Over the years, the City of Niagara Falls has endeavored to transition its identity from a manufacturing town to a tourism hub. Standing on top of what once was a Carborundum silicon plant, the city’s latest tourism initiative has taken flight.
Rainbow Air Tourism’s Airbus H130 helicopters have recently become a staple in the Niagara region's airspace. However, while the new model has been flying since last April, the group only recently opened its new facility on Acheson Drive, steps away from the Niagara Scenic Parkway.
The $15 million center, which opened Thursday, features two Airbus’s that can hold seven passengers and is considerably quieter than previous models heard flying over the region.
Rainbow Air started this year's flying season out of the Niagara Falls Air Reserve Station while they waited for the finishing touches on the site. Niagara Falls Mayor Robert Restaino says he hopes the commitment to seeing the new facility to fruition will become a precedent for other projects in the Cataract City.
“I've been here for five and a half years now at City Hall, and there are a lot of things that come in the door. People come in with great ideas, but those ideas go from great ideas to somewhere lost in the mist of the falls,” Restaino said. “Our administration was all hands-on deck to get this project across the finish line. It's a success story about how an idea starts and comes to fruition.”
Sharing a similar sentiment was Assemblyman Angelo Morinello, who believes the venture acts as a key step in the right direction for the city’s new identity.
“When I was in Vietnam, I did over 30 assault missions out of a Huey helicopter, but what was more important was that it would extract us from danger,” Morinello said. “When I see this building, using this Huey model, is that it's taking that boneyard of failed silver bullets and extracting them from the City of Niagara Falls and bringing in progress.”
While the main attraction of the facility is 15-minute physical flights that take passengers across places such as downtown Niagara Falls, Goat Island and Southern Ontario, 11 new simulator units allow guests to virtually paraglide over a similar flight path. The “Niagara Virtual” VR gallery is part of a city-wide tourism goal to create continuous entertainment options, making the venue attractive to tourists throughout the entire year, not just during peak summer months.
