Show of support for landmark status for Turtle

Jan. 19—Niagara Falls Historic Preservation Commission members received more than 500 letters, and over 1,100 signatures on a petition offering support for designating the downtown Turtle building as a local landmark.

Speakers attending Thursday's public hearing on the matter at city hall generally agreed with the idea as well.

Clearly not in favor: Niagara Falls Redevelopment, the company that has owned the former Native American Center for the Living Arts on Rainbow Boulevard since 1997.

Prior to the hearing, an attorney representing NFR provided members of the media with a document outlining its legal concerns with the landmarking effort and process.

Chief among them: An argument that the 45-year-old Turtle building is not old enough to warrant a local landmark designation and, therefore, should be held to a higher designation standard, one requiring the structure to be formally defined as being "exceptionally important."

"Of the 37 properties in Niagara Falls listed on the National Register of Historic Places, not a single property is less than 50 years old," wrote Ryan Altieri, an attorney with the Buffalo-based law firm Harter, Secrest & Emery, who filed objections to the landmark designation on NFR's behalf. "Almost all, in fact, are more than 100 years old. Accordingly, the commission's proposed designation of the 45-year-old Turtle constitutes a significant departure from its historic practices."

Commission members noted prior to the start of the hearing that they received a total of 512 letters in favor of the local landmark designation as well as endorsements from six organizations, including the Department of Indigenous Studies at the University at Buffalo, the Seneca Nation Tribal Preservation Office, the Niagara Falls National Heritage Area, the Niagara Falls Underground Railroad Heritage Center and the Preservation League of New York State.

Saladin Allah, director of community engagement for the Falls Underground Heritage Railroad Center, noted that the center itself was established inside a historic customs house building off north Main Street that was built in 1863. He said the project demonstrates the need for the Falls to not only protect the building as part of the city's cultural heritage but also to preserve for potential future reuse that could help boost cultural heritage tourism in the community.

"You need to make sure that we preserve these cultural assets to make sure that this potentially generates revenue," he said. "There's nowhere in the world where you can go to see that Turtle. Nowhere. It only exists here."

Linda Grace-Kobus, a novelist and Amherst resident who grew up in the Falls agreed.

She noted that when the building opened as a center for the Native American arts in Western New York in 1977, it was welcomed as part of a "community-wide celebration."

"It was really the first significant, positive recognition of the indigenous people of this area," she said.

Grace-Kobus noted that the center's closure in 1997 was due to a number of factors, including the declining economy of the city which, by that time, had lost a significant number of manufacturers and the jobs they provided. She called for the creation of a steering committee to take on the task of figuring out what could be done with the building in the future with an eye on once again using it to promote Native American culture and art.

"Past failures should not prevent future efforts," she said.

Jessica Forgette, a Niagara Falls High School teacher, who advises a group of Native American students, brought them along to the hearing. The students urged the commission to approve the landmark designation.

"Give these students and their peers here something to be proud of," Forgette said. "No hotel will ever do that."

Falls resident Brandon Kennedy told the commissioners, "The Turtle is not just a building. It is one of the few remaining examples of indigenous architecture in the nation."

Many of the two dozen speakers who offered their comments spoke of their memories of visiting the Turtle when it was open.

"In one of my earliest childhood memories, I sat in the head of the Turtle, and I thought it was so cool," said J.P. Sherpe of Lewiston. "We don't need more hotels, we need tourists. We don't need to tear anything else down in Niagara Falls."

But Falls resident Helen Kress injected a note of caution to the landmark designation discussion.

"Here we are, spending another night, helping a developer do something with his property," Kress said. "Who can work with this guy? He's done nothing for 27 years."

NFR, a company owned by Howard and Edward Milstein, two members of the Milstein family of real estate developers from New York City, acquired the Turtle building at the city's request in 1997.

Since then, it has gone public with at least two proposals to redevelop the site. In 2000, NFR representatives gathered with city officials for a groundbreaking for what the company said would be a new museum featuring rotating exhibits under a partnership with the Smithsonian Institution.

The museum never opened.

In 2017, the company submitted plans to city hall for a 20-story hotel that it said it wanted to build on the property. The project, which never materialized, would have involved razing the Turtle building itself.

NFR's attorney Altieri, in his letter from NFR to the commission, argued that properties like the Turtle that are less than 50 years old are "generally not eligible for listing as historic landmarks, according to both the New York State Office of Parks, Recreation and Historic Preservation and the National Register of Historic Places. He argued that the Turtle, built in 1979, would require designation as being "exceptionally important" before it could qualify for local landmark status.

"Such a showing has not, and cannot, be made," he wrote.

Altieri's letter argued that "nowhere" in its proposal does the commission evidence that it has tried to mount such an effort. Pointing to a groundbreaking at the site involving city officials in 2000, he also suggested the required "exceptionally important" designation would "surely fail" because, at the time, city officials allowed NFR to "remove structural elements" from the building.

"Equally damaging to any attempt to establish exceptionally important circumstances today is the fact that the Turtle could have and should have been so designated prior to the city selling it to NFR," Altieri wrote.

In his letter, Altieri also questioned the makeup of the city's preservation commission itself, referring to a section of a city law that requires the body to consist of seven city residents and, "if practicable," include at least one architect, one historian, one licensed real estate professional, and one licensed professional engineer.

"The commission has not established that it has seven members, whether all of those members are city residents, and whether any of its members are architects, historians, licensed real estate professionals or licensed professional engineers as required by law," NFR's attorney wrote.

Members of the city's preservation commission, with help from the Western New York non-profit group, Preserve Buffalo Niagara, initiated the effort to designate the Turtle building as a local landmark in the summer of 2022. City ordinances bar the owners of buildings with local landmark designations from obtaining demolition permits unless an emergency situation exists.

Commission members are expected to consider all of the comments made in writing and during the public hearing before making a recommendation on the proposed local landmark status for the Turtle. The commission's next scheduled meeting is the first Tuesday in February.

If the commission recommends the proposal, it will be sent to the Niagara Falls City Council for final consideration. A vote in favor by the council majority is required to make any such designation official.

The hearing's final speaker was City Council Member Donta Myles who offered support — but with a critical condition.

"I'm for preserving it if something can be brought to light," Myles said. "I hope everyone here can come together and come out with a solid plan. I don't want to preserve a building and then nothing happens."