Council Agenda: 400 City Hall Square Office Space Availability

I was invited to a meeting at 400 City Hall Square a few days ago. It is quite a nice building and seemed very well constructed. While in an elevator, I mentioned to a lady who worked for the City that it seemed to be a lot better environment in which to work than the old City Hall building and she agreed. So George Wilkki and his colleagues and the Internal Audit Department should not be too upset that they are being asked to move over there.

Now in wandering around one of the floors in the building, I noticed a lot of space being occupied by large meeting rooms. I wondered if that was part of the Plan from Day One or whether that was space that St. Clair College was supposed to have occupied but they backed out (no lease signed). I had heard that a Provincial Government Department had also not moved in yet which would cost the City some money I guess. Hmmmmm I wonder when Fulvio's requested $15,000 audit will be completed and made public so we can know what is really going on in that building.

On Monday, Councillors will be asked to move the 2 Departments there and to spend $97,500 for leasehold improvements since it seems no other external agencies want to go there. (I hope Ken Jr. tells us how much that is per Windsor household so we won't get too upset at the extra cost to be incurred by taxpayers). Imagine then moving out two vital staff functions from the CAO's area to another building so that the Director of Corporate Communications (and several other groups) can be close by. Mind you we do need someone near to crank out all those exciting news releases for the Mayor about how well off we all are in Windsor economically!

I got to thinking why external agencies would not move in and thought maybe it had to do about cost. Clearly this must be a Triple A building so I expect that the rents would be Triple A also. I guess the external agencies might have gone to the Windsor Real Estate Board listing service as I did for fun and have seen that a building like 500 Ouellette (see picture above) where City employees used to work (and to park in the nearby Park N Go garage) had space available. The building is described as:

• "FIRST CLASS OFFICE SPACE IN DOWNTOWN WINDSOR, JUST NORTH OF WYANDOTTE ST. 11 STY BLDG W/SUITES AVAILABLE FROM 450-7000 SQ FT. ESTIMATED COMMON COSTS, UTIL & PPTY TAXES $11.50/SQ FT. ON-SITE PRKG AVAILABLE. RATES FOR LARGER SPACES START AT $5/SQ FT."

Given that the City now knows how other downtown landlords feel about not being able to rent out their space, when will Departments be transferred over to the 2 empty floors at Canderel and how much will have to be taken out of Capital Expenditure Reserves for leasehold improvements!

Chuck Mady must be laughing himself silly!