Broken City Lab presents preliminary documentation of a section of Indian Road, a street located immediately west of the Ambassador Bridge in Windsor, Ontario. This area is one of our potential research sites. Ideas?
5 Replies to “Indian Road”
Comments are closed.
I’m curious of why so many of those homes are boarded up on that street? Interesting idea painting the boards! I wonder though, could it be possible to make these places actually useful as a whole other than just trying to make them aesthetically pleasing?
The homes are boarded up because the Ambassador Bridge company bought them to tear them down to make way for their expansion. However, the city put a moratorium on demolition in Sandwich to try to hold off anymore construction from the bridge. So, the houses sit behind that fence for basically the entire block (on the east side of the street), boarded up and under surveillance by Elite Security.
Ideally, the houses (at least some, if not all), are turned over to the community to become community centres, galleries, educational outlets, etc. There have been some plans proposed to deal with that area, though the one from the Green Corridor outlines alternative uses for those houses, including the potentials I mentioned, but also for storm water filtration, and a wetland park.
Actually, Justin, the city has not put a moratorium, per se, on demolition. They are just waiting for the bridge co. to officially state what their plans are, either short or long term, with the land….just like any of us other homeowners would be required to do.
Also, apart from just a few, the bridge co. has not officially applied to the city to demolish these houses. They may have, er, ahem, a few “arrangements” with certain organizers of the “citizens for demolition” group, while leaving the rest of us who live feet away from this mess to raise our pitchforks towards city hall “demanding” that the city allow the bridge company not have to follow the rules that we’d all have to do.
Also….there is no way the city make the bridge company hold off of more construction of a new span…once the permission is there from the other levels of government, then it’ll be a go.