Town of Niagara sets improvements

By Benjamin Joe

Some of the Town of Niagara’s infrastructure and properties are slated toward improvement and development, following action at the Town Board’s regular business meeting Tuesday.

In one case, $700,000 was bonded toward repairs for the highway garage, as well as the parking lot dedicated to it, the Town Hall, the police and water departments, and the roadway in the Town Park leading to the Calvin K. Richards Senior and Youth Activity Center.

The board also voted to sell a vacant lot at 8962 Porter Road for $10,000 on the condition that development of single-family dwellings materializes. According to Supervisor Sylvia Virtuoso, a local developer, Rotella, plans to put $6 million into the property and construct eight single-family units.

Councilman Marc Carpenter spoke of the projects, noting the price for the repairs of the town’s property would’ve cost much more if it was not done by town employees.

“It would’ve been easily over $1 million,” he said.

The only outside work done, Carpenter said, will be on the highway garage where Kane Construction will be repointing the walls.

With such work in high demand, Virtuoso said the town was, “lucky to find somebody,” and characterized the rest of the work as “necessary.”

“The parking lot is just crumbling and very dangerous for people to walk on, and you know how much traffic we get in the park for ‘Music Mania Mondays,’ ” she said afterward. “The road is deteriorating, so we want to mill it and save it before it completely deteriorates, because then we’d have to tear it all up. It would cost more. We’re doing a repair and it will last another 10 years.”

As for the property being sold, Virtuoso said the town has many lots but, unless a project was completed, this property would not be sold.

“The town owns all kinds of lots,” she told the audience at the meeting. “All over the place. They’re completely useless to the town, but we do maintain them. So, when someone wants to come in and spend $5 to $6 million on a project, we’re happy to sell them what they need to finish their project. But the town lots are not sold if the project doesn’t go through, so they can’t buy them at those reasonable prices and then sell them.

“In order for them to get the full parking area they need for this project to build additional homes that will be put on the tax rolls, we’re selling this property.”

In other news:

•The local law for overnight parking in the Town of Niagara was amended to no longer allow any parking between 11 p.m. and 6 a.m. on town roads. Formerly, the prohibition for overnight parking was between 3 and 6 a.m.

•The Military Road Solar project by Carson Power was given its waiver to build a solar array at 8924 Porter Road, despite it being zoned as residential. The closest neighbors to the project are the LaSalle Sportsman Club and the Niagara Falls International Airport.