It’s sweet to see Windsor finally on economic roll

Windsor’s astonishing growth this year and the prospect of more of the same in 2020 have convinced Mayor Drew Dilkens that his successor might one day have to resort to annexation to address a critical shortage of available land.

The dreaded “A” word has historically sent residents of the bucolic burbs bordering Windsor to the barricades with hot tar and pitchforks. Dilkens, who wrote his doctoral thesis on annexation, insists a controversial land grab won’t happen on his watch “but maybe the next mayor, two or three terms in, will be looking at annexation as an opportunity because the city will be running out of available land.”

Some folks thought this issue was laid to rest once and for all in 2003 when Windsor acquired those 6,500 acres near the airport from Tecumseh. That was the consolation prize after a much more ambitious annexation bid led by then mayor Mike Hurst was thwarted by the province. At the time, with Windsor mired in debt and stumbling from one economic crisis to the next, it looked like more land than the city would need for generations to come.

But that was then. Soon, said Dilkens, with a large number of ready-to-go projects awaiting final approval and loads of pent-up demand, those acquired lands will be gobbled up in an unprecedented building boom. “Just watch how fast those applications will come in,” he chortled of the coming rush.

A chunk of Windsor, which earned its debilitating negativity through decades of painful letdowns — from Ford’s shock departure for Oakville to the Norwich Block redevelopment fiasco — will question how an aging city with a struggling downtown, an addiction crisis and widespread poverty could be on the cusp of unprecedented growth that would require the city to expand its boundaries. “Windsor sucks,” insist online critics who go out of their way to badmouth the city to people considering a move here.

That message must be landing on deaf ears. The one getting through is that the Windsor area is both a good place to live and one heck of a bargain, especially for someone from the Greater Toronto Area.

Dilkens, who has compiled a seven-page list of positive developments in Windsor in 2019, many involving large private-sector expenditures, said this is easily the most exciting and rewarding of his five years as mayor.

Near the top of that list are the Windsor metropolitan census area’s ranking as Canada’s third-fastest growing city and Windsor’s issuing of a record number of residential building permits, more than double the total for 2018.

This area’s secret is out, said Dilkens. He said people in the Greater Toronto Area, fed up with the region’s monstrous traffic problems and choking on massive mortgages for properties the size of a postage stamp, have clued in that the Windsor area is both affordable (with the lowest overall taxes among peer cities in Ontario) and a good place to live. “When, in all your years in Windsor,” he asked, “have you ever seen regular bidding wars on Windsor properties?” That’s something I never expected to see in my lifetime.

Windsor has taken some solid steps forward this year. It’s a relief to see the so-called Dougall Death Trap and the crash-happy Dougall/ouellette intersection nearing elimination. It’s good to see progress on the Festival Plaza makeover that will eventually turn a baking asphalt wasteland into an inviting public space. And all those glowing reports about the new John Muir library branch in Sandwich are spot-on. It’s a tiny architectural gem staffed by some of the most helpful library workers you’ll ever meet.

There are too many private-sector investments this year to list. The largest, the long-awaited $250-million Farhi development on the former GM trim plant site, will transform that east-end neighbourhood. The project, which I wrote about more than a decade ago, was dismissed by pundits as a pie-in-thesky fantasy that would never come to fruition. Yet here it is.

It’s so sweet to see Windsor and its suburban neighbours on a roll. A little over a decade ago, amid the economic carnage of the Great Recession, this border community was written off by the Toronto media as an industrial basket case headed for oblivion. We were toast, they said. Finished. Padlock City. The New Flint.

And now here we are, with arms wide open, welcoming the shrewd folks who are cashing out, big time, and fleeing the social and economic chaos of a runaway metropolis.