Visit Ed Healy of Buffalo Niagara in Retirement

When Ed Healy started working at the Greater Buffalo Convention & Visitors Bureau 23 years ago, Buffalo touted to tourists its proximity to Niagara Falls — and little else.

“At that time, the slogan was ‘Gateway to Niagara,’ and a lot of the focus was on Niagara Falls,” said Healy, who was born in Buffalo and raised in West Seneca. “Buffalo was just an afterthought. I had an affinity for architecture and history and I thought Buffalo had a tremendous amount to offer in those areas. I thought we could do both.”

Healy helped redirect the office’s attention to the city’s historic buildings, arts and cultural attractions and the waterfront as reasons to visit Buffalo. In doing so, he presented a counter-narrative over time that helped change the way people outside of Western New York view the region, as well as locals.

Healy, 67, worked his last day Friday, deciding it was a good time to take time off. Over the years, he has served as director of cultural tourism, director of communications and, since 2009, vice president of marketing for what is now Visit Buffalo Niagara.

“The last 23 years have been a generational effort to rebuild Buffalo, and much of that work is now accomplished,” he told the Buffalo News. “It felt like, with the reopening of the Buffalo AKG Art Gallery, a natural end to the chapter.

“I worked as hard as I could,” he said. “I was all in, but now it’s time to pass the baton to my younger colleagues and let them get on with it.”

Karen Fashana, VBN’s senior director of marketing, takes over from Healy, whom Healy called “absolutely fantastic, intelligent, knowledgeable and savvy.”

“Ed is the champion who said Buffalo had world-class architecture and the world deserved to know about it,” said Bernice Radle, executive director of Preservation Buffalo Niagara, who presented Healy with its lifetime achievement award Friday. of her career. “Before Ed came along, they were focused on the Bills, chicken wings and Niagara Falls.”

“Ed has done so many things, in so many ways over the decades, to help educate and inform our community about Buffalo as a cultural tourism destination,” said Mary Roberts, who resigned last year from her position as Executive Director of the Darwin Martin House Complex. “He’s a great guy on so many levels, and he never calls attention to himself.”

Healy didn’t start his career thinking he would promote Buffalo for a living.

He was drawn to broadcast journalism and, after earning a bachelor’s degree in English from the University at Buffalo, earned a master’s degree in television and radio communications from the Newhouse School of Communications at Syracuse University, where he met his wife, Karen.

After school, the Healys moved to New York, where Ed became editor at age 24 of Goal magazine, an NHL-produced game show for hockey arenas. Following his ambition to go into broadcast journalism, Healy took a job at a short-lived news station in Stamford, Connecticut, and then worked for the Gannett newspaper chain in White Plains, writing for a few regional publications.

They moved to Buffalo in 1991, where Healy worked for the next 10 years in marketing at Blue Cross Blue Shield, followed by a stint as a writer at Artvoice, an alternative weekly. When the opportunity arose to work as communications manager at the Greater Buffalo Convention & Visitors Bureau, he jumped at the chance.

He was able to use his journalism skills, eventually becoming an editor and writing articles for Visit Buffalo Niagara magazine, and collaborating with filmmaker John Paget on several videos about Buffalo.

“I lived overseas for 10 years and one of the reasons I wanted to come back was because I thought Buffalo was a beautiful city and a cool place,” he said. “I was predisposed to advocating for Buffalo’s interests.”

Healy said Buffalo has a “vibe” that also makes the city special.

“Anthony Bourdain said he thought Buffalo was ‘a weird and wonderful place,’ and that’s what I’ve been trying to get in the travel media all these years,” he said .

In 2006, Visit Buffalo Niagara put an illustration of the Darwin Martin House complex on the cover of its magazine, celebrating the ongoing transformation of the Frank Lloyd Wright-designed house.

“That was the inflection point,” Healy said. “This was the first time a Buffalo attraction focused exclusively on coverage.”

A study released a few months earlier by the UB Regional Institute showed that Buffalo could capitalize on cultural tourism.

Healy also played an important role in bringing the National Trust for Historic Preservation conference to Buffalo in 2011, a watershed moment in changing the perception of Buffalo and elevating the region as a powerhouse of historic architecture, arts and culture.

“His active support catalyzed Buffalo’s award for the conference, which highlighted Buffalo as a city with remarkable and important 19th and 20th century architecture,” said Bob Skerker, who chaired the conference with Catherine Schweitzer. conference, which attracted a record number of 2,541 participants. . “The results of this conference were, and are, an increased awareness of Buffalo’s great past, as evidenced by the thousands of people who take walking and bus tours each year, the thousands of people who visit these buildings and the hundreds of articles and blogs and social media posts that tout Buffalo as an architectural tourist destination.

Healy “was instrumental in making this happen,” Skerker said. “Very few other people understood the power this architectural legacy could bring to our tourism industry, or the economic benefits it would provide for years into the future.”

VBN continued to promote Niagara Falls, but there were now many revitalized local attractions to help tell and sell Buffalo’s story, from the Roycroft campus and the birth of the arts and crafts movement, to Teddy Roosevelt’s ascension to the White House in the Ansley Wilcox neighborhood. Home for stage expansion at Shea’s Performing Arts Center.

Travel and garden authors began being courted to visit Buffalo in 2007, leading, over the years, to many positive reviews in many front-line publications.

“We started getting great results right off the bat, with major ratings from national media, including the New York Times Arts & Leisure cover story in November 2008, “Saving Buffalo’s Untold Beauty” , by architecture critic Nicholai Ouroussoff, which ran on three of the full pages,” Healy said. “It’s probably the most significant media success we’ve ever had to date, and in many ways it set the agenda for journalists across the country.”

The striking cover photo was taken looking out at the city center through an oval window of the Guaranty Building.

Healy thanked those who worked to protect the historic gems for contributing to the city’s recovery.

“I can’t imagine Buffalo without Martin House, without Shea’s, without Richardson or Guaranty,” he said. “We owe it to the preservationists for saving these buildings.”

As he leaves, Healy hopes that VBN will be able to do more mainstream advertising in the future on a scale that “can shake things up”.

For him, there will be no more staff meetings, editing the magazine or hosting planners’ meetings.

“It’s been a great adventure,” he said. “It’s been such an exciting time to be in Buffalo. You don’t often get to witness the birth of a city, it’s very rare. But over the last 20 years, we’ve been part of to the city’s rebirth, and I am proud to have participated in this effort.