Downtown Windsor – Part V

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• Yes, that's the one. "The Ikea Bus" -- a little "short bus." All the carless downtown people take that route up to the IKEA. On a saturday or sunday the Yonge Subway south is full of ikea bags. And still, the p-lot is always full.

  Ikea (like an Apple Store) is one of those places you get a sense of the speed and size of the economy.

• That location is proof that Big Box, Mass Transit and Urban Setting can work - if there is a desire to.

  With that being said, I would love to have one down in the Windsor area.

• Sorry, I guess there's some confusion here. I was referring to the one at Wyandotte and Ouellette The caption under the picture says "CIBC closed the branch and the building sits vacant", so I referred to at as the CIBC building. The waterfront building sold for, I believe $4.3 million last year, and it's definitely worth it because of it's size and waterfront location and it's mostly rented. No dispute there.

• I have lived in Windsor most of my life and cannot belive the way downtown looks, I have slowly seen it deteriorate (more rapidly over the past couple of years) to a place that resembles Beriut, its embraassing Thank-you for posting these photos this week you have really opened my eyes and everyone on ccity consuill should be embarassed for this instaed of worrying about a fucking bridge that we will never see in the next 20 years and the new arena (that was not built downtown) dont get me started on that!

• The Canada Building is still listed for sale, as it has been for the past decade. The rents don't justify the price, but I think it's certainly a better pick than a lot of the other buildings out there. http://www.icx.ca/PropertyDetails.aspx?vd=&SearchURL=%3fPage%3d3%26Mode%3d0%26vs%3dSearchAll%26ptgid%3d2%26ci%3dwindsor%26pro%3d2%26st%3douellette%26mp%3d0-0-%26mrt%3d0-0-0%26trt%3d2%26rpmu%3d-1%26ld%3d0%26o%3dA%26of%3d1%26ps%3d10%26uts%3d0-0%26fpud%3d1%26frntd%3d1%26lsu%3d1%26mls%3d%26mxls%3d&Mode=0&PropertyID=6514325

• Sorry David - I mixed the CIBC buildings... :)

  The one you were talking about is ugly. I bet the most valuable part of that porperty is the parking lot.

• It's not just downtown that's becoming an embarrassment. Tecumseh Road East and West, Walker Road, McDougall and Howard Avenue aren't doing much better than Ouellette. Meanwhile, Tecumseh, Lakeshore and LaSalle have never looked better. I wonder what they're doing right and we're doing wrong over here in "The City of Roses."

• George, if you think stripmalls, oceans of asphallt, more pole signs than trees, and being servant to the almight car is better than you're right! Its just great out ther in the burbs!!

• The only thing that the suburbs and county is doing right is taking advantage of extremely short sighted land use policies that saw cheap land. Tecumseh and Lasalle's house bldg.

  The City decimated downtown and decided its fate when it subsidized commercial development off of Central. Had they had proper land use policies allowed the proper costs associated to that development fall on the builders and tenants, downtown would still be fine. Had they put the proper cost to develop the large commercial bldgs on Ouellette near Eugenie, Downtown would be fine

  But just like all of these pictures, we know the mistakes of the past, no matter how much you jam them down our throats, to somehow think that this assessment of the situation is making those somehow better understand the situIation simply gives somje sort of false sense of superiority over everyone else. I'm not trying to attack or offend, its just that claiming that some of us don't know the state of downtown is arrogant to me.

  Those bldg owners whose buildings you ridicule made their mistakes because no design guidelines or standards existed for downtown. Even now, the BIA's design standards are only optional instead of mandatory.

  The more important questions are what do we do now and where do we go from here. Highlighting all the problems only serves to deter new businesses and residents. Promoting the positives to get people to try to come back and having a vision for the future is the only way I know to get people to come back. I also believe that continued assessments such as yours only serve to negate the work that I do

• I also believe that continued assessments such as yours only serve to negate the work that I do

  Maybe so, but I don't like having people piss in my ear and tell me it's rain.

  Admittedly there are many factors that have lead to what we see above, but I feel it's my duty to show the negative side of the coin. Everything downtown isn't super awesome. I am sorry if you don't like what my camera lens captured, but the fact of the matter is all the pictures above were shot in only a few hours of walking around. No amount of breaking streets off into "districts" and making slick marketing videos will change that either.

  I guess the difference is since I don't own a business down there I don't feel the need to sugarcoat the situation. I don't have a need to pretend everything is fine.

  Downtown is pretty f*cked, it needs a lot of help, more help than a BIA can give and no amount of shitty pictues or snide commentary is going to make or break anything down there.

  Now you'll have to excuse me, as I've got to get ready to go out. I'm off to an event at the Cleary. You know that whole supporting downtown thing...