Artvoice: Buffalo's #1 Newsweekly
Home Blogs Web Features Calendar Listings Artvoice TV Real Estate Classifieds Contact

Next story: Higgins Calls for More Parkland

Niagara Falls Airport: Changing With the World

The current Niagara Falls Airport terminal bears a resemblance to a small 1950s Greyhound Bus terminal
(photo: Rose Mattrey)

The Niagara Frontier Transportation Authority’s aggressive plan to build a new, $23 million facility at the Niagara Falls International Airport is without a doubt one of the most significant developments in the region. This underutilized and underdeveloped airport has the potential to create hundreds of jobs and have an economic impact of billions of dollars. Since it was opened in 1928, and later purchased by the NFTA from the City of Niagara Falls for $2 million in 1970, the airport has been all but invisible.

The tiny airport terminal building that serves the public looks more like a bus station than an airport, and there is only one gate to handle both departures and arrivals—so two planes at NFIA is a traffic jam. But this airport is sleeping giant.

In the 1940s when America entered World War II, Niagara Falls was the center of an incredible amount of military activity, from secret work on the atomic bomb project to Frontier Bonze Corp.’s production of scientific instruments to work by Dupont and Hooker Electro Chemical developing chemical weapons and other nasty elements. Hooker, among others, recklessly dumped toxic materials, resulting in the infamous poisoning of Love Canal. The wartime electro chemistry industry in Niagara Falls provided plenty of short-term employment at the cost of toxic long-term consequences.

Also during World War II, the United States Air Force assumed control of the Niagara Falls airport and upgraded its facilities to be used as an airbase, which meant, among other things, significantly increasing the length of the runways. Bell Aerospace constructed a plant on the site and the world’s first supersonic plane was born at Niagara Falls.

What the U.S. military created behind the unassuming little Niagara Falls Airport terminal is an airfield that can accommodate the largest planes in the world. In fact, the Russian-made Antonov AN-124, which is one of the largest planes in the world, has landed there. Barry Boyer of Tech Aviation, the company that maintains and services aircraft at NFIA, told me he had two of them lined up back-to-back and they both took off with a full payload. That means two planes with wingspans of more than 240 feet and weighing more than 890,000 lbs. each were able to depart from NFIA. You need a very long runway to get a plane that large and that heavy airborne, and with a runway more than two miles long, NFIA works. That could never happen at Buffalo Niagara International Airport in Cheektowaga.

Given the current focus on homeland security, one might wonder how you can expect to develop a thriving commercial airport at an airfield that is home to the New York Air National Guard and a US Air Force Reserve unit.

“There is no problem with sharing this runway with the military,” said NFTA executive director Larry Meckler. “We have coexisted for many, many years and will continue to coexist for many years into the future. We actually benefit by having a military presence because they do the snow removal on the main runway, which from our perspective is great because it actually helps keep our costs low. And they also provide the aircraft fire and rescue unit, which is costly; they provide the personnel, the trucks and the equipment at their expense. That gives us a competitive advantage to the Toronto Pearson and Hamilton airports.

“In our joint-use agreement right now we’re charging the military a dollar,” said Meckler, “which was crucial when they were making the case to keep this base open, that their costs had been cut. They were paying $150,000 a year, and we knocked it down now to a dollar. So we have a long-term joint-use agreement with the military.”

DO WE GROW OR DECAY?

In January of 2006, Artvoice published a cover story titled “How Stupid is Your Daily Paper” that focused entirely on the NFIA. It was written in response to a Buffalo News editorial in January that stated:

“It’s hard to imagine a more ill-considered decision than the Niagara Frontier Transportation Authority’s push to spend $24 billion (sic) of hard-earned taxpayer dollars on a Niagara Falls airport terminal that shows every indication of getting somewhere between little or no use at all. The NFTA has yet to do the needed comprehensive and objective marketing study that could make or break the case for a new terminal. Instead, it relies only on a ‘build it and they will come’ plan.”

The editorial went on in a lengthy display of Buffalo News idiocy, but I won’t bother picking it apart again. However, two statements made by the Buffalo News in their opening paragraph deserve revisiting. One, the largest funding component of the NFTA plan is casino revenue, so the Buffalo News whining about “hard-earned taxpayer dollars” is simply wrong. Those dollars are money that people decided on their own to throw away mindlessly feeding slot machines. If we can somehow get a new airport out it then I suppose that’s some consolation.

Two, the Buffalo News editorial board’s statement that “the NFTA has yet to do the needed comprehensive and objective marketing study that could make or break the case for a new terminal” is so blatantly wrong that it can only be an idea they pulled out their ass while sitting around a conference table puffing cigars. Certainly they couldn’t have bothered to ask the NFTA about it.

Enough with the Buffalo News; they’re on their way to irrelevancy anyway. Let’s look at the airport.

As stated in my previous article in January, the world is shrinking. International air traffic is increasing exponentially—both cargo and passenger traffic. Previously impoverished nations with populations exceeding a billion people, like China and India, are making big money, want more leisure travel and want to expand their businesses. Europe, which through the European Union is organized more like a single nation, has a half-billion people, with hundreds of thousands of expanding businesses and a growing tourist population. America is still the number one destination in the world for both tourism and business. But there is very little room for expansion in our already congested major US airports. Niagara Falls, on the other hand, has almost unlimited room for expansion; it already has US Customs and Immigration services, and it is ideally located for anyone interested in reaching the Canadian or northeastern US markets.

For the record, this is not the first year Artvoice has tried to draw attention to the NFIA. Between June and September of 2001, we ran nine major features on the airport, including three cover stories. At the time, we were opposed to the NFTA’s plan to give a Spanish company named Cintra a 99-year lease to take over the airport because we viewed NFIA as an important regional asset that needed to be developed by this community, and not something to be turned over to a foreign company who only pledged a minimal investment for improvements.

Obviously a lot has changed since September 2001. For starters, on September 11, 2001 terrorist hijackers attacked the United States and consequently airport security changed dramatically. The Cintra deal to lease airport fell apart. And over the past five years in Niagara Falls, Ontario, the Canadian government and private industry have invested billions of dollars in developing casinos, luxury hotels, golf courses and many other tourist attractions. In Niagara Falls, New York, the Seneca Nation opened Seneca Niagara Casino and built a 26-story hotel. Tourism to the Niagara Falls area is now topping 22 million visitors a year and growing.

All these developments caused the NFTA to take long, hard look at what to do with their little airport in Niagara Falls with the mega runway.

Lawrence Meckler, executive director, Niagara Frontier Transportation Authority
(photo: Rose Mattrey)

A BOLD IDEA: LET’S FLOURISH

The NFTA has been remarkably successful in growing Buffalo Niagara International Airport. Anyone who remembers the old Buffalo airport with its shabby east and west terminals, leaking roofs and cold, damp buildings, knows the change out there is significant. But according to Meckler that’s as much a result of a quick response to the marketplace as it is to any long-range planning.

“Seven or eight years ago we started to work on air service development,” said Meckler, “and we’d go to Southwest and other low-cost airlines trying to get them to come to the region. We didn’t focus just on Buffalo. Our approach was ‘Buffalo or Niagara Falls, whichever, we just want you.’ We wanted the low-cost airline to stimulate traffic. We had something like 2.9 million passengers in 1997 and last year we had 4.8 million.

“So back then we’d tell a low-cost carrier, ‘Here’s what we can do in Buffalo and here’s what it would cost in Niagara Falls. You want to come to Buffalo, great; you want to come to Niagara Falls, great.’ We just pitched the region. But as time went on, everyone was coming to Buffalo, which was fine because we just wanted the business, we wanted more competition, and to make traveling easier for people in Western New York.”

According to Meckler, before the stringent security requirements post 9/11, theNFIA facility wasn’t really a problem. “It wasn’t a transportation issue,” said Meckler, “it was more of a tourism issue. In the 1990s no one wanted to come to Niagara Falls for three or four days because there just wasn’t enough to do there. You didn’t have the golf courses built up, you didn’t have the gaming, you didn’t have the wineries and you didn’t have the hotels.”

Today the Niagara Falls region is an increasingly potent tourism attraction. Meckler believes tour operators can now sell three- or four-day packages to the Niagara Falls region and get people to come. “But now we have an infrastructure problem,” said Meckler. “So it’s the reverse of what the situation was prior to 2001.”

WHAT IS WRONG WITH THIS AIRPORT?

The Niagara Falls terminal has many problems. To begin with, given today’s security requirements, they can’t efficiently process passengers. Although there’s room at the airport for a number of planes, there is only one functional gate. So right now you can’t load a flight that is leaving and have a flight come in at the same time.

There’s only one small room for passengers waiting to board their plane after passing security; it holds around 30 or 40 people. The average full-sized commercial aircraft holds about 200 passengers. So after the first 30 people clear security, the remaining 170 people are left standing in line waiting until those first 30 people are out of the room and on the plane before they can go through security. It takes about two hours for a plane to be fully boarded instead of the 10 or 15 minutes of boarding time at most other airports with spacious waiting areas. Consider that NFIA has the capacity to handle planes like the Airbus A380, which can carry over 500 passengers. Then what?

To make matters worse, there are no bathrooms available once you’ve passed security and are in the passenger holding room. So if you’ve cleared security and you have to go to the bathroom while you’re waiting for your plane to come in, you need to go back out, use the restroom and then get back in a long line to pass through security again. There is no air conditioning, so standing in line in that small hot building in July and August is not pleasant. And other than a coke machine near the ticket counter, there are no food or beverage concessions whatsoever.

There is no jet bridge for boarding. Which means you’re probably walking across icy tarmac in the winter months before climbing stairs to get into the plane. It’s not very accommodating for physically challenged passengers or the elderly, who typically have issues going up and down stairs.

Bill Vanacek, the NFTA’s director of aviation, said, “An airline company will go through that boarding experience once, but they’ll never come back and fly out of this airport again. It’s not a tenable situation for them.”

In addition to problems handling passengers, there are problems with baggage screening. “Today when you check a bag in the US,” said Vanacek, “it has to go either through a CTX or an L3 machine, which is like a big MRI machine. It shows the inside contents of the baggage. At Niagara Falls our staging area for baggage is so small we can’t accommodate the large machine, so we’re relegated to doing it manually. Security people use a wand and a little cloth that they rub along your bag and then they put it in a machine and trace for explosives materials. That’s what we have to do with all the bags that are coming into Niagara Falls Airport.

“On an international flight it’s almost a guarantee everybody’s going to have two checked bags,” said Vanacek. “So you’re looking at a two-hour baggage screening process. That’s if everything goes right. If you have bags that set off an alarm or require further examination, it slows that process significantly.”

So those are the main reasons the existing Niagara Falls terminal does not work. The terminal is also not much of a welcome for anyone visiting the region. To get off of a plane and walk into that dumpy little dime store airport has got to be disheartening for a tourist who wants to be excited about their trip.

WHAT TO DO?

Last week Artvoice met with Larry Meckler, Bill Vanecek and NFTA public affairs director Doug Hartmeyer.

“What happened in Niagara Falls as a result of September 11, 2001,” said Meckler, “was that the change in security requirements made the existing terminal really dysfunctional. It’s so inefficient it’s almost impossible to attract an airline operator. When airlines or charters would come in they would say, ‘Well, this airport really doesn’t function efficiently for our passengers.’

“So after 9/11 the airport terminal really had to be renovated—and the cost of renovation was out of this world. The only option was to build a new terminal. Once we saw we needed to build a new terminal, that’s when we really began a full-court press to market this airport, because we don’t want to have a new terminal and have it be empty.”

“September 11 put a strain on the operating efficiencies of all airports,” said Vanecek. “We saw some that in Buffalo, but it became magnified at Niagara Falls because of the limitations in screening bags and passengers. We actually brought airlines in to look at the facility, people who had an interest in flying here, and their feedback was ‘We don’t think it will work. We don’t want our airplane on the ground any more than an hour. We want our aircraft flying because that’s how we make money.’

“Air Transat, a Canadian international charter outfit, came in about three years ago and went through the facility,” said Vanacek. “They loved the location and said it would be fantastic for serving the Canadian market; they were looking more at outbound traffic. We had Aero Mexico come up and look at airport more recently, within the last four months. But both companies gave the same feedback. That it would be very difficult to operate because of the length of stay that you’d have to be on the ground in the airport.”

“We had a consultant, URS, come in and look at the facility to see if it could be renovated,” said Meckler. “Their recommendation was that there are so many fatal flaws in the operation, the only thing that made sense was to build a new terminal.”

“It was over $16 million to renovate it,” said Vanacek, “and what you would end up with is a renovated terminal that’s grown as much as it can grow because we’re constrained by the current building’s location and its proximity to runways. So if you had any long-term growth whatsoever you’d be back in the same boat of building a new terminal.”

Facade of the proposed 71,000 sq. ft. Niagara Falls Terminal

SELLING THE IDEA FOR A NEW AIRPORT

The $23 million proposal to build the new 71,000-square-foot airport terminal relies heavily on our state legislators to ensure the NFTA gets a piece of the local share of casino revenue. Although this deal has already been worked out in great detail through Niagara County legislators Senator George Maziarz and Assemblywoman Francine Delmonte, until the cash is in hand NFTA officials continue to lobby Western New York delegates. Vanecek and Meckler gave a presentation on January 21 to other members of our state delegation: assembly members Paul Tokaz and Sam Hoyt and senators Dale Volker and Bill Stakowski.

“What we did,” said Vanecek, “was explain to the delegation the way that we market the airport.

“When we sit down with passenger carriers, both international and domestic, the first thing we do is explain to them where Niagara Falls is situated. We’re sitting in the middle of about eight million people. That’s a very important aspect of our marketing effort.

“We point out our proximity to the Canadian border, the access to Hamilton and Toronto and the highway system that allows people to easily cross the borders back and forth, which we base on our experience at Buffalo. Twenty-five to 30 percent of the people who fly out of this region from the Buffalo airport are coming down from Canada. So we’re not just marketing Niagara Falls to them, we’re marketing the entire region, Southern Ontario, Western New York and even Pennsylvania.”

“But we do go to great lengths to make sure we’re marketing Niagara Falls as a destination,” said Meckler. “We talk about the Falls, one of the seven natural wonders of the world, the growing casino industry, the 100-plus golf courses within an hour’s drive, the second largest wine region in North America. And now, instead of the one-star motels that used to dominate this area, we have a large number of five-star hotel rooms on both sides of the border. These are the types of things tour operators can get excited about. This makes them consider bringing people to this region and bringing service to this area.”

“We’re the closest commercial airport to Niagara Falls, four miles away,” said Vanacek. “You can start your vacation immediately when you land. In five minutes you can be in your hotel, or in a casino, at the Maid of the Mist or crossing the bridge to Ontario.”

The NFTA has been very busy getting the word out about this region and this airport.

“We’ve had conversations with a number of different carriers,” said Vanecek. “Carriers like German-based Condor Airlines. Thomas Cook International, which is a UK-based travel and tour operator. Axis Airways, which is a French-based international tour operator. And we’ve been overseas. We’re not trying to do this out of our offices here. We’ve actually sat down face to face with these airlines. We’ve gone to Scotland, we’ve gone to Madrid, we’ve gone to Copenhagen. We’re going to fish where the fish are, so to speak.

“All of these people have expressed interest in our location and our airport and they’re all figuring different ways to fit us in. I’ll give you a great example: Condor Airlines flies a tour from Germany to Monkton, a small community on the northeast coast of Canada. They spend three days there and then they fly to Toronto for four days, and then down to Niagara Falls for a day trip. Our angle is to flip that and fly them into Niagara Falls and make Toronto the day trip.”

IS NFIA COMPETING WITH THE BUFFALO AIRPORT?

“The planes international tour operators use vary,” said Vanecek. “Boeing 767 and 757 aircraft are heavily used workhorses used to cross the Atlantic. And I know the first question you’re going to ask is ‘Can these planes land at the Buffalo airport?’ Well, they can, depending on the distance that they’re flying. With the heavy weight of fuel and a full load of passengers, a 767 and 757 cannot operate out of Buffalo to Europe. The plane is just too heavy to get airborne on Buffalo’s runway. The longest route we can run out of Buffalo right now is our Las Vegas and Phoenix route. You need that added runway to get the plane off the ground. Niagara Falls can accommodate the predominant workhorses in the airline industry right now, the 757, the 767 and some of the Airbus planes.

“Right now UPS is flying a 767 into Buffalo,” said Vanecek, “but they’re only flying it for very short domestic hauls and don’t have to take a full fuel load. Fuel is very heavy and that’s where you need the longer takeoff length. The takeoff length now at Niagara Falls is 10,825 feet. That really gives you the capability for handling the long-haul destinations. 10,000 feet is the magic number for the large operators. They need to see that. That’s the minimum runway length they need to have.

“Buffalo right now is 8,100 feet. Even when we finish the construction work that’s going on this year, it’s only going to be 8,800 feet. So you literally have 2,000 more feet of takeoff length in Niagara Falls. And that’s the big difference maker.”

“That was a key point we made to the delegation,” said Meckler. “That the traffic at NFIA would complement the traffic at Buffalo, and it would attract charters that Buffalo can’t handle.”

“Another point worth mentioning,” said Vanacek, “is that not every carrier wants to fly into Buffalo. For example, we’ve had several conversations with Allegiant Airlines, a low-cost carrier based in Las Vegas. They told us point blank that even though their equipment would work out of the Buffalo airport, they’d never fly there because of the existence of Southwest, Airtran and JetBlue. However, they would fly to Niagara Falls, because they believe it would keep them under the radar screen from those other low-cost carriers. We’ve been talking to them about a Las Vegas-Niagara Falls-Orlando route.”

“Now the Boeing 747s are for the much longer hauls,” said Vanecek, continuing on the subject of international flights. “A full 767 with 280 passengers weighs about 450,000 lbs. and the larger 747 with 500 passengers weighs around 875,000 lbs. If you were to tap into the China and Asian market or the India market, 747s are the types of aircraft that would serve those destinations, and 747s could fly out of Niagara Falls. We’ve already had meetings with Korean Airlines and Malaysian Airlines, so we’re reaching out to that marketplace and the big carriers. And there is interest. But right now our facilities couldn’t support their operations. It’s just too large of an airplane to be utilizing what we have today. It just won’t happen until we have the right facility.”

“As part of our marketing effort,” said Vanecek, “we priced what it would cost to land a 767 aircraft at Toronto Pearson versus landing it at Niagara Falls, giving the existing tariff rates, the landing fees and the terminal use fees. What we found was that if you landed that plane in Toronto it would cost you $7,500 for that one flight in—get you on the ground, get you use of the terminal and the plane goes away. In Niagara Falls it would cost you $450. So it’s a $7,000 savings per flight, for a 767 plane load of 200 or 250 people.

“And there’s no congestion at NFIA,” said Vanecek. “That’s a big, big selling point for this airport. Pearson in Toronto has curfews, so if you land after 12:30 at night and you’re not a scheduled airline, you’re paying 16 times the landing fee, which is an exorbitant rate. You have noise constraints, curfew constraints; Pearson is congested and slot restricted. They have a set number of landings and takeoffs that can happen on any given day and it’s a competitive environment for those. We don’t have congestion, noise restrictions or curfews. We’re a 24-hour operation. If you want to land at 3:30 in the morning, you can. ”

“And by the way,” said Vanacek, “Toronto is now the number one most expensive airport in the world—not North America, not the Western Hemisphere, but in the world.”

The lack of congestion and the low cost is what made Niagara attractive to Calspan, which just last year built a $13.3 million flight research center and hangar adjacent to the airport. Calspan, which has about 50 high-wage employees, does flight research, a lot of work for the military, systems engineering and flight simulation training. Calspan, which used to be on Genesee Street near the Buffalo airport, had considered leaving the area entirely but, according to executive vice president Thomas Pleban, going to Niagara Falls made more sense. “We came here because of the economics. We do training here for both military and private sector pilots. And we do simulation training for just about any kind of advanced jet aircraft, but instead of doing simulation on the ground we do it in the air. The Niagara Falls airport was economically far more attractive than other airports, and more than that, because of the lack of congestion we can get more flights in. In Buffalo, for example, if we needed to get in the air for a training session, we’d have to get in line and wait behind all the commercial traffic.”

MAKING THE CONTACTS

The accusation in the Buffalo News was that “the NFTA has yet to do the needed comprehensive and objective marketing study that could make or break the case for a new terminal.” Really? One of the first things the NFTA did when they embarked on this project was hire the consulting firm SH&E. This is world’s largest consulting firm in the air transport industry, used by airlines, airports and governments all over the globe. In making recommendations SH&E evaluates changes in market conditions, technical advances and all economic, environmental and regulatory issues.

“We went SH&E to get feedback on whether developing this airport would work,” said Meckler. “And their feedback was ‘Yes, it will. It will absolutely work.’”

SH&E concluded that a market exists for NFIA that would complement the Buffalo airport. In arriving at this conclusion, SH&E did comprehensive research and analysis of passenger and cargo activity in the region. They interviewed leaders in the travel and tourism industry, as well as tour operators and cargo freight forwarders. They recommended the NFTA develop a passenger marketing strategy targeted at charter airlines and international tour operators, and that the NFTA develop a strategy to target cargo freight forwarders.

To help execute the plan recommended by SH&E, the NFTA turned to another worldwide company, Innova Aviation Consulting, the same company that helped bring Southwest to Buffalo. Innova clients range from Buffalo to Beijing to JFK to Argentina, Peru, Amsterdam and all parts in between.

“Innova is helping us make the contacts,” said Meckler. “We had utilized one of the principals there, Barney Parrella, to get Southwest here. We were so impressed with his contacts and his knowledge that we’re using Innova to implement the plan that SH&E put together.”

“We put a marketing package together,” said Vanecek, “using the Niagara tourism bureau, NCIDA, and Buffalo Niagara Enterprise. We’re not just trying to sell an airport. We’re tying to sell the whole region.”

CALLING FOR CARGO

Attracting the tourism and charter flight business to Niagara Falls would certainly be a good thing. But the development of the cargo industry may hold the most potential for job growth. Cargo expansion requires constructing facilities, hiring warehouse employees, contracting with forwarding agents, creating local sales offices, bringing in trucking companies, etc.

About a year or two ago, Kitty Hawk Cargo, headquartered in Dallas, purchased a large hangar at NFIA from a private owner. Kitty Hawk, which has 33 Boeing 727 cargo planes, flies overnight heavyweight freight to major locations throughout the Americas, including Canada, Alaska, Puerto Rico, Mexico and the Caribbean. They currently fly 10 flights a week out of Niagara Falls. Other than an occasional charter flight, general aviation by private plane owners and a few flights from the Immigration and Naturalization Service returning deported aliens to various countries, Kitty Hawk has been the primary user of the airport. But that is changing quickly.

“We finally have been able to start getting the word out about this airport and making it recognized,” said Meckler. “I think that was integral to the cargo deal that we just signed with Niagara Cargo Port.”

What a pleasant surprise it was to see an article about the Niagara Cargo Port deal the Niagara Falls Airport on the cover of Air Cargo Week this month. The weekly publication out of the UK is a worldwide trade newspaper for air cargo professionals.

“A major push to attract freighter traffic to Niagara Falls International Airport is expected following the signing last week of an agreement between the Niagara Frontier Transportation Authority and Niagara Cargo Port,” wrote ACW.

The 20-year deal will see Niagara Cargo Port build and market new cargo facilities at the airport, aimed specifically at the China and India market and using the company’s Boeing 747 cargo planes. They’re building a 35,000-square-foot facility right next to the Kitty Hawk warehouse and plan to build an additional 35,000-square-foot building if they meet their anticipated growth. The company already has a 400,000-square-foot facility at Pearson in Toronto, but felt they had reached their capacity at that airport. They wanted a US base and the ability to reach new markets, perhaps tapping into traffic currently going to New York and Chicago.

Niagara Cargo Ports is really three different companies: Vista Air Cargo, Atlas International Freight Forwarding and Speed Transportation, which currently owns and operates the former Condor Aviation aircraft hangar at the airport. Vista manages facilities and land development. Atlas is the company that will actually line up the clients shipping the cargo, and Speed Transportation, which is a local trucking firm, will get the cargo distributed either in the US or across border into Canada. Closing this deal was a major coup for the NFTA.

“Atlas, the freight forwarder, is the one that’s going to be out there banging on the doors and getting the freight here,” said Vanecek. “They do all the brokering. And their president, Ken Sing, is well known throughout the world in the freight-forwarding community. He’s very successful. He is the person who can get this done. If Ken Sing has confidence that it can happen at Niagara Falls, it will happen at Niagara Falls.”

“I think that between Kitty Hawk and this last deal with Niagara Cargo Ports, we have more credibility in the cargo area now, and it’s going to grow,” said Meckler. “But in the charter passenger area, the reason we’re putting so much time and money into this is because we think it could work, but secondly, as we said, we don’t want to build a new terminal and not have charters and passengers coming through the terminal.”

FUNDING THE NEW TERMINAL

“There is demand out there, and we know that and we can tap into that demand,” said Meckler. “But we were also sensitive that we don’t want to go out and build the Taj Mahal. We want to build something that is a gateway image but that is appropriately sized and fiscally responsible for this expansion project—but something expandable in the long term, so that when demand rises to a certain point we’ll be able to expand it. But starting out it would just be a two-gate facility. Two gates for a number of reasons—one, you’d be able to accommodate two planes at the same time, but it also gives you some redundancy. If one gate fails, you want to be sure that you have the alternative gate available to you. Two gates is really the minimum you would want to build in any sort of a facility.

“An important point that seems to have gotten lost over the past couple of months,” said Meckler, “is that we’re not overbuilding. We’re building so we can expand. We’re building the minimum-size terminal in order to handle two full-size flights, one in and one out at the same time. And we need room for people before boarding so the boarding process is user-friendly. This is the minimum-size facility we feel would work.

“The NFTA put $1 million in for the design,” said Meckler, “which is complete in all aspects. In other words, if we had the money for construction we’d be ready to go. The design is complete, everything has been cleared with customs, cleared with the Transportation Security Administration and we have all the approvals.”

The total cost of the 19-month airport construction project is around $30 million, but $7 million of that is eligible for Federal Aviation Administration funding, which would pay for work on a circulatory road system and airfield apron improvements. So far, between efforts by both Rep. Louise Slaughter and Rep. Tom Reynolds, whose district lines cut right through the airport, $4.2 million is allocated. Undoubtedly senators Clinton and Schumer could help leverage the remaining FAA money by showing the FAA they support the project. Support from our entire federal delegation would also give momentum to the NFTA’s case in the state legislature and the governor’s office.

Unfortunately, unlike the Buffalo airport, FAA money is not available for constructing a new terminal building. The main criteria the FAA uses to fund airport development and expansion is based upon passenger flow. Since there is no passenger flow at Niagara, other than $400,000 from the FTA for an on site bus station, the NFTA is unable to access any federal money for the terminal. So they must look to the state. For BNIA, they were also able to borrow money against stable revenues from parking and food and beverage concessions. Parking is free at NFIA and you really can’t borrow against projected revenue from one pop machine.

The NFTA already has spent $1 million on design; the remaining $22 million needs to come through the state, the largest component being a piece of the local share in casino revenue. That still hasn’t been finalized, although Senator Maziarz and Assemblywoman Delmonte are working to make that happen.

“I’m a very strong proponent of the airport,” Maziarz said. “Local share of the casino is going to go to the Niagara Falls Airport. Absolutely, it’s going to happen. There’s certainly disagreement on the local share of casino money, but on this, the airport, all three sides—the senate, the assembly, the governor—all agree that a portion of the money would go to this project. The city thinks the money is theirs, the county thinks it’s theirs, but it’s theirs both, really. But the airport is going to happen. All sides agree to that.

“When you think about it, this is a significant amount of money coming from an unusual revenue stream,” said Assemblywoman Delmonte. “Those are not taxpayer dollars, those are slot machine dollars. But there is no difference of opinion as far as that funding element is concerned. And it’s even referenced in various executive plans that have been handed down by the governor. So is there unanimity as far as that particular funding is concerned? Yes.”

Delmonte did have some issues with Pataki’s insistence on pushing casino money through USA Niagara, a state agency subsidiary of Empire State Development Corporation.

“The governor has all the casino money, including the money from 2004 and 2005 that was supposed to be distributed according to a memorandum of understanding that was agreed to in last year’s budget,” she said. “He rescinds all of that and sends ’04, ’05 and ’06 dollars straight to USA Niagara. It shouldn’t affect the money going to the airport, though, because of the plan that Senator Maziarz and I fashioned.

“But this whole issue is about local control, because the 2001 law that was passed by legislature and signed into law speaks about local share. It doesn’t say local share administered by a state agency; it just speaks to local share. It’s disingenuous of the governor to assign all those funds through a state subsidiary when they are clearly earmarked for the local community. It’s highly frustrating. But the funds for the airport are not endangered.

“The way the agreement was structured between Senator Maziarz and me are that the funds are used for hard costs for capital purposes, not for operations, not for maintenance not for personnel,” Delmonte said.

“I’m all for protecting Niagara Falls because of the land that it gave up for the casino,” she continued. “In return the only value the City of Niagara Falls had in that whole process was the promise—a promise that was elevated to legislation—that they would get a direct reimbursement. They would get the direct reimbursement, not a state subsidiary, not a state agency, the City of Niagara Falls. I’d like to see a resubmission of language from the governor that respects the outline that Senator Maziarz and I put together, that really honors local control.

“Look at how much is at stake here,” Delmonte said. “You have a construction season that is coming up that would employ a lot of building trades members to work if the project goes forward. You have projects in the school district, you have projects within the hospital, infrastructure projects that the city desperately needs to get to. That’s a lot of good work that could come to pass this year alone. This administration has nine months left. There’s going to be a new governor in January. Why hold off so much that can go forward because of this insistence that there be state control? Why, because the state has so many finished projects it can point to? The Buffalo Inner Harbor? Let’s look at that as a prime example of state control.”

And that’s it in a nutshell.

One more thing to bear in mind: If an airport isn’t built in Niagra Falls, New York, someone will build one on the other side of the river.

To comment on this article email editorial@artvoice.com.