Published: October 07, 2008 11:00 pm            

LOCKPORT: City is star of canal conference tour

With financial black clouds looming overhead, the annual New York State Canal Conference convened this week to consider the impact of investment in the state canal system.

The Lock City offered a shining example of the dividends Tuesday, as public and private facilities played host to more than 100 visitors on the conference’s third and final day.

Conference goers got a bird’s-eye view of canal district revitalization — and the promise it holds for local economy building — from narrated tours of the canal — and history-related attractions downtown.

Mike Murphy’s Lockview V made a rare stop at the top of Erie Canal Lock E-35, where visitors disembarked and walked the area between original and modern locks, walked to newly rehabilitated Canal Street and sampled four nearby attractions.

Then they reconvened for a reminder that everything they’d just seen and enjoyed is owed to two indispensable goods: state investment and the unwavering commitment of volunteers who believe in an old canal’s modern-day relevance.

“Lockport looked really good today,” Mayor Michael Tucker said. “People see what we’re doing, and they’re saying, ‘yeah, you’ve got it.’ ”

As is true in canal communities around the state, revitalization — whether it’s rescuing and restoring old features, creating events and attractions or simply making the canal more user-friendly — often gets off the ground with public cash. It’s usually volunteers who pitch the ideas and bring them to fruition. In the city, the stellar Erie Canal Discovery Center and ambitious Flight of Five renovation are big-money efforts managed mostly by volunteers.

With Wall Street turmoil threatening New York state’s finances, canal revitalization champions worry what things the state will choose to sacrifice in the name of cost-cutting.

Now is not the time to be resigned to fate, Canal Corp. Director Carmella Mantello and state Sen. George Maziarz, R-Newfane, suggested. The Erie Canal isn’t a sentimental relic, they said, it’s an engine for growth in economically hard-hit upstate New York, and it has to be defended that way.

“It’s not about boats going down the canal. It’s about the events, the Canalway Trail, community revitalization,” Mantello said. “It’s about $300 million generated annually (throughout the state) by economic activity at and near the canal. This is what you have to be diligent in protecting.”

Maziarz said state leaders of all stripes, including Gov. David Paterson, need to hear directly from residents why continued support for canal-related endeavors is important, because many leaders just don’t get it. Paterson’s call for a Legislative special session in November to deal with state spending in light of crashing revenues means a lot of funding choices will be called into question.

“It’s going to be a very challenging time, the next couple of years. The canal is a jewel to people like yourselves and me; we grew up with it. ... That same viewpoint is not shared by some of my colleagues in the Hudson Valley,” Maziarz said. “The governor is not (from canal country) but he’s an intelligent man. It’s important for all of us to let him know how important this is to our economic well-being.”

“The projects you see popping today are thanks to money that was (given by the state) a while ago,” Mantello added. “If we stop that momentum now, it will take 10 years to get it back.”

Conference-goers from Buffalo to Troy offered high praise for the investments made so far in Lockport. Most striking to Nancy Uffindell of Rochester were the passion and depth of stories she heard, from narrators of the canal cruise and cave walk, about how the canal got built and manufacturing took hold in the city. As she walked the cave tour, she said, she could almost visualize the hundreds of men who spent years blasting through rock, armed only with black powder and bravado, to forge a hydraulic raceway.

“It’s a side of the industrial story you don’t often hear,” she said. “To think this is how things got built, before machines, before engineering, it’s amazing.”

Bruce Mayer of Lima, a member of Canal New York Inc., predicted restoration of the Flight of Five locks — the topic of an optional Monday seminar that reportedly drew a standing-room-only crowd — surely would bring more canal, technology and history buffs to Lockport. Even in its unrestored state it’s something worth glimpsing, he suggested.

“Restoration is a very exciting prospect to many of us. (The flight) is a wonderful thing we have left over that wasn’t destroyed by progress,” he said.

Costumed members of Niagara County Historical Society’s Step Back In Time cast helped greet conference-goers as they disembarked at the locks and made their way to Canal Street. Flight of Five committee members welcomed the visitors at 79-81 Canal St., which they’d decorated to look like two old-time commercial storefronts. Apples and bottled water, stacked on an old-fashioned wooden cart, were there for the taking as students from Emmet Belknap Middle School sang the well-known Erie Canal Song and a contemporary arrangement, “On The Erie Canal,” by Belknap teacher Denise Croff. As the crowd walked up to Canal Street, the students had played an electrified instrumental version of Erie Canal Song that seemed quirky, given the 150-year-old setting, but was quite pleasing.

The degree of volunteer participation in Lockport’s canal story is noteworthy, said Vicki Schmitt, a representative of Cornhill Navigation in Rochester.

“I am very impressed. People are enthusiastic about the canal in Lockport. Schoolchildren, the locks people, the Step Back players, all of it is so impressive,” she said. “It comes off as a well-put-together presentation.”

Schmitt suggested it’s important for people to know canal preservation “does not mean freezing things in (19th century) time,” it means restoring the old for modern-day reuse. Nearby places like Pittsford and Palmyra are thriving thanks to canal district revitalization, and the strategy was supported by all kinds of residents, not just government officials and historians, she observed.

“Communities that invested in the canal are reaping the benefits; they know it really does attract tourism. Then there are communities that do nothing — and the difference is amazing,” she said. “Obviously Lockport gets it.”

Contact reporter Joyce Miles at 439-9222, ext. 6245.

        

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