Feature Story - November 2005

Special Report: Casino Construction

High-Rise Hotel

New $200 Million Tower for Seneca Nation Casino

New Year's weekend will mark the opening of Seneca Niagara Spa Hotel & Casino in Niagara Falls, N.Y., a 26-story tower that stands out in a low-rise skyline.

It will be the tallest building in Niagara Falls, said Philip Pantano, a spokesman for Seneca Gaming Corp., an entity of the Seneca Nation of Indians, which owns the three-year-old Seneca Niagara Casino next door. It also should contribute to a downtown revitalization for the city of 56,000.

"This is a piece of the downtown economic development puzzle," Pantano said.

advertisement

Vince Anello, the mayor of Niagara Falls, agreed. He said that after the exodus of industry over recent decades, the casino offers a chance to rebound through more jobs, tax revenue, and opportunities for new housing developments. The city had lobbied for state-sanctioned gambling for 30 years before the pact, he added.

"The positive impact of gambling won't be felt for another two or three years," Anello said. "It has given developers a reason to give our area a second look. We've gotten a lot of calls from developers."

The $200 million hotel will be the flagship for the Seneca Nation's gaming operations, which include a 120,000-sq.-ft. casino under construction in Buffalo, which is about 20 mi. south, and a 56,000 sq. ft. casino in Salamanca, N.Y., which is another 60 mi. south. Construction on an 11-story, 220-room hotel to complement the Seneca Allegany Casino in Salamanca is expected to start by the end of the year.

The nation, one of six in the Iroquois Confederacy, rapidly built its gaming operations. In August 2002, the state signed a compact promising to transfer 52 acres of downtown Niagara Falls, including an outdated convention center, to the Senecas. Only 100 days later, the center had been converted into the new $80 million Seneca Niagara Casino. Work on the nearby hotel broke ground in May 2004.

On New Year's weekend, the 700,000-sq.-ft. hotel will open with its first two floors, which house banquet, business, entertainment, and conference functions, and its first 10 guest floors. The upper floors and the third-floor spa, salon, health club, and pool, would open by March.

The nation said the project remains on schedule despite recent turmoil. It dismissed its contractor, Klewin Building of Norwich, Conn., in August and filed a lawsuit against the company. It alleged that Klewin had failed to pay $14.6 million to subcontractors per contract terms and had "effectively abandoned" the project by planning to terminate its workers on site.

"We were left with no other option but to move in a different direction," Barry Snyder, Sr., chair of the gaming corporation and president of the nation, said in a press statement.

The nation gave its wholly owned Seneca Construction Management Corp. a role as "interim construction manager."

But Klewin - which was the contractor that converted the original casino, even financing its early phases - has disputed the account and filed a countersuit in Superior Court of New London in Connecticut. Klewin alleged that once Snyder won election as president last November, the nation engaged in an effort to wrest control of the hotel and two other projects, including the planned hotel in Salamanca. The countersuit alleged that the nation manipulated a line of credit that Klewin relied upon for the projects and orchestrated other moves, including withholding payments, to first pressure the contractor to drop the Salamanca hotel contract and eventually to force it off the Niagara Falls hotel project. The case was set for a hearing in early fall.

Since those events, a subcontractor joint venture involving LPCiminelli of Buffalo has taken on an increasing scope of work for the new hotel. The joint venture, Scanlan-Ciminelli, was established in March 2004 under Seneca law in an arrangement that allows it to receive bidding preference on the nation's projects and reserves 51 percent of the jobs to workers of Native American origin.

Under the arrangement, Charles Scanlan, a Seneca Nation member, owns the company with LPCiminelli staff as his deputies and LPCiminelli serving as a company mentor. In addition to the hotel, the company has built or is working on five other nearby Seneca projects, including an office build-out in Niagara Falls.

The joint venture already was handling $6 million in subcontracted bid packages for the hotel, but after Klewin's dismissal, its share rose to more than $11 million. The joint venture's scope includes foundation work, slab on grade, site utility, sitework, millwork, and doors.

The steel superstructure building with concrete slab on piers uses a variety of materials in its design to represent the story of the Seneca Nation's relationship with its natural environment, said Brian Davis, a design principal with Jeter, Cook & Jepson Architects of Hartford, Conn.

"The story starts at the top of the building which is reflective glass," he said.

The variations in color and texture create dynamism and reflect the sky's constant movement, Davis added.

Another design feature is a set of stripes across the top that converge into a T-shape in the center of the building and descend to the ground to represent the natural erosion that formed the famous falls, which thunder a few blocks away.

"These LED-lighted stripes will move in a falling fashion," Davis said.

Toward the base of the structure, backlit acrylic panels create the illusion of woodlands. Indigenous rock and plaster used for the foundation represent earth.

The hotel has 486 standard rooms, 86 corner suites, 22 one-bedroom suites, and 10 penthouse suites. The one-bedroom suites all have a full view of the falls.

The glass-encased hotel is right across the river from Niagara Falls, Ontario, which has had extensive development in the past decade. The tower will be a prominent addition, the nation's Pantano said.

"It totally redefines the skyline," he added.

With the hotel fully enclosed in early summer, crews were wrapping up sitework in the fall, such as tapping into gas, sanitary, and storm systems and installing curbs and sidewalks. The Senecas plan to build two more hotels once the state buys the rest of the 52-acre parcel, only half of which it has transferred to the nation.