GM Transmission Plant

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• Once this plant closes next June, this huge site has great potential for new urban neighbourhood development (if our city has the vision). I'm thinking of the old Greenwood Raceway or Massey Ferguson sites in Toronto. They have taken brownfield sites and created dynamic, diverse, mixed use urban neighbourhoods.

• I think with the North American International Auto Show threatening to pull out of Detroit because of Cobo Hall, this entire complex should be transformed into a convention centre and be used to lure the auto show here in Windsor.

• Hahaha. I just fell out of my seat laughing at Ed's comment. It'll most likely be levelled like Lear and the Ford Casting Plant.

  The $300million allocated for the Cobo Hall renovation and 167K sq. ft expansion of the convention center into Cobo Arena has already been approved. Illitch didn't renew his lease. The threat of NAIAS pulling out of Detroit is long gone.

• David, of course it will be levelled, and it should be. There is absolutely no use for that building in this century. What I am suggesting is a positive urban residential/commercial neighbourhood to replace it. It has an ideal site between Old Walkerville and South Walkerville. Instead of weeping over closed factories, we need to bring the city forward and weave this area into the fabric of the community. This type of thing is being done pretty much everywhere but Windsor. We need some vision in this city.

• It can't be levelled because The Windsor Expo Centre is in the other side of the building. The guy who runs it has suggested he might end up buying the other half of the building and convert it to a auto meusum.

• I remember reading an article about the Windsor Expo Centre and that the lease was set to run out in 2010 I believe. As a convention centre, with significant renovations and improvements, this would be an asset for Windsor. But, without quicker action and decision making this plant will likely remain vacant for years and join the ranks of the old Woolco/Wal-Mart building on Lauzon, Home Depot on Howard Ave. as empty eyesores.

• An auto museum? We've already got one in heritage village.

  There's no market for another large convention centre in this area.

  The only real use I could think of for a building this size would be a film production studio like they did with the former GM Truck plant in Pontiac. But, that would require the Ontario gov't spending a fortune on tax credits and other incentives like the State of Michigan to lure an outfit from Hollywood and Toronto would be screaming bloody murder that the Ontario government didn't keep those film dollars in Toronto.

• Clint Eastwood where are you when we need you?

• Last I heard, Clint was in Grosse Point, Michigan, where he did his last movie.

  71 major motion pictures approved for the upcoming and past year for the greater Detroit area, yet no one wants to take advantage of some kind of Windsor-Detroit movie making partnership because Toronto squaked and they get what they want like always... Virtually every major actor has been filmed in Metro Detroit now. Al Pacino is in metro Detroit being filmed for a movie where he's playing the role of Dr. Jack Kevorkian, yet Windsor could never be considered a film making town. Or, maybe it's our mayor who thinks the idea of the movie making boom spreading over to Windsor from Detroit is a joke...

• Andrew...
  In the bottom centre portion of your second photo there is a section of old concrete that seems to fade into the railway land. With the history of that part of Walker Rd. (the old Seagrave factory was right up the street to mention only one) was there any significant business operating there at the south-west corner of Ottawa St. and Walker Rd.? Wyeth Pharmacutical operated out of the building that is occupied by the current market but I don't think the property extended as far as that concrete