Unclear Future for Mainstay of Niagara Mist

NIAGARA FALLS, N.Y. — The Maid of the Mist tour boats have plied the roiling waters of the Niagara Gorge since the 1840s, taking tens of millions of visitors, including the future King Edward VII (1860), Marilyn Monroe (1952) and Mikhail Gorbachev (1983), past the American Falls to the base of the Horseshoe Falls, whose staggering height and swirling mist feel almost biblical.

“It’s like ‘The Ten Commandments,’ ” shouted a drenched Gargeyi Baipa, a recent passenger from India on one of the boats, referring to the 1956 film that depicted the Exodus.

Now, the Maid of the Mist Corporation, a small fleet owned and operated by a local family for the past 41 years, finds itself confronting its own possible exodus.

In February, for the first time in the company’s history, the Maid of the Mist lost its contract to run tours on the Canadian side of the falls, after the Ontario government awarded the operation to a California company.

That loss cost the Maid company more than half its yearly revenue, but it stands to lose something perhaps even more precious: access to its winter boat storage and fueling area across the Niagara River, on land it has long leased from the Ontario government. Without a place to put its boats in the winter months, the company cannot function, and there are no easy solutions for a replacement site.

The Maid of the Mist operates in a relatively calm stretch of the Lower Niagara River that is hemmed in by the falls, rough rapids downriver and steep cliffs on either side. While there is a dock for boarding on the New York side, there is no room for storage. The rapids a mile north make it impossible to safely motor the boats elsewhere at the end of the season. And a land route is out of the question: there is no access from the American side, and the only access road leading to the river banks in Canada is too narrow to fit a boat and trailer. Indeed, the company’s two largest boats were brought down in pieces and assembled on the shore.

That leaves one option for alternative storage — new construction on the New York side of the falls. But possible sites are few. Moreover, New York officials have cautioned that the necessary environmental reviews, permit applications and construction could take over two years. That is when the California company, Hornblower Cruises and Events, based in San Francisco, will take control of the Canadian tours, along with the storage area there.

If the Maid of the Mist interrupts its boat service in New York for lack of a storage area, that could render its contract with the state void. Equally problematic is the fact that any state-owned site eyed by the company for a new storage location would have to be put out to bid; there is no guarantee that the Maid of the Mist would win it.

While state officials seem sympathetic to the quandary the family faces, they are saying little publicly. “New York Parks is committed to providing boat service out of the United States side of the falls,” said Angela P. Berti, a spokeswoman for the New York State Office of Parks, Recreation and Historic Preservation. “The Maid of the Mist has been a wonderful partner for New York State Parks.”

The Maid of the Mist, meanwhile, is working tirelessly to find an interim solution. It has identified the property of a former power plant as a possible location for winter storage. It recently hired a high-powered lobbying firm to pull any levers in state government — including at the state parks office, which holds the company’s contract, and the governor’s office.

“We don’t intend to go anywhere,” said Christopher M. Glynn, the president of the Maid of the Mist, which his father, James, bought in 1971. “We like what we do. We want to stay in business.”

Business on the New York side has been good lately, bolstered by the general tightening of the border in the wake of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks and a new requirement that visitors must show a passport to cross from the United States to Canada, which is keeping more tourists on the American side of the river.

A series of Canadian newspaper articles criticized the terms of the tentative 2008 contract that the Maid of the Mist had reached with the Canadians, faulting the government for awarding the contract without inviting competing bids, which might have yielded more money. Ontario’s Niagara Parks Commission reopened the bidding, and Hornblower, which operates boat tours at Alcatraz Island in the San Francisco Bay and at the Statue of Liberty, won the contract, with its boat tours scheduled to start in spring 2014.

The commission, in announcing the Hornblower deal, said it represented “an increase of more than $300 million in revenue compared to previous agreements.”

Mr. Glynn said the Maid’s revised bid had been competitive with Hornblower’s.

Some critics are now challenging the amount of money that New York receives from the Maid of the Mist, which last year had about 2.5 million passengers on its Canadian and American tours combined. In Canada, adults pay $19.75 each ride, while in the United States, tickets are $15.50. Under a no-bid contract signed in 2002, the company pays New York State about 10 percent of its annual revenue; last year the Maid of the Mist paid $1.48 million.

“The Hornblower agreement triggered a lot of questions,” said Assemblyman John D. Ceretto, a Republican who represents the Niagara Falls area. “It was much more of a lucrative deal.”

If another boat company were to take over the New York tours, the Maid of the Mist name, which is controlled by the Glynns, could disappear. According to a sampling of passengers on a drizzly spring day, there is a surprising amount of affection for the moniker and the history. “It’s a pretty romantic name, you’ve got to admit,” said Steve Wynn of Punta Gorda, Fla., who was visiting Niagara Falls with his wife, Gina, to celebrate his 50th birthday. “I think the name’s got to stay.”

Linda Koltes of Minnesota agreed. “It would be a shame to lose Maid of the Mist,” she said, pulling a poncho provided by the tour company tight against the spray. “History’s the whole idea. That’s what makes it special.”

The name derives from a rather dark legend in which a local Indian tribe appeased the thunder god Hinum by sacrificing its prettiest virgin. Each year, one girl was chosen to go over the falls in a birch-bark canoe.

Sitting in his offices, which are lined with photographs of famous passengers, including a young Mick Jagger and a forlorn Princess Diana, Mr. Glynn jokingly distanced himself from the legend. “It’s a terrible concept,” he said. “I shudder to think about it.”

“But,” he added, “the name is a registered trademark in New York and Canada.”