By Neale Gulley<br><a href="mailto:gulleyn@gnnewspaper.com">E-mail Neale</a>
The Tonawanda News
May 13, 2008 12:52 am
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Efforts to promote tourism and capitalize on canal history seem poised to play out.
Local and county economic developers endorsed a pitch by the Erie Canal Theatre Project-Clinton’s Ditch: The Story of the Building of the Erie Canal, according to a press release issued by the mayor’s office.
Hugh Pratt, a college professor at several colleges throughout the South, is one of the writers of the play, along with his wife. He said a recently created board which meets at St. Joseph’s Cathedral in Buffalo has researched the canal in order to produce the script and that the resulting play is “a social justice story.”
“These outdoor theater dramas, you write them for a permanent place, and some of them last for (many years),” he said.
He said there are about 100 such productions in America, and one in North Carolina that draws about 100,000 people each summer.
“The Erie Canal really has not been promoted as a tourist attraction because people never really told the story the way people want to hear it and see it.”
North Tonawanda Mayor Larry Soos sees potential in plans for the outdoor theater production, a love story set during the construction of the Erie Canal, to feature on a regular basis at one of the city’s parks, during the summer months.
“They wanted to do it on the canal but we researched the whole canal and there’s not an area big enough for what he wants,” Soos said.
He said such a draw would satisfy elements of the state’s Greenway project regarding educational initiatives on Greenway land — such as Gratwick-Riverside Park. That is one of the reasons he said Gratwick would be a likely venue for the production.
Fisherman’s Park is also an option — the two have emerged as possibilities because they provide the necessary space outlined in the proposal.
A major stipulation in deliberations leading up to the Greenway grant was that park land be used for, among other things, educational purposes.
The play, according to Soos, would be based at least somewhat on the history of the canal and could therefore satisfy educational needs as well as the county’s interest in events that could be leveraged in order to secure additional funding for further aspects of the proposed park work.
Plans would probably take two or three years to materialize, Pratt said. An amphitheater could have to be built and economic viability surveyed, among other work.
City officials lobbied for, and were granted, nearly $250,000 in county funding for work at Gratwick earlier this month. The funding was available as the result of re-licensing agreements with the Niagara Power Project.
Contact reporter Neale Gulleyat 693-1000, ext. 114.
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