I was going through some old photos, (these were taken in July 2002) when I stumbled across these shots of a small cluster of houses in the City Centre West lands that were long ago demolished. True to the Windsor way, the lands today remain vacant… These houses were located in the yellow box on the Google Earth view above. I’m pretty sure they were located on the Chatham St. side.
A view of the back yard. Remember these photos were taken in the early days of digital photography, my poor camera didn’t even have a zoom… Hence the occasional crappy angle.
It’s hard to see in this shot, but there is a bit of century old trim poking out at the peak of this one… This house would have been on the corner of Chatham and Caron.
The middle house.
The end house located against the alley.
Redevelopment my ass. Seven years later it’s still a vacant lot. A victim of the temporary Casino land speculators.
There will be redevelopment because Eddie’s canal dream, I mean plan will save downtown! Too bad they will tear down the rest of the neighbourhood to acheive it but so what? Windsor’s expropriations have been great for the taxpayer. /sarcasm
The sad reality is if they didn’t tear down most of the neighbourhood for TEMPORARY parking lots the urban village would be filled with shops and residents. Instead of learning from many past mistakes Windsor will keep doing what they want to do it is after all Windsor’s way.
not sure if you know, but the new version of google earth lets you slide back in time. for windsor it lets you go back up to 10 years, viewing all the old satellite maps. kind of cool.
id like to first state that I am all for preservation. however, in the case of these houses, they are not worth preserving. They were not beautiful homes when they were built, and they cannot be beautiful with any sort of renovation. Too small, too ugly. BUT if and when a development does come to that area, canal or not, I hope that the designers have a vision of preserving the look and style of the region. We don’t need steel and glass towers, we need beautiful and cutting edge architecture. ps. love this site, keep up the good work!
darren – good call – there were where I thought they were:
p/p – Fair enough, however any building ugly or not is better than a vacant lot.
Good riddance. And, I say snaps to the “casino” speculators who demolished it. It took away from the glorious red brick houses worth preserving on the other side of the block.
I can just imagine the kind of crackhead tenants that would be living there if these houses still existed. Trust me, I own a building in this area and you don’t want junk like this in this kind of neighbourhood or it will never be gentrified (not that the urban waste of taxpayer resources would ever come to fruition in this area anyway).
In fact, I wish that Bob Zuckelman would do the same thing with those boarded up turds along Riverside Dr. on the other side of the casino. Come on, you want tourists to visit downtown and that’s the first thing they see.
Usually I agree with the anti-demo stance. However, in this case I say Good Riddance! One less block of crack houses in our downtown core.
Supporting demo to rid the area of potential “crack houses” (a dubious urban legend that is far more prevalent in myth than reality) is skipping over other solutions (also vague, but there are other options). The empty lot will likely stay an empty lot for ages, given Windsor’s climate. An old house, still standing, at least has material to work with, rather than a void.
The real question is how do these properties achieve this state of disrepair and abandonment? What is wrong with the city core in this case that would lead to a migration of residents to more attractive areas?
I suspect that conditions get to a certain state whereby speculators see an opportunity to acquire properties for long term investment should economic conditions improve or opportunities arise. Much of this is the result of speculation and in many cases absentee landlords or owners who do not see the structures as the asset. They see the land as the true asset and in many cases are contributors to the decay as self-serving to reach their goals. Once the properties decline or become crack houses there is no resistance to demolition. Parking lots are a source of revenue to help defer taxes at little cost to the owner (as compared to owning and maintaining a structure).
A good example is what is going on just to the west. In Sandwich town it appears that the seed of decay is being sown in nice neighborhoods and as the seed sprouts more and more residents remove themselves from decaying areas as their property values decline. Houses are purchased and boarded up. Consequently, these properties are added to the inventory of the ‘investor/speculator’ at an increasing rate until the entire street or neighborhood is acquired. Controls are virtually nonexistent or difficult to manage even with master plans for community development.
Consequently, after years of negligence many historical properties are lost.
And although it is perhaps an effort for renewal, I do not believe that a downtown canal is the answer to building a vibrant core.
thanks andrew. i know for our city it just lets you go back 10 years, but i wonder if you can go back more for places like detroit. i’ll have to check
Let me guess. Shawn doesn’t actually live in this area of downtown. Try living in this area for a couple months and I think your idea of myths and urban legends will change completely…
David, you are correct that there was issues at one of the houses because of unruly biker slobs but it was only ONE house (the one of the right). The other two had older ladies living in them.
The area today has little crime (other than the odd auto break-in. But that happens more in south Windsor and the ‘burbs than in this neighbourhood according to Windsor police) and is in every sense a neighbourhood. People sit out on their porches, talk to one another, help out with projects…The one small problem is the apartment on the corner of Bruce and Pitt. New owners don’t seem to care who rents and there seems to be a few druggies living there but their issues are confined to their apartment.
The potential to expand on this neighbourhood with row houses and small buildings with retail on the main floor is astounding. No pie-in-the-sky dreams of using excessive amounts of taxpayers money, just good planning and the ideas of using the gems that are there to build a larger neighbourhood is all that is needed to make a neighbourhood that downtown desperately needs.
Andrew, just a heads up……….listening to the WFD radio we have here at work, and it looks like something around Bubby’s resturant just went up in flames. It’s not Bubby’s or the Multi cultural center, but maybe that little house on University immediatly west of Bubby’s. OR the Herald Press. Something is now gone……more lost density in this little pocket of who-knows-why-it’s-not-a-parking lot-yet.