TOP 10: Centennial Park, Niagara Digital Campus battle for 'Parcel 0' (No. 5)
Dec. 26—On one side is Centennial Park, Mayor Robert Restaino's proposed $150 million "events campus."
On the other is Niagara Digital Campus, a $1.5 billion data center proposed to city landholders Niagara Falls Redevelopment.
As it turns out, the two projects can only be built on the same plot of land — "Parcel 0" — a 10-acre site owned by NFR off John B. Daly Boulevard near the intersection of 10th and Falls streets.
The property has for months been the subject of a city initiated eminent domain proceeding. Last week, New York's highest court rejected a request to consider an appeal to an earlier court ruling that determined the city had the right to invoke its power of eminent domain to forcibly acquire NFR's land for the Centennial Park project.
NFR officials have estimated that the cost to the city for acquiring the 10 acres could reach $20 million or more.
There's been talk of a "two-project solution" within the city but outside of Niagara Falls, the silence on the million- and billion-dollar projects has been deafening.
Gov. Kathy Hochul did offer some thoughts when asked about the two projects by a Gazette reporter while she was in the city for a ribbon-cutting at Niagara Falls State Park this past week.
As for Centennial Park, Hochul said the state is awaiting the results of a feasibility study from Buffalo-based Upper Edge Consulting.
"We're very interested in the mayor's vision," she said.
As to the state's potential involvement in the $1.5 billion data center, Hochul said her administration is aware of the project and open to discussing it and any others that may lead to economic growth in Niagara Falls.
"It's a very, very fluid situation," she said.
For the most part, discussion and debate on the two projects was left to city and NFR officials — and mostly skeptical city residents.
City council members in July hired their own attorney to review the city's efforts to acquire 10 to 12 acres of South End property and review a proposed settlement of the eminent domain proceedings, negotiated between NFR Executive Vice President Roger Trevino and City Council Chair David Zajac and Council Member Vincent Cauley.
Attorney Jeffrey Palumbo advised the council members to reject NFR's proposed eminent domain settlement and told lawmakers the city had "a very strong case" against NFR's legal challenges to the eminent domain proceedings.
As for the latest court decision, while the ruling appears to exhaust NFR's potential legal challenges to the city's eminent domain proceedings in the state courts, a spokesman said they may not be done with their legal maneuvering.
"There are considerable federal constitutional questions presented in this case, and we will carefully consider our legal options and next steps," NFR spokesman James Haggerty wrote in an email reacting to the Court of Appeals ruling.
