This past weekend a fire broke out near Caesar’s on Glengarry Avenue. Windsor Visuals was on the scene, and he got some amazing shots of the fire in progress… So click here to check out Owen’s shots.
From the Star:
Arson cause of blaze in abandoned home
BY STAR STAFF, THE WINDSOR STAR
APRIL 11, 2009Arson has been pinpointed as the cause of a downtown blaze that gutted one abandoned home and damaged another early Saturday morning.
A fire was set inside 276 Glengarry Avenue about 1:30 a.m. and it quickly spread, causing exposure damage to an adjacent home, said Shawn Boutette Assistant Chief of Fire Prevention with Windsor Fire and Rescue Services.
Neither home was occupied. Both were boarded up and slated for demolition.
Fire crews battled the blaze for several hours, disrupting traffic accessing the parking garage at Caesars Windsor.
Police have no suspects at this time.
Anyone with information can call Windsor police at 255-6700 or Crime Stoppers at 258-TIPS.
© Copyright (c) The Windsor Star
More holes in the streetscape, and more Casino parking lots I’m sure.
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Sure David - But there's no end of vacant land around there...
I think a lot of it has to do with the demographics of the area. Most of the people in the Glengary area are unable to afford to properly maintain their house, or some slum lord who refuses to maintain it. Not surprisingly, the value of these and surrounding houses goes down.
When a property comes for sale, it would be great it somebody moved in, spent heavily and renovated the house, but the fact of the matter is, nobody wants to move into a block full of crack houses whether they have the nicest house on the block or not. It's sad, but the reality of 2009.
Taxes are a BIG reason why Windsor's core neighborhoods aren't gentrifying. Windsor residents get very little value for their tax dollars compared to Essex County and put up with a lot of headaches like flooded basements from backed up sewers. Factor in a city administration that functions more like a Politburo than a democratically elected municipal government and you have all the ingredients for a urban wasteland, which pretty much describes the entire city in 2009.
I'd rather drive by a vacant parking lot that has future development potential than a burned, boarded up, cracked out looking house. Without these eyesores called "houses", maybe the area can begin to re-develop and may attract better investments then we currently have.
I don't see the logic behind the city's refusal to initiate tax incentives to homeowners or potential developers in areas of the city that need it most. Our city's administration is adamant on driving investment out of the core. It's just ridiculously backward.
To illustrate exactly how bad those few blocks east of the Casino are, go up to Level 6 of the Caesars parking deck and look west--nothing but empty lots and a few piecemeal houses in varying states of (dis)repair. This was the neighborhood my Great-Great-Great Grandfather settled in when he first came to Windsor with the arrival of the railroad.
Considering the Casino has an ongoing problem with parking (Utilizing the Wyandotte/Goyeau garage as overflow and busing people over) I would suspect that this particular block (Glengarry/Chatham/Aylmer) probably has a "future" as some sort of solution to this problem--surface parking or another structure, unless the Casino shoe-horns something in on the surface lot outside the 250 Windsor Ave building.
Forgive my directional dyslexia...I mean, look EAST.
Maybe there was some insurance money involved. Why would an arsonist burn these shacks down? Maybe just to see his handy work displayed in such a venue as this. Betsy
Nice big pile of rubble over the weekend.