The historic Windsor Arena site, May 3, 2019. Photo by Mark Brown/Blackburn News.The historic Windsor Arena site, May 3, 2019. Photo by Mark Brown/Blackburn News.
Windsor

Windsor opening up requests for two key properties

The City of Windsor is gauging commercial interest in two landmark parcels.

Requests for expressions-of-interest will be opened for the historic Windsor Arena site, as well as the vacant, 6.2 acre Grace Hospital area just west of downtown. Mayor Drew Dilkens announced Friday that the city is taking advantage of the upswing in development in offering these sites to potential developers.

"The economy is so strong and robust in the city of Windsor," said Dilkens. "We can hardly keep up with our applications for development with respect to housing, and institutional, commercial developments. It's been absolutely incredible for the last few years."

The mayor said the Windsor Arena area, which included the adjacent Water World property, had been considered for some time as a potential site for a new Catholic Central High School, but Dilkens said the Windsor-Essex Catholic District School Board informed the city that the site was no longer in their future plans.

Windsor Arena, once affectionately known as "The Barn", was opened in 1924. Its status as the first official home of the Detroit Cougars, later the Red Wings, gives it the distinction as one of the oldest NHL buildings still standing. The arena later became the longtime home of the Windsor Spitfires, then the University of Windsor's hockey teams. The arena no longer has a regular tenant, and has been used for storage over the last couple of years, Dilkens said.

The Grace Hospital site has also been sitting vacant for some time and had been set aside as the new urgent-care facility with emergency services once the new mega-hospital is complete. But Dilkens said this was an ideal time to encourage other development on the property, yet reiterating that there will still be emergency services downtown.

"We have always been very clear that there will always be the delivery emergency services somewhere in the downtown core," said Dilkens. "Grace Hospital was the site set aside and we were partners with the hospital to reserve that site, but it could be on the Hotel-Dieu site, or it could be elsewhere in the downtown core."

The original hospital on the site closed in 2004 and had been sitting vacant before being torn down in 2013.

Windsor Regional Hospital said in a statement Friday afternoon that there was always a possibility of a new urgent-care facility with emergency department going elsewhere in the downtown area.

"As per our agreement with the city, the option to consider alternative uses for the site has always been available to the city," the statement read. "Depending on how the Ccity chooses to move forward, the Grace site may still house the satellite emergency department. However, it has been nearly four years since the plan was announced and the city must continue to do its due diligence."

The request for expression of interests applications for both sites will be made available over the course of the next week, the mayor said.

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