By Dan Dakin Niagara Falls Review Updated 18 hours ago
With three weeks to go before his 60th birthday, Art Frank can't help but think about the future. After more than five years at the helm of the two casinos in Niagara Falls and 33 years in the gaming industry, Frank admits the thought of life after work has crossed his mind.
"I've been doing this for a long, long time. I'm not saying I'm ready to pack it in, but when you start thinking of five years from now, I'm probably done by then," the president of Niagara Casinos said in a candid interview with the Niagara Falls Review this week. "I'm certainly motivated still and I want to make sure whenever it ends, I leave Niagara Casinos in a great position to be successful for the next 20 years and for the next guy who comes in."
Google Art Frank's name and not a lot of responses come up. Terry Benedict, he is not. Unlike Benedict, the swanky, over-the-top casino boss from the movie Ocean's Eleven, Frank keeps a low-profile and doesn't sit down for many interviews.
"I'm not looking for a lot of attention. It's just not my style," he said. "I don't think I'm all that. I'm not the know-it-all guru of gaming. I have a great team around me. The 4,500 employees we have here make me look good."
The New Jersey native who became a Canadian citizen in 2007 got his start in the gaming industry as a dealer in Atlantic City three decades ago. He came to Canada to run Casino Rama near Orillia, where he stayed for more than eight years. Five and a half years ago, he was hired as the president of Niagara Casinos, which operates both the Niagara Fallsview Casino Resort and Casino Niagara.
"It has been a good 5½ years. Time has just flown by," he said.
Frank's first true visit to Niagara Falls was in the 1950s, when he was eight years old.
"I remember my parents bringing me to Niagara Falls and we did the Maid of the Mist and Journey Behind the Falls. I don't know where we stayed, but it was probably one of the motels out on Lundy's Lane. It was a fun place and I remember it being a good experience."
Niagara Falls looks far different than it did back then. And it's changed remarkably since Casino Niagara opened 15 years ago in December 1996.
While Frank was working at growing Casino Rama, the city he would soon work in was becoming a gambling destination. He said Orillia and Niagara Falls couldn't be any more different and said it was the new challenge that interested him the most.
"Rama was in the middle of nowhere. It was absolutely not a tourist destination, so we had to rely on incenting people from the GTA to come to our casino," Frank said. "I had been at Rama for 8½ years, so I felt like I had pretty much accomplished everything. I think coming down (to Niagara) got the blood rushing again and got me pumped up."
When he arrived in 2006, the gambling scene in Niagara Falls was fairly healthy. There were two casinos and, although there were still economic challenges, tourism had recovered slightly from the post-9/11 fallout.
But Frank knew things could be better.
"When I first got here, we'd be jam-packed on the weekends, but it was important to make this place busy midweek. You can have the best restaurant in the world, but if there's nobody in it, you think there's a reason why. I'm a firm believer that action breeds action. If the place is busy, people want to be there."
Though Casino Niagara intentionally caters to a more local and slightly more laid-back crowd, Frank said another one of his goals early on was to make Fallsview less "stuffy". When I arrived here, it looked very formal. There were a lot of people with stiff collars. It looked intimidating to some people," he said.
The biggest challenge in his time at Niagara Casinos has been another downturn in the economy, especially the low American dollar, which has resulted in significantly fewer people crossing the border to visit the casinos. Though nothing has been formally proposed, Frank acknowledged a proposed 7,000-seat entertainment complex could help improve that.
"We had a study done about a year ago that showed it would not only be good for Niagara Casinos, but it would be a huge economic engine for the region — a 7% increase in hotel occupancy, 2,800 additional jobs. I think this would be a great way to recapture a lot of that upstate New York market."
Though he's still deciding on how long he might continue working, Frank said he and his nine-year-old daughter, Olivia, are comfortably settled in Niagara. "I'm planning on staying here. My daughter has friends and school in the region and I love the area. I plan on being here for a while."
And of his legacy? In Frank's typical low-key style he says what he takes pride in most — outside of his family life — is his ability to be a leader.
"I think I'm good at putting really good teams together. If it wasn't for them, I wouldn't have had success anywhere I worked. I think people in general like my style and they like to work for me. That's not to say I'm always nice — you still have to run a business — but I like to think of myself as a leader with a conscience."
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