Pelissier garage tenants receive 30-day extension
Bob Williams spent much of Tuesday looking at commercial rental property downtown — and feeling stressed.
As the executive director of the Windsor Pride Community Education and Resource Centre, Williams would rather spend time fundraising and helping clients, but he has little choice.
City council decided Monday to give tenants of the city-owned Pelissier Street parking garage a 30day extension till the end of June before they are evicted. Windsor Pride Community had sought six extra months, allowing them till the end of the year to find new space.
“It’s a poor decision,” said Williams. “I understand the business equation. Well, fine and dandy. But to put us to the curb in such a short period of time is not right.”
Tenants of the Pelissier Street parking garage received sixmonth eviction notices late last year saying they must be out by the end of May, after council decided in a controversial split vote to revert underused main-floor retail space into more parking spots.
Tenants nevertheless hoped a reprieve would come, given that Windsor entrepreneur Mark Boscariol and two other investors made a pitch to buy the garage, keeping retail and adding a rooftop event space. But dead set on removing retail, council refused to even consider the offer.
“I am certainly not very happy,” said Williams, adding that suitable accessible space is hard to find in downtown Windsor. “The city doesn’t even have a contractor in place. We need our councillors to get behind us and make sure this is a safe and healthy and prosperous community.”
Despite scrambling to find new digs Tuesday, Williams felt thankful for one thing: community support that has come in for Windsor Pride. Besides well wishes, the Ontario Public Service Employees Union offered $1,000 to help with moving. As well, he fielded a call from Unifor Local 444 wanting to help.
Williams is not the only tenant who considers council’s move unwise — and unfair.
“I don’t feel very good,” Youssef Gereige, owner of the Youssef Hair Boutique which has been downtown for 27 years, said after Monday’s vote. “We don’t have a place to go. Pretty well, they’re putting us on the street.
“I don’t know what we’re going to do.”
Gereige, who has put more than $50,000 into renovating his salon and who employs 10 people, said he doesn’t want to leave downtown but that he may have no choice.
Larry Horwitz, chair of the Downtown Windsor Business Improvement Association, thinks Mayor Drew Dilkens and some councillors are not thinking about the best interests of downtown by ripping out retail.
“It baffles me to watch the politics going on here,” Horwitz said. “Two businesses who are working hard and putting in all their sweat and their time and their energy into being downtown, and are now being thrown out of downtown.”
Horwitz hopes residents will let councillors know they want more retail, not more parking, downtown.
“We have to stand up,” he said. “We have to call our councillors who voted against this and say this is not fair, this is not right, this is stupid. And it makes me angry.”