Glasgow’s style guru becomes the Falls guy

Posted on Business.scotsman.com
Glasgow’s style guru becomes the Falls guy
By Noel Young
TOURISM is king in Niagara Falls, one of America’s most iconic visitor destinations. But behind the spectacular scenery is an industrial hinterland that has hit hard times.
Now they have turned to Eddie Friel, for more than 20 years a key figure in the great Glasgow revival, for advice on fixing the area’s jobs problems. At 66, Friel, whose lasting legacy to his adopted city was the ‘Glasgow, Scotland With Style’ campaign, has a new job as a visiting professor at the University of Niagara in New York state. And he is increasingly in demand as a speaker on his philosophy of tourism driving the economy and how creating a brand for a city-region is a vital step to recovery.
Recently he was a headline speaker at a sell-out conference in Niagara, telling Americans (and Canadians) how the area would do well to take a few lessons from Glasgow.
“Don’t talk to me about retiral,” says Friel, who with his wife has bought a home in Lewiston in upper New York state. “Glasgow has a great story to tell and I love telling it.”
Friel, who was made a freeman of the city in 2004, believes there is a lesson in the Glasgow turnaround for everyone. “What Glasgow did in the years from 1980 on was absolutely amazing. It was phenomenal that the city was able to turn itself round in such a short space of time, bearing in mind the dramatic rundown in industry.
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