George Bernard Shaw and Downtown
“The problem with communication is the illusion that it occurred” - George Bernard Shaw
If you want don’t want the past history and you want to cut right to the action plan please jump to the heading ‘So what do we do?’
My point of view is that I try to choose my words carefully but I find that instead of people listening to what I am actually saying, they try to figure out where I’m coming from or whats my angle. Lately I have been accused of not being a team player when over the past 3 years I thought I was building a reputation for never saying no to an initiative by the mayor’s office. I don’t care about the mayor’s personality or whether we personally get along or not, its none of my concern.
As we can see Downtown Doesn’t Work without a partnership with the BIA, Mayor’s office, administration and residents. Bellmio came here and ridiculed us for the lack of partnership remaining from 5 years earlier. Do I need to take responsibility due to the way I express myself? Sure. Do I need a time out or a penalty box session before I can try to contribute again or am I banned from discussion for life? Howlong? Whats the penalty? Banishment for life
Give you an example: years ago when I chaired the DWBIA and the issue of the Arena came up. I spoke before council. Personally I was a fan of an urban village, but when going before council, I was not speaking only for myself, I was representing all 600 downtown businesses. What I specifically spoke of and asked for was not an arena or an urban village. What I specifically spoke of is the reports from Experts that said regardless of a use, the fact that no decision was made with that land was hurting downtown far more than the whatever the ultimate decision would be. I pleaded to make a decision on the city owned lands within the urban village. To date I don’t think any councillor has ever heard what I actually said, only interpreted it as support for an urban village or for an east side arena.
Now you have councillors and the Mayor saying that they wanted to have a downtown strategy meeting back in February but that it was cancelled because the bar closure issue was before council. What kind of message does that send? I hate to tell them but there will always be an issue before council, I’ve submitted policy statements on Massage Parlor Zoning and Panhandling. Basically I have to infer that as long as we are not exactly on the same page as the Mayor, we’re cut off. Council could have said no back in November, but it dragged out for 6 months while no one actually said:
“HEY, BTW, do you know that the entire downtown is being put on hold while this is before us? ”
COuld we have at least had someone pick up a phone and tell us that the option was: “Drop this demand and downtown will move forward otherwise prepare to have all initiatives frozen”
I am inferring that businesses and residents are not even allowed to ask the question anymore without some sore of penalty.
Now the Council will have a downtown strategy meeting in a few weeks but without any input from the DWBIA, businesses or residents.
Right now, I have supported getting out of the event business for a reason. Everytime we celebrate an event we promote someone elses brand. Whether it be NFL, Red Bull or now Caesars, we advertise for someone else. That should stop, period!!! The DWBIA has invested years and tens of thousands into a brand of what it could and should be and that is all we should be promoting. We need to show convention goers that downtown is an option. A perfect example is Via Italia, they have a wonderful brand, district and theme and you won’t see them contaminating it or diluting it by ignoring it for something else. Even when they do have another event they market it UNDER Via Italia.
But when that gets said it gets interpreted into not wanting to be a part of the “team”. I have always been a team player, but the team isn’t even sitting at the table together.
Now you have Larry Horwitz announcing a Toga Party without checking with any other board member let alone the Casino. Guess what, a little communication would have avoided a lot of headaches.
Basically the City should stop trying to fight the change that the DWBIA has been trying to implement and try to listen to why it wants to make the changes it speaks of. After that the DWBIA and city should have a list of “who does what” and find more opportunities to partner
SO WHAT DO WE DO?
City Council should look at the IDA International Panel report once again as well as the Bellmio recommendations again. They both call for making a final decision on the City owned City Center West Lands.
I can only hope Thom Hunt will show them the book by Dave Feehan Making Business Districts Work
Chapter 27 Table of Contents -
Look at chapter 29
A Guide to Developing a Retail Base (H. Blount Hunter)
- Step 1: Create an “Inventory” of Downtown Attributes
- Step 2: Define the Nature of Downtown’s Retail Challenge
- Step 3: Evaluate Prevailing Usage and Customer Perceptions of Downtown
- Step 4: Document Downtown’s Trade-Area Drawing Power and Its Mercantile and Dining Successes
- Step 5: Identify Downtown’s Most Sustainable Competitive Retail Niche
- Step 6: Pinpoint the Retail “Bulls-eye” and Acknowledge the Need for a Critical Mass
- Step 7: Target the Most Appropriate Retailers for Success
- Step 8: Groom Downtown for Long-Term Retail Evolution
- A Practical Model of Downtown Retail Evolution
Separately they can read Alan Mallach or listen to him on Smart City Radio. Alan wrote a book entitled Managing Neighborhood change: A framework for sustainable and equitable revitalization
Alan’s first books talk about pioneer grants http://www.nhi.org/online/issues/140/strategies.html
On last weeks smart City Radio he says ways to do revitalize a neighborhood
When are conditions right for jumpstarting new development? Alan says “you can do anything at any point but the question is what”
“In an area with very low values and investment, you could create new development, but if you want it to have impact it has to be on a large enough scale so it actually transforms the character of the neighborhood.
Conclusion: The current City Center West incentives for infill or renovation will not work unless the City Center West Lands is developed
the If you in a neighorhood that already had more of a fabric more of a market you might be able to make an impact with just renovation or infill housing
A process of “what else goes into that package besides the housing itself. Neighborhoods aren’t just housing, they’re communities. Light Rail and Parks are the most dramatic change
1. Increase demand for housing -
- physical properties of the neighborhood,
- feeling of getting value for their money (particularly true for rehabilitating old housing),
- Give people moving into the region good information about urban options that are available. Too often that information is not available. People moving into the region don’t get good information about their urban options and they end up choosing the suburbs
- Alan says what I’ve been saying, the idea of going out and actually marketing and promoting a neighborhood can have an impact
2. Increase stability of the neighorhood -# of abandoned housing, crime
3. Increase Amenities - Light Rail, parks (which downtown already has) pay off the quickest in transforming a neighborhood.
And last but not least, my recommendations that I have previously posted which are:
1. A market study/survey to find out what amenity, incentive or policy would be required to get people to move back to the inner city or whats stopping them. Use the information to create and find a way to fund a Partnership with all BIA’s to promote and market to bring down new residents to their areas.
2. finish and implement the CIP’s (expanding the scope of the sustainable downtown plan). Apply for all incentives possible on all of them
3. Replace the Heritage planner and review the process, scoring and list
4. Develop design guidelines that allow for walkable commercial development (i.e. commercial buildings must front on road with parking in rear, adopt dWBIA design guidelines and restrict certain elements)
5. Develop sign guidelines for areas (BIA’s) we want to foster such as no backlit signs, strobe lights etc…
6. A separate and lower tier of Development charges for infill development
(why does a home with a 500,000 value pay $17,000 but an inner city home with a value of $100,000 pay $15,000 discouraging infill) could be part of #2
7. Make a decision on use of city owned land in City Center West
8. Work with the county and the provincial gov’t to install a green belt like they did in GTA to prevent any land in Essex county from being rezoned from agricultural to residential.
9. Lobby the province to make the college’s Health Science bldg a reality somewhere in the core
10. form a task force to execute the steps shown on the EPA’s website to become an active aging community. Forget about doing it solely to make windsor an retirement community for outsiders. How about making it a healthy active aging community for our own residents!!!
Post Feedback
Excellent … and right on the mark mark!! How about adding this
A freeze on sprawling parking lot developments on the outskirts of the city … ie … Walker Road South and the Windsor Raceway … how do you freeze development on the urban fringe … charge development fees that actually COVER the cost of the infrastructure needed!!! People in the business of developing land want to make money and the sooner greenfield / fringe developments become more expensive then infill / redevelopment the better!!
I always forget to mention some thought … here we go …
As far as making a decision regarding City Centre West … please, PLEASE, I hope nobody advocates another mammoth public mega project to solve all of Dtown’s woes. I look at City Centre East and shake my head at the billions spent to create a no man’s/woman’s land … enter that area in the evening … it’s blank wall after blank wall … not many pedestrians, an underutilized Charles Clarke Square, Court houses, the PD, city hall, and then thousands of people completely at the Casino completely detached from the Dtown area (how are we supposed to get tourism spinoffs when the drive in to this isolated place and drive away??)
I hope the city would rather choose to sell off the CCW in small parcels, with some of the guidelines you’ve noted … I think a larger number of investors means more enthusiasm / energy, more people with a $$stake in what happens in the area, and more ideas to move forward.
I’m thinking when Alan Mallach talks about doing a mega project. He means a Mega HOUSING project.
I think its ok to sell CCW as one parcel but to a developer that will create a minimum # of housing units on the land. No one has established the proper minimum of housing units and that should be done
Mark, I have never had the problem when listening to you speak, either in the media or before council that you were speaking for yourself only, you have always presented the issue whatever it was with precision and passion, unlike one councilor who continually electrocutes the English language when he thinks he is trying to be eloquent in his ellocution verbage!
You stated above: “Now you have councillors and the Mayor saying that they wanted to have a downtown strategy meeting back in February but that it was cancelled because the bar closure issue was before council.”
I guess they can’t multitask or hold two simultaneous thoughts in their heads at the same time and differentiate between them without getting confused or muddled or..or..or……..
Also: “I am inferring that businesses and residents are not even allowed to ask the question anymore without some sore of penalty.
Now the Council will have a downtown strategy meeting in a few weeks but without any input from the DWBIA, businesses or residents…”
Typical of this city’s administration thinking and behaviour! There again, they don’t want to be confused between seeing their roles as fathers/mothers of the city with their parental nature on knowing what is best for us or to be confused by asking us what it is we would really like to happen. I also think that your phone number is blocked on their Blackberrys!
Personally I agree with Larry Salani, that our mayor, council and city administration have become totally anal rettentive on the border file since Eddie has been in office, that everything is hinging on its outcome or non outcome. Read Ed Arditti’s blog today, its all about getting money from the feds and the provinces to pay for Eddie’s big schemes. In other words Eddie is stalling everybody in this city until he gets his money, then he is going to become the benevolent father and spend it like a drunken sailor once he pays off his lawyers!
What to do about the core, lets implement what the DWBIA has already put their energy into, a branding for the core and the City via the downtown. And I agree with you, lets stop wasting our money on sponsoring non Windsor events! I’m so tired of hearing how this or that event..IN DETROIT, is going to put Windsor on the map…we’re already on the map for good or bad!
I 100% agree with the statements by Larry Salani as well although he
didn’t use the actual words “anal retentive” to be fair.
We’ll never know the true cost of the border file when it comes to lost opportunities or what could have been accomplished with that same time, effort and money.
Hopefully today council can leapfrog back into the forefront. WHile London officially bans drivethroughs in their downtowns, we approve them. While London doesn’t allow offices out of their downtown we plan another commercial park
Mark well spoken and true to the many points you have made.
I find it absolutely astonishing that the mayor’s office, city council and administration are moving forward to strategize about downtown to fullfill THEIR vision of what downtown should or could be without the input of the DWBIA and residents.
How do you think they would feel if I decided how THEIR neighbourhood should be developed? Better yet, how do they like how the province and feds tell them what THEY are going to do about the third river crossing without giving regard to Windsor’s input?
I guess what is good for the goose certainly doesn’t apply to the “gander”.
They ended up agreeing only to have another meeting. However the meeting so far only consists of all the BIA’s, WEDC, CVB.
This would be a great opportunity for the Downtown Residents Association to appoint a representative and request their presence at the table
I will be reporting on the meeting as it was good and bad. Good because all the councillors were saying the right things, bad because they was no discussion of a to do list or evaluating the 173 point list that has existed since 1994 (only 64 items partially or fully completed to date, 17 in progress, 24 attempted and failed and the remainder unaddressed)
You think the first step would simply be to make a new to do list with responsibilities and timelines.
Oh And I wanted to ammend one more thing on my wish list and move it to the front
1. DWBIA to conduct comprehensive benchmark surveying of the perception of the
a. overall downtown
b. the DWBIA and its programs
Thats your best way to here back from residents and visitors as well as finding effectivess on program spending to perception. I’m sick of anecdotal evidence and downtown decisions being decided based on a letter to the editor or a phone call.
If you can’t measure it, you can’t control it. If you don’t measure what people think about downtown, you will never control it
A meeting is coming up next week for the DRA and I will certainly bring this up. It would not only be irresponsible not to include residents (considering it will be us who decide what business will thrive what will not) but foolish on the part of the councillors. If they wish not to be re-elected this would be the way to go by NOT including residents.
I think it would be wise for each group to write a preparatory sheet so that we all state our intentions and goals
Something like a one pager with bullets that states
1. Vision
2. 5 things you would like to see done in priority
3 things downtown that you would like to NOT see
What we need is a to do list with timelines. No more talk.
One of my political slogans that was never used was
The change we need is: “action for a change”
As immortalized by Elvis Presley, the campaign song Windsor needs
A little less conversation, a little more action please
All this aggravation aint satisfaction in me
A little more bite and a little less bark
A little less fight and a little more spark
Close your mouth and open up your heart and baby satisfy me
Satisfy me baby