One funky street
It’s the modest red brick storefronts, the mom and pop shops that sustained the neighbourhood. It’s the churches with gold and silver onion domes, the cultural and social centres. It’s the murals and the sculpture proudly depicting the heritage of the birthplace of the automobile in Canada.
Mostly, it’s the feel of a close and once-thriving community.
“It’s quite captivating,” said a prominent local entrepreneur planning to open a business there. “I just feel good about that street when I’m on that street.”
Drouillard Road: It’s one of the funkiest streets in Windsor, and it’s finally beginning to get its due.
Ford City sprang to life when Henry Ford hooked up with Gordon McGregor, the owner of Walkerville Wagon Works, to found Ford Motor Company of Canada in 1904. Thousands of people, many immigrants from across Central Europe, swarmed there for jobs. The small French farm community was transformed into an industrial boom town. And Drouillard Road, named after Francois Drouillard, who donated the land where Holy Rosary Church was built, was the epicentre, where people walked to and from work at the factory, shopped and worshipped.
But in 1953, Ford moved its headquarters and main assembly plant to Oakville. The suburbs grew up. And Drouillard Road became a ghost town.
For 40 years, there have been attempts to revitalize Ford City — the usual streetscaping and facade improvements. Still, Drouillard Road is nearly empty in the middle of the day. The population has shrunk. Average income is low. There are a lot of derelict buildings. Mostly, there is a stubborn stigma.
But these are good bones. And things are starting to happen.
“When people come to Ford City, they’re astounded by the architecture,” said Stephen Lynn of Ford City Neighbourhood Renewal.
It’s not that they’re all spectacular buildings, though the churches are. There is Holy Trinity Russian Orthodox, with its distinctive blue spire and onion dome, St. John the Divine Orthodox Christian, with two gold onion domes, one ringed with stained glass windows, and three more on Seminole Street near Drouillard.
It’s the streetscape — “a great streetscape,” says city planner Thom Hunt.
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It’s the one- and two-storey buildings, the storefronts facing the street, the narrow street itself. No strip malls or parking lots. You can walk the entire core, from Wyandotte Street to Seminole. It’s like Main Street in the 1950s. It has a sense of place. You can almost feel that this was a bustling street, the heart of a neighbourhood of ordinary, workingclass people and immigrants beginning to establish themselves.
“Our heritage has tended to be tilted in favour of architecture,” said city heritage planner John Calhoun, “but it can also be the people associated with a place, the events that happened here. The power is not so much the architecture but the stories, and the buildings, as a collection, they hold together as a neighbourhood.”
Drouillard Road needs someone with vision who’s willing to take a risk. That person may be the entrepreneur I spoke with. He loves the feel of Drouillard — and the cheap prices. He sees it as a bit like Detroit, where pockets of the core are being transformed into destinations. He’d like to do for Ford City what Slows Bar BQ did for Corktown.
“He single-handedly revitalized Corktown,” he said of the owner of the popular restaurant. “He believed in his vision. It’s very inspirational.”
This entrepreneur is being encouraged by another prominent businessman, Ashok Sood, who moved his Champion Products to Wyandotte between Drouillard and Albert Road
“WE’RE PLAYING WITH A LOT OF IDEAS. SOMETHING IS GOING TO HAPPEN.” ASHOK SOOD
after his building on Walker burned down several years ago.
“You could turn off all the lights and still work,” he told me, touting the huge windows that flood the building with light. “It’s beautiful. There’s not another place in the city where you can do this.”
The group of four connected buildings totals 96,000 square feet, and the oldest dates to 1912. Sood plans to finish replacing the boarded-up windows with glass, fix the brick and landscape by the end of the year.
The city believes Sood is key to Ford City because he also owns more than 20 acres of vacant former industrial land between Walker and St. Luke roads. If that land is developed — the city would like a mix of residential, commercial and offices to generate pedestrians — it would link dynamic Walkerville to Ford City, says Hunt.
“The thinking is if you could connect those two areas, then that may serve to revitalize Drouillard Road.”
Sood will repair what’s left of his Party Warehouse on the east side of Walker and plans to build another commercial building. He has already had inquiries from several busi- nesses, including a drugstore and two banks.
“We’re playing with a lot of ideas,” he said. “Something is going to happen.”
He’s considering building 50 or 60 affordable homes on the west side of St. Luke, too.
He wants to open the area between Walker and St. Luke by extending Whelpton Street to Walker and Montreuil Avenue to Richmond Street.
In the meantime, there has been a bit of a resurgence in the Ford City BIA, with a printing company, auction house, tailor, restaurant and artist studios all opening since 2010. The new owners of Maisonville Court retirement home are planning a $6-million renovation, and there’s a plan to convert Holy Rosary Church into a banquet centre.
The community has been reawakened, too. There was an Easter party for children, and there will be a barbecue and fireworks for Victoria Day and a farmers’ market with produce, art and music every Sunday all summer. Residents have already begun planting in the eclectic and popular community garden. There are guided historic walks, too.
But Ford City won’t be like Walkerville, another historic neighbourhood that has been revived, said Marina Clemens, the longtime activist and executive director of Drouillard Place.
Ford City has its own story to tell.