In recent years, Niagara Falls hasthrown open its doors to casino gambling, gay weddings and a tightrope walkthat, until laws were relaxed, would have meant arrest.
It even briefly considered taking in toxic wastewater from hydraulicfracturing.
On the drawing board now is a plan to entice young people to move in by payingdown their student loans.
After the city's old strategy of industry over tourism flopped amid the declineof Rust Belt manufacturing and the disastrous Love Canal, a new economic planappears to have emerged: Try anything.
"If you piece together a series of wins, then I think it becomestransformative," Mayor Paul Dyster said, reflecting on efforts to reversefortunes in a city where one in five people live in poverty and the populationof 50,193 is less than half what it was in the 1960s.
More than $2 million in yearly block grants from the federal government couldbe in jeopardy if the number dips below 50,000.
"Less people means less attention in the government's eyes. ... You needpeople in your neighborhoods," said Community Development Director SethPiccirillo.
The latest idea is to cover two years' worth of student loan payments forrecent college graduates who agree to live in a targeted neighborhood.Piccirillo said the tuition program will start small, with about 20 people inthe first round, but it has attracted interest from around the country.
And that's really the point, Dyster said, of using Niagara Falls as anincubator for new ideas.
"Anything you do at Niagara Falls, because it's a famous place, you getthis exponential increase in the level of interest and the level of publicitythat's generated," he said. "When you do it in Niagara Falls, it'sthe difference between speaking in a conversational voice and talking through amegaphone."
The overarching goal is to get people to set up shop here, or at least stickaround long enough to spend money.
So, last July when it became legal for same-sex couples to wed in New Yorkstate, Niagara Falls organized an attention-grabbing group wedding with hopesof reviving its onetime reputation as "the honeymoon capital" forsame-sex and opposite-sex couples alike.
A year later, wedding-related vendors say business is up 20 to 25 percent.
"The general mission is to obtain business. Whether it's new residents ornew visitors, we're all on the same goal to better Niagara Falls ingeneral," said John Percy, president of the Niagara Tourism &Convention Corp.
City officials say redevelopment of the Niagara Falls Airport, which was barelyused until the late 2009 opening of a $31.5 million terminal, has improvedaccessibility. The airport went from handling 37,014 passengers in 2009 to197,208 in 2011.
Other successes include the 2010 grand opening of a three-block cobblestonestretch, Old Falls Street, to connect the state park with a convention centerand hotels and serve as a destination for festivals and shows. Niagara CountyCommunity College, meanwhile, plans to open a new culinary center in Septemberafter taking over part of a former mall near Niagara Falls State Park, and a$22 million upscale hotel is planned in the same area.
But there's no hiding the obvious financial hardship for the city whose gatewaylandmark is a mothballed Shredded Wheat factory: Dilapidated houses and boardedstorefronts dot the city, this summer's Italian Festival was canceled for lackof sponsors and night games for varsity sports were scrapped for next season tosave the school district the cost of lighting the field. About 22 percent ofpeople live below the poverty level, compared with about 14 percent statewide.
And perhaps the most thriving business in Niagara Falls today, the SenecaIndian Nation's 10-year-old Seneca Niagara Casino, largely operates as anisland with few surrounding businesses appearing to benefit from its estimated7 million yearly patrons. For the past few years, the city hasn't even seen itspromised share of slot machine profits — $58 million and counting — because theSenecas have withheld it as part of a feud with New York state.
Tourism was the city's main draw until the early 1900s, when the growth ofnumerous chemical plants fueled the rise of a hydropower-fueled industrialbase. But industry started to lose steam in the late 1950s and '60s.
Meanwhile, the sister city of Niagara Falls, Ontario, made itself all abouttourism, putting up hotels, restaurants, museums and other attractions, even asits New York counterpart was dealing with the 1970s toxic Love Canalcontamination that caused the abandonment of an entire neighborhood.
Now the cash-strapped city finds itself in an awkward dispute as it tries tocollect $25,000 from high-wire artist Nik Wallenda to cover public safetyovertime expenses from his June 15 U.S.-to-Canada wire walk across NiagaraFalls. Dyster says the state-approved legislation allowing the normally illegalwalk entitles the city to reimbursement. Wallenda counters that he's alreadypaid the state for security and that the city should take from there.
None is enough to discourage Nissa Morin, who hopes to get in on the tuitionresidency program to help erase roughly $7,000 of her tuition debt. She has abachelor's degree in music and sound recording from the State University of NewYork at Fredonia and is working on her master's degree in businessadministration from D'Youville College in Buffalo. She envisions establishingher own business in Niagara Falls, perhaps a recording studio or housingcooperative out of one of several old bed and breakfasts in need ofrehabilitation in the downtown neighborhood chosen for the program.
The flow of tourists ensures businesses a potential customer base, she said,but Morin sees the need for more residents to enliven the area and spruce itup.
"How many times do you get the opportunity to come into a city and buildthe ideal neighborhood for yourself?"