This isn't some Sun Belt paradise. It's Niagara Falls, Ont., boomtown, part of a vibrant region, some of whose biggest success stories sit 25 minutes from downtown Buffalo.

"I was born and raised here," said Mayor R.T. "Ted" Salci, "and sometimes I just can't believe what I'm seeing."

Neither can planners on the American side of the border. Growth in Southern Ontario has captured their imaginations, and has raised calls to more closely align the fortunes of Buffalo and Niagara Falls, N.Y., while pursuing development as a region.

That approach, these planners predict, could allow Western New Yorkers to prosper alongside their Canadian neighbors in a new, complementary economy - with an American flair.

"There is no doubt in my mind that the Buffalo Niagara region is approaching a new dawn," said Robert G. Shibley, a professor of architecture and planning at the University at Buffalo and director of its Urban Design Project.

Like Western New Yorkers, Southern Ontario residents watched manufacturing slide during the 1960s, under the same global pressures. Rather than spend the next several decades trying to recapture their industrial heyday, communities adjusted.

Buoyed by good planning and a steady provincial hand, the region diversified its economy. Its leaders decided to treat prospective devel opers pretty much the same, with no community trying to lure business from another nearby. From Toronto to Fort Erie, competition gave way to cooperation.

The region welcomed immigrants and international investment, and played to its strengths.

Results in Niagara Falls alone give pause: The Ontario city has seen more development in the last decade than its American counterpart has seen in half a century.

The value of new construction permits rocketed from $59.6 million (U.S.) in 1996 to $325.5 million (U.S.) by 2002. More than 40 new hotels and motels have gone up since 1995.

Two skyscraper hotels planned for the next three years, at 58 and 59 stories, will become the tallest buildings on the Niagara Frontier, each more than one-third higher than Buffalo's 38-story HSBC Center.

Mayors and planners from Buffalo, Niagara Falls and Lewiston want to plug into that success. They meet regularly with fellow leaders from the Ontario communities of Fort Erie, Niagara Falls and Niagara-on-the-Lake.

Generating employment

They discuss many subjects, from border issues to development. And they envision a region that curves from Toronto to Rochester: a burgeoning Golden Horseshoe of nearly 10 million people - an employment powerhouse with so many tourist attractions that it would take years to visit them all.

One region, two countries. And smack-dab in the middle: Buffalo Niagara.

Guidance may be found in the way the Canadians developed Southern Ontario. Policies set by the Ontario government's Ministry of Municipal Affairs focus on developing Southern Ontario as one region, but in sectors, identifying several areas for their strengths and attractions.

The provincial government has long seen Hamilton as a major industrial center. Niagara Falls, clearly, is seen as a growing mecca for tourism. Niagara-on-the-Lake is treasured as a wine region, theater center and historic site.

Planners in Toronto and Hamilton used the same approach to develop their cities. Both contain bustling neighborhoods with different characteristics.

Land in Ontario is seen as a community asset. Wide swaths have been set aside for the public good, including the heralded Niagara River Parkway, a 35-mile road and recreational trail that stretches from Fort Erie to Niagara-on-the-Lake.

Contrast that approach to New York State's "home rule" approach to planning, which historically has been weak and has been left to individual communities.

Taken as a whole, the New York system appears disjointed and extremely independent. A confusing maze of regulations - in which neighboring communities compete to win projects, public money, industry and jobs - has trampled big-picture development.

"It seems like we're all talking about the same thing - development, growth and prosperity - but we never seem to be on the same page," said Thomas J. DeSantis, senior city planner for Niagara Falls, N.Y. "We can't get that many people to work together. But when I go over to Ontario and talk to planners and city officials there, I see a cooperation that seems unattainable on this side."

Timothy E. Wanamaker is president of Buffalo Economic Renaissance Corp., the City of Buffalo's development arm.

"We need a regional planning board overseeing development in the Buffalo Niagara area," he said. "Unfortunately, we have too many levels in the approval process. It slows us down."

In Erie and Niagara counties, there are more than 60 local zoning and planning boards, and at least two dozen industrial development agencies and related organizations. Each has some sort of say or control over proposed developments.

Streamlined approval

Proposed projects in Hamilton need to clear one level of approval: the City Council. In Niagara Falls, Ont., there are two: the City Council and the Regional Council.

Every Thursday in Hamilton, all city department heads, planners, conservationists and anyone else with a stake in a proposed development meet in City Hall and discuss pending projects.

"The Council has delegated as much as possible to the staff," said Stephen Robichaud, manager of Hamilton's Strategic Initiatives Department. With professional staff and only one level of approval, projects get the go-ahead in weeks, instead of the years it can take in Western New York.

Erie County has three cities, 25 towns and 16 villages, for a total of 44 individual governing bodies. Niagara County has three cities, 12 towns and five villages, for a total of 20.

On the Ontario side of the border, in an area about the same size, there are 12 municipalities governed by the Regional Municipality of Niagara, including the cities of Niagara Falls and St. Catharines. The City of Hamilton is an amalgamation of six towns. That means 13 municipal bodies, compared with 64 in Erie and Niagara counties.

"All the municipalities you have to work with on the American side of the border," said Robichaud, "that would be a nightmare."

Then there are the business incentives.

In Buffalo and Niagara Falls, N.Y., and their neighboring municipalities, state and county industrial and economic-development agencies hand out tax breaks, low-interest loans and other enticements to attract new businesses and keep existing ones.

The Province of Ontario does not allow local governments to work that way. The province helps with funding for new roads, public transportation and infrastructure to support development, and also sometimes helps pay for part of the planning process. But companies must foot the bill for their projects, so they rise or fall based on solid business plans and a company's ability to gather private financing, not its connections to members of political bodies or public authorities.

"You take away all that wheeling and dealing, and you end up with a very collaborative approach," said Douglas A. Darbyson, director of planning and development in Niagara Falls, Ont.

The simplicity and collaboration draw outsiders, and international investment, including American dollars. Buffalo's Paul L. Snyder is one of the five partners in Falls Management, a Toronto-based company that operates the two falls casinos for the Province of Ontario - Casino Niagara and the $660 million (U.S.) Fallsview Resort.

"What has made Niagara Falls, Ont., so successful in creating an international resort destination is the tremendous cooperation between the province, the city and private development," Snyder said. "Being located next to a world-famous entertainment destination," he added, "can only help us" in Buffalo.

Of the dozens of high-profile commercial proposals in Niagara Falls, Ont., during the last decade, the majority have been completed or are under construction, said Serge Felicetti, director of the city's Business Development Department.

Across the border, in Niagara Falls, N.Y., the success ratio is closer to 10 percent.

To be sure, casino gaming is the linchpin for much of the new development on both sides of the border. The two Canadian casinos grossed $968 million (U.S.) in the 2004-05 fiscal year, said Teresa Roncon, a spokeswoman for the Ontario Lottery and Gaming Corp.

But more important on the Canadian side is the recognition that tourism can drive an economy and create good jobs - especially in a region blessed enough to contain one of the wonders of world.

Manufacturing still makes up 22 percent of the economy in Niagara Falls, Ont., said Felicetti, but tourism accounts for about $1.2 billion (U.S.) a year in terms of money spent and spinoff jobs.

Tourism in the Niagara Region - which stretches from Fort Erie west to Grimsby, about five miles east of Hamilton - provides about 30,000 jobs, officials said. The two casinos account for 5,546 of those jobs and an annual payroll of $133 million (U.S.), Roncon said.

The "vision thing'

"Since Casino Niagara opened (in 1996), there have literally been thousands of spinoff jobs," said Nathan Hyde, executive coordinator in the Niagara Falls, Ont., mayor's office.

After the casino opened, the province's gaming corporation set aside $1 million for the city to hire 30 new police officers. Hundreds of hospitality management positions have opened up across the city, Hyde said, as well as the need for more teachers, health care workers and local manufacturers to supply the two casinos and other hospitality trades.

The Seneca Nation of Indians opened its first casino in Niagara Falls, N.Y., on New Year's Eve 2002. It was the first major development on the American side in decades. Now a four-star, high-rise hotel behind the casino is nearing completion, and other long-stalled proposals are gathering steam.

By the end of the year, Seneca leaders have said, they will announce their preferred site for a casino in the City of Buffalo, one expected to be smaller than Seneca Niagara Casino.

Though a casino will be part of the mix in Buffalo, Wanamaker said, he does not consider it a lifesaver.

"I'm not going to build my economic development around a casino," he said. "Dollar for dollar, I'd rather have 20 small companies come here than one casino."

Wanamaker and other Western New York planners think that the region can stop hemorrhaging businesses and people but that it is going to take more than blueprints; it's going to take a whole new attitude and a big something called imagination.

"We need to reimagine the cities of Buffalo and Niagara Falls," said Shibley, the UB planning professor. "Call it a vision thing, a regional vision thing.

"We have to stop operating out of fear and depression. Too many people have been doing that for 30 years. We can't rebuild the steel industry, but we can build on existing neighborhoods like the Theater District, the medical complex and the waterfront."

In Buffalo, new development must begin in the downtown core and spread from there, Shibley said, and people in the region must understand that sound development will take time, as it has in Southern Ontario.

Five years ago, he said, there were 3,000 people living in downtown Buffalo, half of them in detention centers. Today, 400 new housing units are being developed in an eight-block area.

Solving image problem

To implement the "vision thing," the city must overcome the image thing.

"Nobody bashes Buffalo more than Buffalonians," said Wanamaker, who moved here two years ago from Washington, D.C., to lead the city's makeover.

When he addressed an international convention of Realtors in Las Vegas last year, Wanamaker said, few knew more about Buffalo than its winters and the stereotype image of a convoy of advancing snowplows.

His presentation began with a rarely seen panoramic view of the Buffalo skyline taken from the harbor, and included details of a strategic plan to build on existing downtown hubs.

"They were genuinely surprised at all that Buffalo has to offer," Wanamaker said, "and when I told them about Bass Pro coming here, they wanted to follow."

The time has come, Shibley said, to roll up our collective sleeves.

"Let us imagine a prosperous, binational region," he said, "replete with culture, entertainment, history and an extraordinary geographical experience."

e-mail: bmichelmore
@buffnews.com

Because of First Sunday magazine's advanced deadlines, a discussion about the status of the first six issues handled in the "Why not Buffalo?" series did not include Friday's news that Gov. George E. Pataki intends to appoint a commission early next week to oversee development of Buffalo's waterfront. This was one of the key components of the "Why not Buffalo?" article of Jan. 2 about what was needed on the waterfront. News of the commission could not be included in the series update that you can find on Pages 12 and 13 of today's magazine.

If you would like to comment on today's "Why not Buffalo?" articles, e-mail your thoughts to whynotbuffalo@buffnews.com. Please include your name and address. Previous articles from the yearlong series can be found in the Living Here section on the Buffalo.com home page.