Niagara Falls banks on Wallenda's tightrope stunt

NIAGARA FALLS, N.Y. -- More than a century after stunters, hucksters and daredevils were banned from desecrating the world's most famous waterfall, a Flying Wallenda will walk a tightrope across the cataract in prime time on live national TV — with official permission and support.

It happens Friday night. Nik Wallenda, seventh-generation scion of the first family of the high wire, will try to become the first person in 116 years to walk over the Niagara River, and the first ever to cross so close to the mighty falls' thick mists and gusty winds.

In a testament to the economy's sluggishness and tourism's allure, the USA and Canada granted Wallenda an exception to the no-stunts policy. The supposed beneficiary is this beleaguered city of 50,000, which shares the falls' name and little else.

Once a scenic wonder, industrial colossus and honeymoon capital all wrapped in one, the city has over the past 50 years lost much of its industry, half its population and almost all its glamor. Yet now it's the site of the biggest high-wire act since Phillippe Petit walked between the World Trade Center towers in 1974.

"We've done it — boom! — a shot heard 'round the world," New York State Assemblyman John Ceretto said when the walk was approved this year. "Somebody might be out there and say, 'I want to invest in this city. They're on the move, they're thinking outside the box.' "

Wallenda himself is on message. "Not even Marilyn Monroe brought the attention here that I've brought," he says, referring to the star of the 1953 film Niagara. "Anyone who says this doesn't help Niagara Falls, they're fools."

He means critics such as Paul Gromosiak, a local naturalist and historian whose books include one on Niagara daredevils. He calls Wallenda's walk a step backward: "It's a distraction from an experience of nature. It reduces Niagara Falls to a backdrop."

In a nation whose basic economy is at best changing and at worst declining, Niagara Falls is one of many communities that have seen their future in the past:

•The legalization of gambling in Atlantic City in 1978 failed to alleviate urban blight in the faded resort. The city is betting on yet another casino, the Revel, which cost $2 billion and opened last month.

•Connersville, Ind., known a century ago as "Little Detroit" because of its importance to the auto industry, hoped to return to prosperity as the site of a plant where 1,500 workers would make high-tech police cars. But this year, the Energy Department denied Carbon Motors a $310 million loan, possibly killing the project.

Niagara Falls' own history includes wire walkers such as the Great Blondin, who crossed the Niagara Gorge in 1859 with his manager on his back. Maria Spelterini (1876) walked across backward wearing wicker peach baskets on her feet. Charles Cromwell (1884) sat on a chair on the wire. Clifford Calverly (1893) raced across in a record two minutes, 35 seconds.

None crossed anywhere near the falls itself. Yet Wallenda, whose wire is strung directly over them, may be hard pressed to enter this pantheon.