Downtown study to boost core traffic

By Sean Frame

One city councillor is excited about how a new study may shape the downtown’s future, despite the reservations of business.

City council approved the study on March 2, to be completed by the end of the year. The intent is to improve beautification of the area, living conditions, walk-ways and give more incentives to those purchasing properties.

“The potential is huge, I can’t say it enough,” said Ward 3 Coun. Rino Bortolin, who has been voted as chairman of the study. “I live just outside of downtown, I had a business just outside of downtown. If you live in this area the choice and the possibility of living a great urban lifestyle is right here.”

According to Bortolin, the study will not only focus on the downtown but the area surrounding it.

Planning and Developing Services is working on the study that will recommend a framework to help grow and develop the downtown core for the next 20 years. This study will go block by block acknowledging living conditions which Bortolin admits are in a sorry state. He said most housing in the surrounding area is cheap but many houses are condemned or empty.

“They are literally looking at everything because there are neighbourhoods that literally a two-minute walk from here where 30 per cent of the homes are empty or they’re vacant,” said Bortolin.

“How can we fix that, how do we fill those missing teeth, so to speak? There are issues that unique to that area that have no bearing on where we’re standing (corner of Chatham and Victoria) but at the same time those issues matter in getting people downtown, back into the core, back to buying those homes, filling those homes, renovating those homes,” he added.

Incentives already make it relatively cheap to develop downtown but Bortolin said other incentives are needed to attract developers and residents — for example, letting condos reopen downtown without a parking lot or having property tax holidays on new developments for around 10 years.

All downtown stakeholders have been invited to the primary input sessions. Bortolin said throughout the whole process the University of Windsor, the Downtown Windsor Business Association, Downtown Residents Association and others will be involved.

DWBIA President Larry Horwitz said he supports the study as long as it produces results.

“We have studied this to death, now we need action,” said Horwitz. “We already have incentives in place, so getting people here shouldn’t be a problem.”

According to Horwitz, the DWBIA’s incentives already make opening a business cheap and he is more concerned with how the city will boost residency.

City hall has also drafted a survey to ask residents what they wish to see in the downtown core.  To have a say in the future of downtown Windsor the survey can be found at https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/R29TLG6.