BRANSON MO NEWS: In the mid-1990s, Ed Labuda had high hopes for Niagara Falls.Like so many other residents and business owners in the city, the owner of Labuda Funeral Home on Portage Road liked what he heard from Toronto developer Eddy Cogan when he pitched a plan to reverse years of decay and reshape Niagara Falls, USA as a destination on par with its neighbor across the border in Canada.“I was real excited because it was going to develop the area which had been going down for 40 years,” Labuda said. “It was going to be exciting because it was going to create jobs and put our young people to work in this city.”
Two decades later, the neighborhood surrounding Labuda Funeral Home has most certainly changed.Unfortunately, from Labuda’s perspective, it has not changed for the better.The disappointment is evident to Labuda whenever he looks at the pair of empty, boarded-up buildings next to his family’s business in the 300 block of Portage Road.“They are just shells of buildings,” Labuda said.The properties are owned by an affiliate of Niagara Falls Redevelopment, the firm left behind to complete Cogan’s vision after he died in 2003.Similar …
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