NIAGARA FALLS – State officials in Albany have refused to release information about how a nationally recognized historic site in the Niagara Gorge is being handled as a new boat dock and storage facility is built nearby for the Maid of the Mist.
The city’s Historic Preservation Commission has been denied access to documents about plans for the remains of the Schoellkopf Power Station by officials from the state Office of Parks, Recreation and Historic Preservation. They instead were urged by state officials it to let things play out.
“They said, ‘Just trust us, We’re doing the right thing,’ ” said James C. Bragg, City Hall’s historic preservation specialist and secretary to the commission.
The site is the subject of an ongoing lawsuit, and state officials indicated they did not want documentation floating around, Bragg said.
The former Schoellkopf Power Station collapsed into the Niagara Gorge in 1956, leading to the construction of the Niagara Power Project.
It was the first site where power was generated for the City of Niagara Falls. The site of plant’s power station No. 3, on a parcel just north of the Rainbow Bridge, was added to the National Register of Historic Places in February.
The reception from officials with the New York Power Authority, the owner of the land where the former power plant and the new boat facility sit, has been a little warmer.
Power Authority officials are planning to take the commission down to the site, now blocked off to the public because of the $32 million construction project. They are also planning to make a presentation about the project at the Authority’s Witmer Road offices, possibly later this month.
Still, the request for information appeared to have left many state officials feeling like they had their feathers ruffled.
“NYPA’s superiors not too happy we were digging around,” Bragg said.
The Power Authority did provide a heavily redacted copy of a document dated August 2008 it submitted to federal regulators. Many of the pages are completely blacked out in the document, called a “Historic Properties Management Plan” for the Niagara Power Project lands.
Bragg said he was told the redactions were made because the document contained sensitive information related to the Seneca and Tuscarora nations.
The document “looks like something from Iran-Contra,” he said.
What the commission specifically asked for was documents related to what was at the site before construction began, how the state planned to manage those historical resources during construction and how the site would be interpreted after construction is complete.
Requests for comment from Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo’s communications office and the Power Authority were not immediately returned.
The Maid of the Mist Corp. needs to build a storage facility for its boats on the American side of the falls because the Canadian government last year awarded the rights for its tours beginning next year to Hornblower Cruises of California.
A group called the Niagara Preservation Coalition sought a court order this spring to halt construction at the site, but a judge rejected that request and removed a temporary ban that had been enacted.
At a court hearing in April, Assistant State Attorney General George Zimmermann told State Supreme Court Justice Catherine Nugent Panepinto the Maid’s project had been approved by the state Historic Preservation Office.
Another part of the lawsuit remains before the court – whether the state needed to seek out competitive bids for the tour rights awarded to Maid of the Mist.
In December, Cuomo announced an amendment to the state’s 2002 deal with the Maid of the Mist Corp. that now calls for the company to triple its annual rent payments to the state parks office. Those payments are now expected to total $105 million over the nearly three decades remaining on the contract.
Afterwards, Hornblower said it would have paid the state double that amount for the rights to tours on the American side.
email: abesecker@buffnews.com
The city’s Historic Preservation Commission has been denied access to documents about plans for the remains of the Schoellkopf Power Station by officials from the state Office of Parks, Recreation and Historic Preservation. They instead were urged by state officials it to let things play out.
“They said, ‘Just trust us, We’re doing the right thing,’ ” said James C. Bragg, City Hall’s historic preservation specialist and secretary to the commission.
The site is the subject of an ongoing lawsuit, and state officials indicated they did not want documentation floating around, Bragg said.
The former Schoellkopf Power Station collapsed into the Niagara Gorge in 1956, leading to the construction of the Niagara Power Project.
It was the first site where power was generated for the City of Niagara Falls. The site of plant’s power station No. 3, on a parcel just north of the Rainbow Bridge, was added to the National Register of Historic Places in February.
The reception from officials with the New York Power Authority, the owner of the land where the former power plant and the new boat facility sit, has been a little warmer.
Power Authority officials are planning to take the commission down to the site, now blocked off to the public because of the $32 million construction project. They are also planning to make a presentation about the project at the Authority’s Witmer Road offices, possibly later this month.
Still, the request for information appeared to have left many state officials feeling like they had their feathers ruffled.
“NYPA’s superiors not too happy we were digging around,” Bragg said.
The Power Authority did provide a heavily redacted copy of a document dated August 2008 it submitted to federal regulators. Many of the pages are completely blacked out in the document, called a “Historic Properties Management Plan” for the Niagara Power Project lands.
Bragg said he was told the redactions were made because the document contained sensitive information related to the Seneca and Tuscarora nations.
The document “looks like something from Iran-Contra,” he said.
What the commission specifically asked for was documents related to what was at the site before construction began, how the state planned to manage those historical resources during construction and how the site would be interpreted after construction is complete.
Requests for comment from Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo’s communications office and the Power Authority were not immediately returned.
The Maid of the Mist Corp. needs to build a storage facility for its boats on the American side of the falls because the Canadian government last year awarded the rights for its tours beginning next year to Hornblower Cruises of California.
A group called the Niagara Preservation Coalition sought a court order this spring to halt construction at the site, but a judge rejected that request and removed a temporary ban that had been enacted.
At a court hearing in April, Assistant State Attorney General George Zimmermann told State Supreme Court Justice Catherine Nugent Panepinto the Maid’s project had been approved by the state Historic Preservation Office.
Another part of the lawsuit remains before the court – whether the state needed to seek out competitive bids for the tour rights awarded to Maid of the Mist.
In December, Cuomo announced an amendment to the state’s 2002 deal with the Maid of the Mist Corp. that now calls for the company to triple its annual rent payments to the state parks office. Those payments are now expected to total $105 million over the nearly three decades remaining on the contract.
Afterwards, Hornblower said it would have paid the state double that amount for the rights to tours on the American side.
email: abesecker@buffnews.com