WINDSOR | Construction - News and Development

[Riversideguy]

Originally Posted by RoseCityFreePress

I didn't get a picture but as i was driving by it looks like some glass is going up on the new Windsor Star Building.

Yes I saw that too. I like it. I did recently see an add in one of those Windsor business magazines, that showed the building renderings saying space for lease. One thing I noticed is that in this picture the news scroll was not on the building. I hope that is not the case as that is what I liked about the renovations. The images/signs/video screen (Who knows), are a lot smaller as well. Thought the original picture looked a lot better.

[Symz]

Palace reno pictures courtesy of the Windsor Star

source: http://www.windsorstar.com/Windsor+Pictures+July+2012/6899566/story.html

[RoseCityFreePress]

Originally Posted by Riversideguy

Yes I saw that too. I like it. I did recently see an add in one of those Windsor business magazines, that showed the building renderings saying space for lease. One thing I noticed is that in this picture the news scroll was not on the building. I hope that is not the case as that is what I liked about the renovations. The images/signs/video screen (Who knows), are a lot smaller as well. Thought the original picture looked a lot better.

I hope they dont kill the ribbion boards or the video screens. It would as a nice high tech felling to downtown. something we could use

[north 42]

I heard that they are keeping those features, so hopefully it looks great when it's all done.

[Symz]

The Squirrel Cage downtown is now open.


source: http://www.facebook.com/TheSquirrelCage

[cbyrne2014]

Originally Posted by Symz

The Squirrel Cage downtown is now open.


source: http://www.facebook.com/TheSquirrelCage

Impressive transformation. There is a 'before' photo on the Facebook page as well:



Hopefully this spurs further development in the core. I imagine this place will do quite well when students arrive downtown.

[Symz]

More glass going up on the Windsor Star building.

photo courtesy of my wife, taken on Nokia Lumia 710

[Symz]

Here's an update talking about the renovated Windsor Ice Park. It turns out they will be keeping the ice pads and just adding on to the building to fit in the other amenities they were previously talking about.

The article also ends up mentioning what's going on with The Barn.

source: http://www.windsorstar.com/news/Former+Windsor+Park+plans+include+expansion/6907583/story.html

WINDSOR, Ont. -- Renovations at the former Windsor Ice Park are expected to be completed by the end of the summer with further additions to the building set to be finished before the end of the year, says one of the building’s owners.

James King who, along with wife Leigh Ann, bought the dilapidated ice rink earlier this year, said he hopes to have ice ready for rental on two ice pads by Sept. 2.

A new facade, a restaurant with an outdoor balcony and an expansion to accommodate indoor fields for baseball, football and soccer are still in the planning stages. Drawings have been completed but the addition must pass through the city’s site plan application process.

“When we bought this property, we weren’t even sure we wanted to get into the ice rink business,” said King. “But after consulting with numerous groups who say they need ice time at convenient times, we decided to renovate the rinks and add on to the building instead.”

The 14-acre development, now named Central Park Athletics, has a new website and is advertising for ice time users.

The Kings, who own King Interiors and King Developments, have stripped the former ice park to the walls, added new tiles, lights, showers and washrooms. They’ve also replaced the building’s roof, exhaust systems and sprinkler pipes and will be erecting a new entranceway using glass on all sides.

“I’m still amazed at how much work had to be done,” said King. “The further you got into it, the more you realized how much work there was left.”

The Kings bought the Ice Park building after Rink Partners Corp., which also owned rinks in London and Cambridge, went into receivership and placed the buildings on the market. The privately owned rink opened in 1996.

Revamping it is not the only major development on Kings agenda at the moment.

They are also close to reaching an agreement with the city to transform Windsor Arena into a farmers’ market.

“We hope to have something in place within a week and that we’ll to able to make some progress as quickly as possible,” said King.

King declined to discuss details of the talks with the city other than saying they largely include logistics around the site.

“We want it to happen and the city wants it to happen because we’re both committed to helping revitalize the downtown core,” said King.

Mayor Eddie Francis said that the issues include parking, access for delivery trucks and long-term lease arrangements for the arena but “none are insurmountable.”

King also said that recent advertisements indicating that a flea market would soon be opening in the “heart of the city” with food booths, a food court and a farmer’s market have nothing to do with his development.

“Absolutely not,” said King. “In fact, I’d like to know who it is myself.”

Calls to a number listed in the ad have failed to produce a response.

[Symz]

Big news for HMCS Hunter!!

source: http://www.windsorstar.com/news/Windsor+HMCS+Hunter+gets+home+Detroit+River/6913374/story.html

WINDSOR, Ont. -- The HMCS Hunter, a landmark in Windsor’s core since the Second World War, is finally moving to where the naval reserve facility belonged in the first place — on the Detroit River.

The Windsor Port Authority will announce today that it has signed a 60-year lease with the Department of National Defence to provide the site for a new $20-million home for the Hunter and its 150 sailors and other reservists.

The new HMCS Hunter will be built at the foot of Mill Street, on the site occupied by the former Mill Street Marina.

Construction of the military training centre will start this fall and the new HMCS Hunter — named for a Canadian warship that took part in the Battle of Lake Erie during the War of 1812 — should be commissioned in late 2014.

The deal has been an unusually long time in the making, says David Cree, president and CEO of the Port of Windsor.

The publicly owned port corporation started informal talks with the federal government’s DND about the project in the 1990s.

Officials at DND have known for decades that the Hunter’s structural problems and other limitations required a complete replacement to fix.

And that’s not even counting the inexplicable distance from water for a naval training facility.

Originally designed as a privately owned indoor public market, the current HMCS Hunter at 960 Ouellette Avenue was hurriedly taken over by Ottawa at the beginning of the Second World War, and officially commissioned in 1941.

What was thought to be a temporary home for the reserve unit turned into most of a century for the building known as the “stone frigate.”

Windsor had to wait many years for its turn before rising to the top of DND’s list for facility replacement, and funding. A nearly identical ship-themed building for the reservists of the HMCS Carleton will be built in Ottawa at the same time, sporting similar porthole windows and a ship-like profile.

The Windsor project was put out to public tender last Friday, and the port authority is to announce it at its annual meeting late this afternoon.

Defence Minister Peter MacKay had been expected to announce the project as early as last fall, but his staff were unable to overcome scheduling problems. The minister was instead in Halifax announcing the first small contracts associated with Canada’s $35-billion naval shipbuilding program.

Work is actually already underway for the new HMCS Hunter: the City of Windsor has started replacing a Russell Street water main to service the new building.

Starting this fall, the former dry-stack marina building will be demolished and its 30-year-old docks and breakwalls replaced with military-grade installations that will enable heavy trucks to service the military vessels expected to tie up there.

The naval reserve will moor several of its larger training craft next to the new HMCS Hunter, moving them from their current berths in Amherstburg. Smaller craft will be stored indoors in the new building, which will include loading and launching ramps to the Detroit River.

Army and air force reservists will also use the 40,000-square-foot facility, which will have about half the floor space of the current building. “But it wasn’t purpose-built” to serve a military function, Cree noted.

The project solves a number of needs and problems for the city and the port authority, in addition to what it will do for the DND and its reservists.

It finally puts a tenant on one of the port’s most valuable pieces of property; the marina for pleasure craft was less than half full by the time closed in 2003, as power boating declined in affordability. The west end location also proved to be too far from where most boat owners live.

“It will be a nice little boost to Sandwich,” Cree predicts of the new HMCS Hunter, which can be busy seven days a week.

The Port of Windsor has another development to announce Wednesday: it is moving its own headquarters from downtown Windsor to Old Sandwich Town. The corporation has purchased a former bank building at the corner of Sandwich and Mill Street, a former CIBC branch it intends to renovate later this year.

The $2-million-per-year port operation will move its four office employees from the Westcourt Building to the 3,000-square-foot building this fall.

“We think it makes a nice statement about our support of Sandwich and it gives us higher visibility in the west end, where our business is,” Cree says of the corporation’s new home.

Together with the recent completion of the new aggregate docks and Sterling Fuels offices, warehouse and Great Lakes shipping facility, the Port of Windsor will have helped pump more than $50 million worth of redevelopment into the west end by the time the new “stone frigate” opens in 2014.

[email protected] or 519-255-6852 Follow me on Twitter at #winstarvander

Read more: http://www.windsorstar.com/news/Windsor+...t+River/6913374/story.html#ixzz20J0kCF8Y

the site




I think this is great news. It never made much sense to me that a naval reserve base was nowhere near any water.

There will be 1 more empty building on Ouellette now after this move, but I think it's long overdue and worth it.

The current site on Ouellette


source: http://www.internationalmetropolis.com/2008/04/15/hmcs-hunter/

[RoseCityFreePress]

The Hunter looks good, i just dont really like the side that looks like a ship, its kind of gimmicky. The Star building already looks better then it did before. I think its going to improve the look of downtown immensely. The stucco was old and cheap and it looked that way, the glass give it new life. It looks better already.

[north 42]

Yup, I think that section of Ouellette will look so much more modern with the Star building being completed, and Old Sandwich Town will benefit from the HMCS locating there. I can only wonder what will happen to the space vacated by that move. That section of Ouellette really needs a facelift badly

[Jacob]

source:
http://www.windsorstar.com/news/Transit+Windsor+board+eyes+fleet+upgrade/6899820/story.html

Transit Windsort is planning to improve its service:

Overcrowded buses and buses running behind schedule have Transit Windsor passengers and drivers at “a breaking point.”

“Everyone is frustrated,” Pat Delmore, director of operations, said Saturday at a Transit Windsor Board of Directors meeting.

On a daily average, almost 11 Transit Windsor buses are up to 10 minutes late on their route, according to an internal month-long company study.

Laura-Lee Campbell, 30, relies daily on city buses and said 50 per cent of the time her bus is late.

Sometimes, she said the bus blows right by her because it’s overflowing with passengers.

“I have no other way to get around so I’m grateful for it, but it would be nice if there was better service,” she said. “The drivers get more grouchy when they’re late and they’re not as helpful when they’re running behind schedule.”

Delmore said an increase in riders, construction, baby strollers, bikes and wheelchairs are all contributing factors to delays.

A Transit Master Plan, which would give the public transit system a facelift, includes improving services on the two busiest routes, Crosstown 2 and Transway 1C — the route Campbell relies on.

Both routes travel from Forest Glade to Prince Road, but the Transway 1C uses Tecumseh Road while the Forest Glade runs on Wyandotte Street.

The two main lines run every 15 minutes. One of the options favoured at the meeting would add nine buses to the company’s aging fleet and improve service to every 10 minutes during peak hours at an annual operating cost of roughly $975,000.

Campbell applauded the solution.

“This is our critical zone area right now that’s not being addressed and it’s going to change the future, I believe,” Delmore said. “It’s that stepping-stone. After we get this we can start hitting the feeder routes and the other lines that have issues as well.”

Coun. Bill Marra, Transit Windsor Board chair, said in addition to improving routes, 25 per cent of the fleet is over 20 years old. Most major transit systems in Ontario retire buses after 12.

If everything goes according to plan, Marra said Transit Windsor will integrate and test two electric buses this fall from BYD — a Chinese green energy company.

In the last year, ridership has gone up almost three per cent.

“Our ridership is up. So clearly the community embraces public transit,” he said. “They want to see public transit improve.”

Marra is hoping the master plan, which was started in 2006, will be brought to city council before September. He said with campuses growing in the downtown area improvements need to be made immediately.

“We need to go to council with the Transit Windsor Master Plan and really demonstrate to them what it would take to bring transit Windsor to a whole different level, which means being able to travel to any point in the city within a 15 minute time frame,” Marra said. “Council wants to make Windsor an affordable and attractive place to live and transit is a big part of it.”


Read more: http://www.windsorstar.com/news/Transit+...upgrade/6899820/story.html#ixzz20MkIOXIE

In my opinion an increase in bus frequency is long overdue and the vehicle location service would be nice, so you know where the bus is when you are sitting at the stop waiting.

[Symz]

A few more Palace pics from the Windsor Star

source: http://www.windsorstar.com/entertainment/Windsor+Pictures/6922219/story.html









Honestly I wish they would get rid of the block glass along the elevator shaft but It hink they are keeping it based on the 1 amateur looking render they released. I also wonder what they're doing with the pillars that hold the structure and go down to street level grade. When it was the Palace they left the 1 corner pillar black and did not cover it with stucco like the other pillars leaving it looking smaller. I have to wonder since it's on the corner if it was left like that so there wasn't such a blind spot at that corner, who knows. I do wonder though if the pillars will be clad in something or if they'll just be painted to tie in better with the colour of the glass.

I'm also wondering what they'll be doing about the business advertising that was along the building while it was the Palace.

[Jacob]

Wind Mobile is finally expanding to Windsor. There will be a store at Devonshire mall. They have very inexpensive mobile phone plans, but do not have a very wide selection of phones.

http://windsorite.ca/2012/07/mobile-phon...ing-to-windsor-four-cell-towers-planned/
http://mobilesyrup.com/2012/05/26/wind-u...sor-woodstock-peterborough-and-kingston/

[Symz]

A recent pic of Windsors new, and yet to be opened train station with the old station in the forefront.

source: http://www.flickr.com/photos/23441300@N03/7566121434/in/pool-windsoritedotca/

[Symz]

Something is going on inside the old Turek's on Ouellette. We drove past and saw people working inside. Excited, but I don't know what it will be.

[north 42]

Originally Posted by Symz

Something is going on inside the old Turek's on Ouellette. We drove past and saw people working inside. Excited, but I don't know what it will be.

I noticed that too and was hoping it's something decent going in, but anything is better than an empty storefront. Hopefully we see more businesses opening up down there.

[Symz]

Originally Posted by north 42

I noticed that too and was hoping it's something decent going in, but anything is better than an empty storefront. Hopefully we see more businesses opening up down there.

I think the Windsor star relocating on Ouellette really provides an opportunity for other businesses to open up as opposed to it's previous location that had fewer available properties nearby for businesses like food places etc to open up. It would be nice to see something like a book store, small hardware store, office supply store or something to that effect open up downtown.

[north 42]

Originally Posted by Symz

I think the Windsor star relocating on Ouellette really provides an opportunity for other businesses to open up as opposed to it's previous location that had fewer available properties nearby for businesses like food places etc to open up. It would be nice to see something like a book store, small hardware store, office supply store or something to that effect open up downtown.

It would be nice, because eventually the food market will reach it's saturation point, so more retail is preferred, but as of now, I'll take anything.

[Symz]

Palace reno

source: http://www.windsorstar.com/news/Windsor+Pictures/6942935/story.html