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Pelissier Street Garage Retail Space To Be Converted To Parking

AM800-NEWS-PELISSIER-STREET-VIEW-APRIL2014
AM800-NEWS-PELISSIER-STREET-VIEW-APRIL2014
City council has voted to spend 500,000 on the conversion.

Retail space in the bottom floor of the Pelissier Street parking garage will be changed to more parking spaces despite a long line of delegates opposing the move.

After a marathon meeting last night city council voted 7-4 to spend $500,000 on the conversion rather than renovating the space for potential renters.

Urban Planner, Caitlin Malloy-Marcon, says parking garages create "dead zones" and bottom floor retail helps fix that.

"These "dead zones", they give you a feeling of unease as a pedestrian or as a motorist driving down the street. It gives you the feeling for a lack of safety because there tends not to be anybody around, there aren't windows with people looking out and activity going on on the street. So it really does a great disservice to any commercial businesses or commercial tenants that are on either side of that "dead zone"."

DWBIA Chair, Larry Horwitz, says a lot of progress has been made downtown and this is a major step backwards.

"I know the councillors care about Windsor. I know they care about downtown. I've watched them make manoeuvres with the university, with the college and things like that and all of you care about downtown, I know that very much. But to create a "dead zone" would be against what you stand for which is the re-birth, revitalization of downtown."

Councillor, Rino Bortolin, says the last thing the downtown needs is more parking.

"We already are second in the country for the amount of parking that we offer. Even London, just down the 401, comparable city, they're even bigger and we offer 67% more spots that London does."

Last year, the city put up $500,000 for renovations at the garage hoping suitable tenants would come forward, only the True Fitness gym submitted a proposal, so the offer to renovate was taken off the table.

The building's current tenants, Windsor Pride and the Youssef Hair Salon, will be given six months to vacate.

The mid-80's was the last time the parking garage's ground level retail space was 100% occupied.

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