WFCU Centre Open House

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• i think the WFCU arena might be the catalyst that brings downtown Windsor back to life. Why go to a kiddie bar to get drunk when you can go to a Spitfires game at the WFCU where you can drink beer AND watch professional hockey players beat each other up like real fighters? A good hockey fight always beats a bar fight in my book.

• "downtown Windsor died the day they put the wrecking ball to the Norwich block".......how about "downtown Windsor died in 1968 during th race riots in Detriot" or "downtown Windsor died the day they put the shovel in the ground and began construcion on Devonshire Mall".

  The Norwich block was just another casualty on a long list of events which have occured over the years to bring us to where we are today.

  Regardless of the cause or causes, a quantum shift has occured over the years in terms of where Windsorites choose to spend their leisure time and money. Until that changes and the residents of this city start to go downtown nothing is going to change.

  You can do all the streetscaping and facade enhancing you want, but none of it will amount to anything until the predominating perception of the downtown changes. It seems like popular opinion is that all that exhists downtown are bars full of 19 and 20 year old Americans and x-rated massage parlours. This just isn't true - take the riverfront for instance - it wasn't that long ago that it was adorned with barbed wire fence and railroad tracks. I'd love to know how many locals have walked along there in the last ten years.

  If Eddie Francis or any of this city's leaders truly want to see our downtown flourish they need to challange the residents of the city to head downtown and see first hand the changes that are being made. if Windsorites don't even want to go downtown how can they expect non-Windsorites to spend time there? There's still a lot of room for improvement but I truly believe most people would be in for a plesant surprise.

• I use the riverfront trail almost weekly. However, vibrant livable downtowns have a good mix of retail, office and entertaiment. The retail is dismal, and vacancy is at an all time high, and thanks to piss poor planning soon the Arena and hockey team will be far from downtown too taking a nice cut out of the entertainment side of things. Add the capitol to the mix and we really are going to end up with just restaurants and bars.

• Be careful what you wish for - one day you will be pining for the day when houses were dirt cheap and there was no traffic or condos downtown. In an odd way, I kind of miss the old crappy Detroit downtown.

• Commercial residents are not going to step up to the plate and make solid investments in downtown and downtown is not going to flourish if residents are challenged to see the changes in downtown. The reality is that these kind of moral statements have already been tried and they just don't work. Look at downtown and see for yourself. I go through the Windsor riverfront trails weekly too. Not to check out downtown Windsor, but to see the Detroit skyline with their beautiful high rises adorning the skyline the Commercia building, Buhl, Guardian, Penobscott, Book Tower, Book Cadiallac, etc., over the Detroit River. If Windsor had the kind of beautiful architecture like Detroit has, I'd be down there a lot more. Removing the Clearly Guest house never had an impact on my decision and was such a collossal waste of taxpayer money. Take a look! The Bistro never increased downtown traffic. I still go to the Riverfront and I'm sure a lot of other citizens go to visit the Riverfront too, but not to walk through downtown.

  As for downtown Windsor, it sucks! There's nothing to do there except to check out the Riverfront. The returns on streetscaping improvements have already gone beyond its peak and its offering nothing but increasing diminishing returns on that investment. But, that's only a small part of the picture. The big reason why downtown Windsor and all the positive statements about visiting downtown won't do jack is because there's no major anchors in downtown anymore. And, that's why the small retail shops are dying in downtown. Devonshire Mall is so successful because they've got major anchors there like Sears, the Bay, Zeller's. It might shift a little as Future Shop and Home Depot move to Walker Rd. And, that's why Devonshire Mall has no vacancies, is packed on the weekends, and the little retail shops like American Apparel, Smart Set, book stores, etc., keep going bankrupt in downtown Windsor. No one wants to visit downtown without a major anchor. Most people just bypass downtown and check out the Riverfront. Go to downtown Toronto. Again, major anchors in the Eaton's centre and the area around there is thriving and packed with people on the weekends. Yet, in other areas of Toronto without major anchors, the streets are pretty much dead. Even downtown Detroit. Before the riots in 1967 when people weren't scared of getting mugged and beaten around every corner, they had major anchors like the Kresge's and the 18 floor Hudson's Department Store, which in the 1950's had over 100,000 people go through the entrance doors each day.

  That's the problem with WIndsor. No major anchors. There's the casino, but without a second one (say on the urban village lands behind the AGW) to motivate someone to walk from the one casino to the other and walking through downtown to get there they're gonna stay inside Casino Windsor. Niagara Falls has two casinos and it's done wonders for revitalizing the whole strip between the two casinos. I've seen Niagara Falls before and after the two casinos where there and what a difference. The one casino didn't do the job to revitalize Niagara Falls like the two casinos did. The Arena and the Capitol would have been anchors to get people to visit downtown again, but the mayor screwed both up for downtown and failed us again.

  If the Mayor wants to fix up downtown, it needs to lower the business taxes and try to solicit major anchors like Sears, the Bay, Zehr's, Home Depot, etc. to downtown. Offer them the urban village lands if they don't want another casino on it. Just check out the parking lots and volume of people surrounding commercial areas with major anchors and compare it with downtown WIndsor. That's the problem with downtown. Lack of major anchors. And, the office building tax rate to set up shop in downtown is way too high to encourage out-of-city corporations to move down here.

  The Mayor doesn't understand this and never will. He should resign so someone with a basic understanding of economics can restore downtown. Everything he does just puts another nail in the downtown Windsor coffin and the city. And, the urban village lands are still a parking lot. And, soliticiting an engineering building that won't even pay property taxes is a big mistake. Students aren't going to spend the kind of money needed to jumpstart and revitalize downtown.

• David, you don't need a major anchor like The Bay or Home Depot to have a vibrant downtown. All you need to have a healthy downtown is a commitment from Windsor's business, labour and civic leaders to work together to do whatever it takes to make downtown Windsor thrive. That's not going to happen in my lifetime because the idiots in charge over at City Hall could care less about what happens to the city or its' citizens. They're only concerned with keeping themselves in power and lining their pockets with taxpayer money. Windsor is being run like Detroit in the 1970's and 80's.

• "...in other areas of Toronto without major anchors, the streets are pretty much dead".

  I'm not sure how familiar you are with Toronto but this statement is quite inaccurate. Pretty much anywhere you go in Toronto, the streets are filled with people at all hours of the day and night, and this has nothing to do with having "major anchors" in the area. In fact, the number of privately-owned, "mom & pop"-type businesses in Toronto is truly staggering, and for the most part they seem to be doing fine. Granted, some areas are less busy than others, but I'm continually amazed by the sheer numbers of thriving businesses and shopping districts in the city. In most areas you'd be hard pressed to find any vacant retail space.

  Of course, this situation is entirely different from Windsor due to the sheer numbers of people in the city. In my opinion, Windsor has fallen victim to urban sprawl to such a degree that there just aren't enough people in the city core anymore to support a thriving downtown. However, I hope I'm wrong.

  One other thing - if one were to take an informal poll of Windsor residents, I suspect you'd find that most folks under 25 frequent the downtown area regularly. The hard part is attracting families, seniors etc to the downtown core, especially since the notion of downtown Windsor as a bastion of drunken hooliganism seems to have firmly taken hold of the city's collective psyche.

• I used to work in Toronto, so I know the city. Last time I checked, Queen Street between Landsdowne and Dufferin were dead because of no major anchors in the area. I mean, they manage to get a lot of it rented, but there are very few people walking around those areas during the day. There's a mall a number of blocks north of there and it's packed because of the major anchor, but that's it. Queen Street to the east around the warehouse district is also weak. When you get into Beaches, it's ok. There's a lot of commercial streets in Toronto were people aren't walking around during the day. It's because there aren't major anchors there. Same with downtown Detroit. There are lots of office buildings and office workers there, but no major anchors like Hudson's Department Store there anymore, so after work, people just get into their cars and drive home and that's why if you walk around downtown Detroit during the day or evening there are very few people walking around. The Greater Detroit area has a population of 5.5 million people. The Greater Toronto area has a population of 5.5 million people. Where the heck is everyone who works in Detroit? They're around the major anchors and that's not in downtown Detroit. Same thing with Windsor. With no major anchors, there are very few people. I mean, what's the point of going somewhere with a major anchor? Just look at anyplace in Windsor with major anchors. The Costco parking lot on Walker is always filled. Same with the Real Canadian Superstore parking lot and the Zehr's up at Tecumseh and Lauzon. Huron Church and Tecumseh with major anchors like Canadian Tire also is packed. There's a high correlation between major anchors and people. This is not a theory. It's a fact!

  Remove two of the major anchors from Devonshire Mall like Sears and the Bay, and you'll see that mall crumble. You'll see at least half the retail shops there vanish with them. I've seen the same thing happen with other malls in other cities. When downtown Windsor was vibrant, it had a lot of anchors. A&P in the Mother's part of Club 801. Loblaws on Tuscarora and Ouellette where the Bingo Hall now is. I think there was a Zellers were the Herb Gray Centre was. The Metropolitan, which had the gas explosion, Woolworth, etc., and this is what attracted the high end small retail shops like Birks, jewelers and a whole bunch of others. There were a lot of major anchors years ago, which isn't the case today and that's why downtown was bustling back then and it's dead today.

  I walked around downtown today just to see what other small retail shops folded this month and looked at the Palace billboard and it said, "We're still open", and had to laugh. Piss poor planning by city hall. The mayor needs to call it quits for this mess and resign. Overpriced and unnecesary bus terminals and bunkers and costly street improvements are not what taxpayers should be wasting their money on. How about an Ikea or a Costco on the urban village lands?? There's a lot of major anchors that could turn downtown around, but the mayor just doesn't get it.

• David, I live in Parkdale and I can assure you that there are plenty of people walking around on Queen West between Landsdowne and Dufferin during the day. I'll concede that there isn't much going on at night, but I believe this is due to Parkdale's largely undeserved bad reputation. However, gentrification is slowly creeping west along Queen (Starbucks @ Landsdowne; the Drake & Gladstone hotels recently undergoing extensive renovations, etc).

  As for the mall you speak of, I'm assuming you mean Dufferin Mall. As far as I know, the only "major anchor" there is Walmart. Is that what you'd suggest for downtown Windsor???

• I think putting a Costco downtown would do nothing for the street life. Windsor once had a thriving downtown filled with locally-owned businesses and there's no reason to believe we can't have a thriving downtown again. What we need are more people my age [people in their late 30's and early 40's] with young kids living and working in the city core.