Bartown or Ghost Town...OR A New Urban Village?

I like Mark Boscariol. He has a tough job as DBIA President and a tougher one as a person who has invested his money in our City Centre. We have spent time exchanging emails and having a coffee (at his restaurant) talking about downtown. We don't always agree, and that's the fun of exchanging ideas, but we both want a better Windsor.

Isn't that the choice that he and his DBIA members are facing? Give him credit for thinking about downtown Windsor and trying to do something about it.

• "A section of Pelissier Street risks becoming a "dead zone" if the city shuts down the retail section of a municipal parking garage, the head of the downtown business association warned Tuesday.
  
  Mark Boscariol said foot traffic along the 400-block of Pelissier Street will disappear if the ground floor commercial space reverts to parking."

Why would the City want to chase away retailers from the area: "[Gereige] pays the city about $2,000 a month for rent --more than what he paid Mady last year. Gereige believes the city upped the rent to scare away tenants."

If Mark and his members will understand that the downtown is being deliberately shifted eastward to the new Casino complex, then what is being done will be understandable. Why else would the City of Windsor's official plan be changed to confine "kiddie bars" to the downtown core. What retailer would want to open a new store or keep open an existing store in Bartown? If there are no retailers, who cares about pedestrians?

As the Mayor said in a Star story "Downtown is a place where you can live, work and play." What is conspicuously absent from the Mayor's listing is the word "shop!" There is no desire to have a retail element in what was once a thriving downtown when I moved to Windsor.

Good luck in getting "public debate on the issue so that businesses can make their case to council." Debate as much as you want Downtown BIA. The decision to help the Casino and to move the downtown was made a long time ago. We just did not know it, until now.

UPDATE: And Mark, you have bigger problems now since it looks like the University could not make a deal to go to a downtown campus. Who is going to fill up all of that empty space now?

I liked your concept about Kalamazoo in the Star today. (I would prefer it be more like Ann Arbor to be honest!)

Hey I have a real good idea. How about you and I going to meet Beztak and Chuck Mady and trying to convince them to build an urban village in the Windsor West area along the lines you have suggested with a new University/College campus as the focus. I have some ideas about other partners as well who I think would be interested. Perhaps Caroline and Ron, the Councillors in Ward 2, would like to help too.