The REAL Niagara Falls

[jn_12]

I grew up in a house like that: Queen Anne style.

I love urban grit and there's some gems in the downtown tour. Thanks. What's the average Niagara Falls "dump" house sold at?

I don't know for sure, but I'm going to assume that Niagara Falls and Welland have similar property values (give or take). My mom sold her house in Welland last year: 3 bedrooms, 2 baths, refurbished rec room, garage, etc for $110k (bought for 90k in 1993). It was built in the late 40's, early 50's so it's basically a box. The same house in Toronto in a similar neighbourhood would get around 300k according to her real estate agent. In the whole Niagara Region you can get the best house in any town for less than 500k, and in Welland the newest houses go for under 250k. Housing prices is a big reason why Niagara has one of the oldest populations in the province.

"Dump" houses though... you could probably get two for under 100k. I'm not lying.

 

[egotrippin]

It is really sad to see pictures like these. Such a thriving tourist area should have its older core equally as vibrant. I couldn't believe it when I first wandered away from Clifton Hill into the actual city centre during one visit, it literally felt like a ghost town. However like these shots it was also winter when I was there, so I suspect like Redroom mentioned it's not so bad during the summer.

p.s. Flar, I love your tours of Ontario towns as most of them I've never really "explored". Any plans to do my old hometown(s) Markham and Stouffville? The only place I've ever really stopped to look around is old Unionville.

 

[Jarrek]

An example of how not to insulate a historical building:

 

[Brandon716]

Nice tour, Niagara Falls has to be one of the most interesting places around due to the stark difference between the new and the old.

What was the economy of Niagara Falls when the old downtown was built, more trade and business or was it also built from tourism? If it was built from tourism it makes you wonder why money isn't flush to redevelop these old properties. Some of these older buildings have a lot of architectural charm and could be renovated nicely.

 

[CDL.TO]

Nice tour, Niagara Falls has to be one of the most interesting places around due to the stark difference between the new and the old.

What was the economy of Niagara Falls when the old downtown was built, more trade and business or was it also built from tourism? If it was built from tourism it makes you wonder why money isn't flush to redevelop these old properties. Some of these older buildings have a lot of architectural charm and could be renovated nicely.

Downtown is located where based around where the original border-crossing bridges were located (rail and road), and therefore the train station. This is due to the Niagara River narrowest at this point. So it's based upon transportation.

I believe that the tourist-sector part of Niagara Falls is at the same location as it has always been. There's plenty of older buildings past the top of Clifton Hill. Basically, Niagara Falls had two downtowns; a tourist one and a traditional one.

The big downside of downtown Niagara Falls is that it's not on an arterial but on a side street. Seems like everywhere that had this setup had their downtowns die; for another example go check out Thorold.

 

[ShonTron]

Newmarket and Georgetown are also good examples of the downtown off the main street. Newmarket's kind of interesting, and it was next to the railway, but not on the streets that ended up important. Thorold is a great example.

There were several villages that make up Niagara Falls - there's the main one, there thanks to the railway and the original crossings, there's another historic centre is close to the Clifton Hill area - I believe its centre was at Main and Lundy's Lane (which is another Pawn Shop corners).

Sometimes the deliberate movement of traffic away from a downtown kind of works - like Unionville or Streetsville.

Georgetown's downtown location seems even stranger - especially as Guelph Street - Highway 7 is an old main street, and closer to the station than Main Street.

 

[adma]

Downtown is located where based around where the original border-crossing bridges were located (rail and road), and therefore the train station. This is due to the Niagara River narrowest at this point. So it's based upon transportation.

Remember, too, that there's always been an industrial-town aspect to non-tourist Niagara Falls: everything from Nabisco to Cyanamid. (Why not? Water power and cheap electricity is a great industrial draw.)

Georgetown's downtown location seems even stranger - especially as Guelph Street - Highway 7 is an old main street, and closer to the station than Main Street.

The strangeness is compounded by the Delrex development (and attendant retail strips) from the 50s onward, which gives Georgetown an urbanistic "tail wagging the dog" feeling...

 

[flar]

I've always thought an LRT would be perfect for Niagara Falls, connecting the VIA station, downtown/Queen St, Clifton Hill, and the Fallsview area.

LRT would be cool and a possible catalyst for redevelopment. I noticed an old rail corridor when I was taking these pictures. Apparently others have thought of this, according to these posts on SSP:

The old rail line was purchased by the city from CP for a people mover to circulate tourists. Then there was no funding for it so now its just an abandoned strip of grass and gravel. It had trains running on it not that long ago. I remember being on Clifton Hill one night around midnight and seeing a huge CP intermodal train rumble through. The best part was the shocked look on the faces of tourists.

I recently came back from Niagara Falls and had a nice time. I don't know if it has been discussed here before, but I was wondering what is going on with the old railway right of way that runs through the city. It is nice that they've put a wide pedestrian path on it along Victoria.

It was a heck of a lot of walking, and despite the People Mover, there needs to be better ways of making it easier to get around, especially higher up the hill. I know there were plans for a monorail that died but it coud be something much cheaper and simpler. I was thinking it would be great if there was a simple narrow gauge tram that ran along that old railway, single track with doubling at every other stop so that trams could pass each other. It could do wonders to link the old historic downtown (as well as the train and bus stations) with the Falls area and its popular tourist attractions. Perhaps something like this:

I figure this could be done fairly cheaply and could even be offered as a free service. If Marineland could afford to put up expensive rides, this could be a drop in the bucket for the casinos to fund.

 

[Redroom Studios]

as stated before, I would agree with CDL.TO that the non central location of downtown as well as not being located along any major traffic routes are the main reasons for the downtown's collapse.

In the article about the city on Wikipedia, they also blame the growth of malls and big box stores starting with Niagara Square along the QEW in 1977. That mall has gone through some tough times in recent year s too, losing a major tenant in Robinson's department store. Recently though it looks to be rebounding with fairly new additions such as Future Shop, Petcetera and Linens and Things. Also in the last 6 months the old Robinsons location has been demolished and is now being replaced with about a dozen new tenants, construction is ongoing.

On Lundy's Lane, Shoppers Drug Mart is building a new bigger location on a former run down flea bag motel site. Across the street is another 2 storey development that looks like a red barn (no mention of what it will be) In the tourist area there are 2 new highrise hotels under construction... an expansion to the Hilton and also a Crowne Plaza, though there has been no action on the latter in atleast a year after they completed the first floor...

 

[Redroom Studios]

Flar - interesting proposal, but still what is the attraction that will make people want to go to downtown (Queen St)? If anything they migt want to try to get developers to build some lowrise rental or condo buildings to try and increase the population in the area and try to encourage new business to move in...

Another thing I wanted to mention is that ACRES headquarters really sticks out like a white elephant - the only newish building in the area. I wonder why they moved there in the first place? The company used to be located at the northwest corner of Dorchester Rd @ Hwy 420. I remember going for a tour of the facility in grade school.

 

[adma]

Was that originally meant to be some Rae-era provincial government building?

As I suggested, perhaps the best hope might be some kind of university/community-college type facilities locating there...

 

[jn_12]

I posted this in the comments of spacing awhile back, but back in the late 1800's the intellectuals and engineers and city planners in Niagara Falls came up with a plan to turn Niagara Falls in to a massive metropolis comparable to New York and Chicago. It was expected that the Falls would be the catalyst due to its hydro capabilities and people and industry would flock there to create a utopian city.
Here's the link to the article: http://www.jstor.org.cat1.lib.trent...&artsi=1&Query=niagara+falls+and+utopia&wc=on

I don't know how many of you can read it since I can only access the full article through Trent U's library portal, but if you're interested in reading it I'll gladly email it to anyone that wants it.

 

[Jarrek]

Flar, very interesting proposal.

Pitch it to Niagara Fall City council.

 

[flar]

It's not my idea, I just reposted something dreamed up by other people. But I could imagine someone buying up Queen St. and creating some kind of Disney-fied themepark-like homage to the classic "Main Street". The old rail corridor would make a nice way of transporting people back and forth from their hotels.

 

[Brandon716]

It's not my idea, I just reposted something dreamed up by other people. But I could imagine someone buying up Queen St. and creating some kind of Disney-fied themepark-like homage to the classic "Main Street". The old rail corridor would make a nice way of transporting people back and forth from their hotels.

It doesn't have to be Disney-fied, it can be a mix of genuine business and tacky tourism.