Critics of the effort to designate the Turtle building in downtown Niagara Falls as a local landmark have questioned what they perceive to be a lack of interest in the project among indigenous groups and people.
Student members of the Native America Youth Club at Niagara Falls High School beg to differ.
Members of the club, which includes about a dozen Native American students, lent their voices to the ongoing discussion over the building’s future during Wednesday’s city council meeting.
Several of them addressed the council, asking lawmakers to approve a request from the city’s Historic Preservation Commission to officially designate the Rainbow Boulevard building that was once home to the Native American Center for the Living Arts as a local landmark.
“We strongly believe that the landmarking of the Turtle will be a huge benefit to the city, the youth, and surrounding indigenous communities,” the students wrote in a Feb. 19 letter to the council. “Allowing this building the chance to be reawakened would allow a place for so many Native youth in the city and their allies to go to learn about and embrace their culture. This is a moment in time when we are able to voice the need to add something positive to this city instead of the violence, poverty and negative views so many people focus on when it comes to the City of Niagara Falls.”
City council members accepted receipt of the commission’s recommendation during Wednesday’s meeting and set a public hearing on the matter for March 6. Preservationists have argued that the structure, which opened as a Native American arts center in 1981 and closed amid management and financial issues in 1995, is a culturally and historically significant structure worth landmarking. The designation would not prevent the owners from tearing down the building, however, under city preservation guidelines they would need to show that an “emergency” situation existed before they would be able to do so.
Why would a group of high schoolers be interested in resurrecting a building that has been empty for longer than they’ve been alive?
Several of them said, on a very basic level, they just think it’s “cool” to have a building shaped like a turtle downtown.
While it may be empty, they said it is still a unique building, much more attractive to them than say a hotel and way better than another vacant lot or a parking lot.
“It’s so cool,” said 16-year-old Amelia Jacob, an 11th-grader. “I don’t understand why they wouldn’t want to do something with it.”
Jacob worked for the Maid of the Mist and walked by what she described as the “grey building with a ball in the middle” nearly every day last summer. She said she didn’t know the building was shaped like a turtle until her mother filled her in on its history as a Native American arts center.
While she described it as “so ugly now,” she believes it has the potential to be much more.
“There’s nothing like that around here at all,” she said. “I wished I would have seen it when it was more ‘alive.’ ”
Addison Moore, another 16-year-old who is also in the 11th grade, shared a similar experience. She said she first recognized the building was shaped like a turtle when her mother pointed it out to her during a helicopter ride over the city. She called the structure “very cool” and “very interesting” and said the Falls needs more like it.
“There’s not much here,” she said. “I’m always like embarrassed to say I live in Niagara Falls. Not only is there not much to enjoy, we have such a bad reputation. Maybe if we had this, people would say, ‘Oh, it’s so beautiful here.’ ”
Several club members liked the idea of having a place in the city that would honor their heritage and their culture and give them somewhere where they felt more like they belonged.
“I thought it would be an amazing opportunity for Native Americans,” said Kobe Rickard, a 14-year-old who is in the ninth grade.
Two students — both Native American, one who is part caucasian and another who is part African American — described the challenges of finding acceptance for who they are in the community.
Emma Santos, a 16-year-old 11th-grader, said she has found it difficult at times, as a person with light skin who is part Native American, to convince others that she has indigenous heritage.
She hopes the Turtle building could become a space for Native American people of varying backgrounds to gather together.
“I feel like the Turtle would bring kids my age and younger that look like me, that don’t look Native but are Native, it would bring them together and bring out that heritage in them and make them more proud of it,” she said.
Michaela Doreen, another 16-year-old who is in the 11th grade, agreed. As a person who is African American and Native American, she said it can be hard at times to overcome what she described as the “identity problem” of not “looking” Native.
She said she would also like to see Turtle become a place where people with similar experiences can go to “reassure them that they are what they are.”
English teacher Jessica Forgette, who has been an educator for 17 years, the past three in the Falls school district, started the Native American Youth Club last year after doing some research and finding there are about 200 indigenous students at the high school. Her mother, Linda Capton, is in charge of the district’s Native American education program for pre-K through sixth grade students.
“Mrs. Forgette,” as she is known by her students, spread the word about the club’s formation in classes and through word of mouth among students and by putting up posters inside the high school.
Before the Turtle building issue came along, club members got together to talk and engage in various activities, including the making of ribbon skirts, an Indigenous garment that represents resilience, survival and identity.
In November, she shared with the students what was going on with the Turtle landmarking effort and “they just ran with it.”
Forgette, who is a member of the final graduating class at the old LaSalle High School, said she remembers visiting the Native American Center for the Living Arts when she was younger. Having grown up in the Falls, she recalls the Turtle building as a place where she and her cousins, who lived in the Tuscarora Nation Indian Territory, got together to enjoy the dancers, see the artists and just have fun.
“I felt like the Turtle for me personally just brought those two worlds together and to me that was so amazing,” she said.
Forgette bristles at the notion that “no” Native Americans are interested in preserving the building. She views landmarking as a “safety net” for the structure and “step one” in allowing those who care about the Turtle building to put a plan in place for its long-term viability.
While some have suggested there’s no “viable” plan for the building, Forgette said, in reality, there are “many” solid ideas out there.
“There’s a plan, but we have to landmark it so we can start putting it into place,” she said.
Landmarking of the Turtle building does have one staunch opponent: The owners of the building itself.
The private firm Niagara Falls Redevelopment, which is owned by the Milstein family of real estate developers in New York City that has amassed 140 acres of property in the Falls since the late 1990s, acquired the property from the city in 2000.
Through its attorney, Niagara Falls Redevelopment has strongly opposed landmarking the building, arguing that, at 45 years of age, the building fails to meet state and federal standards for such designations which generally involve structures that have been standing for 50 years or more. In cases like the Turtle building that are under 50 years old, NFR’s attorney has argued that preservationists would need to take landmarking a step further by documenting by proving that the structure has “exceptional significance.”
Representatives from Preserve Buffalo Niagara, a local non-profit group that is supporting efforts to preserve the Turtle building, have said that there’s no hard and fast rule barring buildings less than 50 years old from being designated as landmarks.
NFR has also questioned the current makeup of the city’s current roster of historic preservation commission members suggesting they do not have the proper qualifications under the city’s own laws to determine the historic, structural, or cultural significance of any building, the Turtle included.