The Toronto Power Generating Station sits like a jewel at the top of a crown, the stunning 1906 Beaux-Arts building perched at the edge of the Niagara River just upstream from one of the most powerful waterfalls in the world.
Once tasked with supplying power to Toronto, the venerable landmark is now being repurposed as the Toronto Power Hotel, Niagara Falls’ first five-star boutique hotel, with a planned opening in 2030.
The building’s restoration is a sign of a broader transformation of the Niagara region in an effort to become a year-round world-class tourist destination, a multibillion-dollar strategy endorsed by the provincial government. The strategy is among the most ambitious tourism bets that Ontario has made in a long time, with a goal to double the annual number of tourists.
But whether the region can attract 25 million tourists a year — equal to overnighters and day trippers to Venice — with a high-stakes plan that may include luxury casinos in an era of online gambling, and a Disney-like theme park under an all-season dome, remains to be seen.
“Niagara Falls, let’s face it, is one of the key components to Canadian tourism,” said Wayne Smith, a professor in Toronto Metropolitan University’s tourism and hospitality department.
The tourism scheme, called the Destination Niagara Strategy, was released by the Ministry of Tourism, Culture and Gaming in December 2025.
The strategy is intended to “create new, world-class attractions and boost local tourism while attracting 25 million annual visitors,” the provincial ministry said in an email, adding the plan will generate “an additional $3 billion for Ontario’s GDP every year.”
The plan not only calls for a theme park and new gaming establishments, but also a ferris wheel similar to the popular London Eye on the River Thames, which attracts 3.5 million people a year — more than Toronto’s CN Tower.
The falls are an “aspirational destination,” along the lines of the Eiffel Tower and the Louvre in Paris, or London’s Big Ben, said David Adames, the CEO of Niagara Parks Commission, which owns the land that the future Toronto Power Hotel sits on.
The parks organization is a vast, self-funded provincial agency that oversees parks, restaurants and attractions along the 56-kilometre Niagara River corridor.
“If you say Niagara Falls anywhere in the world, people will instantly know where you’re talking about, what it is,” said Adames.
The local airport, jointly owned by St. Catharines, Niagara-on-the-Lake and Niagara Falls, will be expanded to accommodate commercial aircraft, a factor that Niagara Falls Mayor Jim Diodati thinks could be a game changer for the area.
“We’re going to be able to get more international traffic and those people tend to come and stay longer and spend more,” said Diodati. “So we’ll dip into another market outside of the rubber tire market.”
After its facelift, Diodati says the city’s vibe will be a mash-up of Orlando meets Nashville in Niagara Falls, offering a mix of adult and family entertainment that Diodati refers to as a “buffet.”
“The more reasons to come here, the more reasons to stay longer.”
Niagara Falls is world renowned
By most accounts, Niagara Falls has fascinated nearly everyone who has ever set eyes on it, which local historian Sherman Zavitz calls “one of nature’s grandest and mightiest creations anywhere.”
The first European to see the falls in 1678 was Belgian missionary Louis Hennepin, who described it later in a book as a “vast and prodigious Cadence of Water which falls down after a surprizing (sic) and astonishing manner,” noted Zavitz.
More recently, former Ontario premier Dalton McGuinty got a standing ovation from business leaders in China when he blurted out “Niagara Falls” after “Toronto” and even the “CN Tower” failed to spark recognition of his home province from the crowd, a story he recounted to Diodati.
Despite the falls’ fame, or even its rank as Canada’s top tourist attraction, the city of Niagara Falls has been languishing.
The Toronto Power Hotel, located on Niagara Parkway, will be the first new hotel built in Niagara Falls in the past 18 years.
More hotels could be on tap after the province announced this summer that MGE Niagara Entertainment Inc., which operates Fallsview Casino Resort and Casino Niagara, has agreed to give up its exclusive right to operate gaming establishments in the region for Ontario Lottery and Gaming Corporation (OLG).
That agreement has opened the door for hotel operators in Niagara Falls to meet with a number of other gaming operators to look at building new resorts with a “wow factor” that will “elevate the brand,” said Diodati.
The ministry of tourism said in an email that it expects to begin the procurement process for gaming opportunities later this year.
The planned expansion of the Niagara District Airport will cost at least $200 million, money needed to extend the runways, build a new terminal with two to four gates, a customs area and room for commercial tenants to support an estimated 51,000 flights annually by 2045, according to a master plan.
“We’re the biggest population in Canada without regular daily scheduled flights,” said Diodati, referring to the Niagara Region, which has a population of 540,000.
“Las Vegas, you land in Vegas. Toronto, you’ll land in Toronto. Orlando, you will land in Orlando,” he noted. “But Niagara Falls, you land somewhere else and then you’ve got to work your way here.”
The provincial government announced in July a $10 million investment to support the new airport’s initial design work, but a funding source for the rest of the expansion has yet to be nailed down.
“It’s a project that we have go out and find investors to support,” said Daniel Pilon, CEO of the Niagara District Airport.
The province is also planning to expand parts of the QEW, the main corridor into the region, and increase GO train service to Niagara, from hourly bus service and three trains a day, to GO trains every hour.
“That’s going to be a game changer for us here because the QEW has become a linear parking lot,” said Diodati.
‘We’ve had inquiries about year-round attraction parks’
E.J. Lennox, the famed architect behind iconic Toronto landmarks such as Old City Hall and Casa Loma, designed the Toronto power generating station along the Niagara River to reflect the grandeur and natural setting of the falls.
The plant provided hydroelectric power to Toronto until 1974, when it was shut down after newer and more powerful generating stations were constructed, and has sat empty for more than 50 years.
Work on the $200-million redevelopment project began last summer. The restoration includes a large spa, four to five restaurants, free public viewing areas and a museum dedicated to Lennox.
“This will gain global attention from the perspective of a National Historic Site,” said Adames, of the historically designated building.
The public-private partnership will see Niagara Parks take in as much as $4 million in rent a year.
A new theme park could also be coming to the city, an attraction the province is “very interested” in, said Adames.
Last December, the tourism ministry put out a request for information to gauge private market interest in a theme park and gather information from developers, investors and operators on what key requirements are needed to build one.
A possible site is Marineland, at the south end of Niagara Falls, which could be developed now that the last of the dolphins and beluga whales held captive there were moved in August and September, respectively.
The park has enough land to build three Magic Kingdoms, said Diodati, referring to the Disney theme park in Orlando. The Canadian Press has reported that the park has been for sale and that a deal, conditional on the animals leaving, is in place.
“We’ve had inquiries about year-round attraction parks, a lot of them would be under domes,” said Diodati. “I’ve seen some amazing proposals.”
Future profits from new gaming establishments will be leveraged to build nongaming attractions, he added, anything from indoor skiing and surfing to an in-house show akin to Cirque du Soleil.
Currently, about eight per cent of visitors to Niagara Falls say they gamble, a small margin compared to cities reliant on gambling like Las Vegas, which is targeting high rollers and major sporting events to make up revenue lost to online gaming and a steep decline in Canadian tourists, said Smith, the TMU hospitality professor.
Land-based gambling revenue in North America has slowly declined, due in part to the advent and rapid expansion of online gambling, said Robert Williams, a professor in the faculty of health science at the University of Lethbridge and research co-ordinator for the Alberta Gambling Research Institute.
But the Las Vegas strip has been able to reinvent itself. Currently just over a third of its revenue comes from gambling, down from about 60 per cent in the 1980s, said Williams. The other two-thirds comes from accommodation, food and beverage, entertainment, retail and other nongaming activities.
If Niagara can emulate the modern Las Vegas integrated-resort model, then “the strategy is sound,” said Williams.
Smith said it’s hard to predict the future with the world in its current state of flux, but he believes the tourism strategy could work.
Success lies in promoting the Niagara area to domestic and international markets, said Smith, an approach that has worked this year for Canada’s East Coast, which is seeing a strong wave of U.S. tourists.
Gridlock continues to frustrate
Worries about over-tourism, which have plagued tourist meccas like Venice — pushing locals out by driving up housing costs and threatening the environment — don’t yet seem to be a concern.
“I’m not (worried) at this point, because there’s actually really good housing options in Niagara and I think more coming as well,” said Adames.
“But at the same time we do need to plan proactively for the labour force,” said Adames, who notes Niagara Parks will work with tourism programs at Niagara College and Brock University to identify needs in the labour force.
Diodati and Adames both believe the region has room to grow, without negative impacts, especially in its shoulder seasons, such as fall or spring, when convention spaces are largely empty.
“Obviously we’re conscious of it,” said Diodati, referring to over-tourism, acknowledging the area will need more infrastructure to house millions more tourists. But the tourism industry is vital in the Niagara region, he said, where 40,000 people count on it for their jobs.
Professor David Fennell, in Brock University’s department of geography and tourism studies, acknowledges as well that transformation is an essential part of tourism.
But with gridlock already an issue at rush hour in areas of Niagara Falls, such as Clifton Hill, the region should be “prepared to really amplify the infrastructure support.
“It’s great to have the economic impact. It’s fantastic. It’s job creation. It’s cultural pride and heritage,” said Fennell. “But we get a little bit worried sometimes with these social impacts and these key environmental impacts as well.”
The province didn’t respond to a question about whether it will provide funding for infrastructure improvements in the region.
Meanwhile, the destination strategy moves forward.
“It’s a regional effort. It’s not just about Niagara Falls,” said Diodati, referring to nearby areas such as Lincoln, which he said has great wineries, and Niagara-on-the-Lake, which is home to numerous wineries as well as the annual Shaw Festival.
Diodati said the strategy has involved years of planning by the tourism ministry, the OLG and the Ministry of Finance.
“And now we’re going into the execution stage where it becomes real.”
