Jarvis: Windsor Signs 99-Year Lease for Great Gateway Park

Article content

Windsor secured a 99-year lease for Gateway Park, the quirky, fresh green ribbon considered a key part of the River West neighborhood’s transformation.

Article content

The deal with the Detroit River Tunnel Company, to be announced Tuesday, went into effect on November 9.

The long, narrow linear park in a cut at the top of the rail tunnel between Wellington and Cameron avenues runs one kilometer from Riverside Drive to Wyandotte Street. The only parts the city cannot use are two buildings. One, south of Riverside Drive, is owned by the Canadian Pacific Railway and is used for ventilation. The other is privately owned.

The DRTC, controlled by the Canadian Pacific Railway, retains ownership of the land. The city will pay $ 300,000 to help with maintenance. That includes a payment of $ 100,000 plus $ 20,000 a year for the next 10 years.

The company will also pay $ 40,000 for an easement to city property 40 feet underground.

Article content

The city has committed $ 700,000 to revitalize the park. There will be no development on the land because the track below it, built by the Michigan Central Railway in 1910, is still in use.

This has been a long time coming.

The city council first approved a plan from its sister city Fujisawa, Japan, for a Fujisawa public garden on the site in 1999. Windsor reached a five-year temporary agreement a year later to use the property to clean it up. The Consulate General of Japan planted 20 Japanese cherry trees in 2002 as a symbol of friendship.

The same year, local real estate agent Jack Renner led a group of visionary and civic volunteers who maintained the park. They pulled out abandoned cars, removed weeds, planted a garden on Riverside Drive, created a walkway, set up benches, and even mistreated an amphitheater stage. They invested $ 1.2 million in donations of money, materials, and labor.

Article content

But, five years later, the city was unable to obtain a long-term lease or surface rights to the land. Then everything stopped.

Trash was still being thrown there: mattresses, old furniture, tires. There were drugs. People who were homeless camped there.

Most people forgot about the park and those who remembered it did not feel safe using it.

The last negotiations between the city and DRTC took almost three years. The agreement was back and forth between the city council and the company several times.

Now, Windsor has the opportunity to create one of the most unique parks in the city.

When you go down the stairs to the park, the city vanishes. The buildings disappear behind the cherry blossoms and the other trees along the embankments. The noise from the traffic above fades away. You can hear the birds sing.

Article content

“It’s almost like you’re somewhere in the county,” Coun said. Fabio Costante, whose west side neighborhood borders Gateway.

“There is a strong and genuine attachment to space because of how unique space is,” he said.

It is a unique oasis that runs through a desolate stretch to the west of the city center. It is also a critical part of the plan to resurrect that stretch.

Gateway crosses University Avenue West, a main corridor that connects downtown with Sandwich and the two campuses of the University of Windsor. There are already plans to remake University Avenue, narrowing it from four lanes to two, adding green boulevards and protected bike lanes.

Two catalytic developments are also planned for that area. The $ 35 million Graffiti project at 1100 University Avenue West includes the repurposing of three long vacant heritage buildings and the construction of a 123-unit apartment building.

Article content

Fairmount Properties’ ambitious plan to transform the former Grace Hospital site into University and Crawford Avenue includes a $ 100 million “international mixed-use village” with 400-500 housing units.

The City Council has also approved incentives for further development at University Avenue West and Wyandotte Street West.

“It’s important to see this as a part of the entire River West transformation,” Costante said, referring to the neighborhood east of the University of Windsor.

An emblematic park would not only be part of the revitalization, but would connect that section with the river bank.

“It’s connecting downtown residents to the riverfront in a really cool way,” Costante said.

Coun Center. Rino Bortolin, whose neighborhood also borders Gateway, likens it to Detroit’s popular Dequindre Cut, the old railroad cut that carries pedestrians and cyclists from the river to Eastern Market.

There is talk of trails, benches, lights, maybe public art, and a riverfront pedestrian crossing. There is already a landscaping plan. Mayor Drew Dilkens hopes that work can begin next spring.

With the $ 700,000 from the city and the $ 300,000 from the DRTC, “we can take what’s out there and make it really good,” he said.

[email protected]