New city hall is no Taj Mahal — and that’s OK

Windsor’s new city hall, set to open next month, will be a crushing letdown for those hoping to ferret out election-year proof of lavish and inappropriate spending in pursuit of a grandiose civic dream.

With the massive structure 95-per-cent complete, needing only cosmetic final touches before the May 26 ribbon cutting, I went on a sneak preview this week, from the basement to the top floor, looking for some hint of unnecessary or over-the-top expenditures.

I came up empty. No gold-plated bidets. No crystal chandeliers. No granite countertops. No gleaming tropical woods. No grand expanses of polished marble.

The Taj Mahal this is not. The Hall of Mirrors at the Palace of Versailles this is not. Louis XIV would surely not be impressed. In fact, anyone counting on being blown away by Windsor’s new and long overdue “palace” of the people might want to lower their expectations a tad. What we have here, for the grand sum of $43.9 million (which includes demolition of the old city hall and development of a new civic plaza) is precisely what city residents were promised: a crisp, clean hyper-efficient office building intended to serve the needs of city residents for the next 75 years and beyond. When this project was approved three years ago, I thought it was politically foolhardy to schedule the grand opening for an election year. Taxpayers are never thrilled seeing their dollars “squandered” on government buildings. So why rub it in their faces just months before ballots are cast?

Now I get it. This building will sell itself to the public as a great leap forward from the dismal, asbestos-infested structure that has been our city hall for six decades and as an accessible and convenient place to conduct civic business and see democracy in action.

The building ’s best feature, from my perspective, is the way it opens up the municipal decision-making process to public scrutiny with a large and inviting ground-floor council chamber and an adjacent atrium with eightmetre-high ceilings and oodles of glass.

For citizens who’ve spent years trudging up gloomy stairwells to the third-floor council chambers, only to find themselves relegated to a claustrophobic hallway because of chronic overcrowding, the first meeting in the new chamber, on June 4, will be a revelation. With capacity for 180 people compared to the current chamber’s 75 to 80, it will be a delegation organizer’s dream. A primary objective of the architects, Moriyama and Teshima of Toronto and Ottawa, working with Windsorbased Architecttura Inc., was to create a public building that’s visibly open and transparent. Well they’ve done that in spades. People will be able to peer in through the glass at ground level and see their elected representatives in action. Conversely, councillors will look up from their agendas and see placard-waving demonstrators outside. Now that’s grassroots democracy in action.

Bright and airy, with lots of LED lighting and the latest digital equipment, the chamber’s one reminder that this is a place that matters, a place where Windsor chooses its future, is a marble block feature wall bearing, in attractive lettering, the city motto: The River and the Land Sustain Us.

The city’s project administrator, Wadah AlYassiri, explained that the five-storey building ’s first two floors will be all about serving the public with one-stop-shop service for clients and the customer convenience of having, for instance, the building and property departments sharing a floor instead of being housed in different buildings.

With a partial green roof, those LED lights, bird-safe and louvered windows, recycled building materials and a modern heating and cooling system, Al-Yassiri estimates the new building will be at least 30-per-cent more energy efficient than its predecessor.

I suspect most criticism will come from those who believe the city should have spent more, much more, to create a glittering landmark structure that would fire up imaginations and become an immense source of pride for city residents.

Instead we have something clean and functional, a working building for a working city — and a huge advance over the crappy, outdated 1950s structure that preceded it.

I’m more than satisfied with that. And by the way, it’s already paid for. In full.