Town of Niagara to hold public hearing on Fashion Outlets tax deal

By Benjamin Joe

Senior Contributing Writer

A public hearing will be held in the Town of Niagara’s main meeting room at 2 p.m. June 2 to gather input in regard to a proposal for a new tax deal for the Fashion Outlets of Niagara Falls USA, which is owned by Fashion Outlets II LLC and Macerich Niagara LLC.

The preliminary acceptance of the applications was voted on by the Niagara County Industrial Development Agency Board on Wednesday, May 13.

Kevin Clyne, an attorney representing Macerich, said in the meeting that the tax deal was, “imperative to the stability and survival of the mall.”

The Macerich and Fashion Outlet II corporations proposed to pay $500,000 in taxes and $100,000 in taxes, each year, respectively, with a 2% increase each year in taxes for 10 years, as outlined in the project summaries submitted to the NCIDA. As well as those taxes, Macerich pledged $250,000 annually as a host community payment, and Fashion Outlet II also pledged $100,000 annually in host community payments to the Town of Niagara.

Town of Niagara Supervisor Sylvia Virtuoso said the municipality is, “Definitely very supportive of anything we can do for the mall to get over this tough hurtle right now of e-commerce and lack of Canadian shoppers; and try to get tenants back in the mall, because they are absolutely vital to the town and to Niagara County.

“They provide more than 50% of the sales tax. They employ 800 people. And the surrounding area definitely benefits from the mall being there, as well as the millions of tourists who come to Niagara Falls and have a place to shop. We definitely have been working together to try every resource possible to help the mall stay open and help them until they can get back stronger.”

Virtuoso also said the host benefit agreements have been active and will not be changed by a new payment-in-lieu-of-tax deal the companies have proposed. While she is in favor of the new PILOT agreement, she characterized it specifically as a Niagara County IDA project.

“We’re in support of the PILOT agreement changes because there were two separate (PILOTS) done at two separate times; and I believe bringing them together and changing the PILOT agreements to benefit the mall more is a help – and we are in full support of that – but it’s definitely a Niagara County IDA PILOT agreement,” Virtuoso said.

In other Town of Niagara news

•The municipality is upgrading its network infrastructure to improve security, reliability and energy performance. In a work session held Wednesday, May 13, Virtuoso said there were “real issues” with the town’s IT system.

“We have real issues with everything that’s out of date,” she said.

To upgrade the system, the Town of Niagara Board voted to pay Alternative Information System Inc. $11,113.58, which would come out of the energy reduction account.

The Town of Niagara Police Department’s infrastructure will also be upgraded while Alternative Information System is working on the network in Town Hall – thought the police station’s servers have not been malfunctioning and are not in the same shape as the rest of the town’s server infrastructure.

“It has been a long time coming. Our servers, everything goes down and it’s very unsafe with the wiring and the way we have it, I have to say, rigged,” Virtuoso said. “Everything is going to be cleaned up and taken out. … We’ve been doing it piece by piece, but now we have so many pieces that are actually past their use date.”

•Two part-time summer employees, Wayne Vanderhinder and Domenico Anello, had their hiring approved by the Town Board at Tuesday night’s meeting. Their time on the clock will not exceed 640 hours, as budgeted in the 2026 Town of Niagara budget.