ontario sees anything concrete coming from Niagara Falls, as he stated, “Rome wasn’t built in a day, but it starts with a plan and a discussion, and we are further than we have ever been.”