Express unveil ambitious plan to revitalize mothballed arena
The Windsor Express pulled back the curtain Wednesday on its striking plan to bring The Barn — opened in 1925, closed in 2013 — back from the dead.
Mothballed Windsor Arena would be transformed into a
“multi-purpose facility,” whose nucleus would be a revitalized home court for the city’s professional basketball team, but would also feature restaurants, stores, and the flexibility to retract or add seating for concerts, boxing and wrestling events, pickleball and badminton tournaments, e-sports,
women’s roller derby and myriad other uses.
“That arena is a significant piece of the community and it needs to be brought back to the people of Windsor,” Express president Dartis Willis said at a news conference unveiling ambitious plans that still must sink several threepoint shots before from becoming a reality.
Just three weeks ago, city council shortlisted the Express proposal along with a proposal from the YMCA, as the city moves to find a use for The Barn and the adjacent Water World property.
Council directed administration to meet with the two shortlisted proponents to discuss whether they — the Express and the Y — could develop the project together, since the Y is mostly interested in Water World and the Express is mostly interested in Windsor Arena.
Parties for both proponents have told the Star they’re interested in working together.
Ward 3 Coun. Rino Bortolin, who represents the downtown including the Windsor Arena area at Wyandotte and Mcdougall streets, said he sees the Express proposal as a dynamic idea for a key property — vacant for seven years — that’s a “money drag” for city taxpayers.
Basketball is an urban sport, he said, drawing its fans and players from core areas. He envisions the Express project generating major foot traffic through the downtown and expanding the downtown footprint to the east.
“I can’t say enough, I think this is something that would definitely fit, definitely work, I’ve been a supporter from Day 1,” said Bortolin, who has been working with Willis for three years.
He emphasized that the project won’t work if it’s just about Express home games. The Barn can’t just be active for 30 or 40 nights a year. There has to be closer to 200, be it for Express games or recreational volleyball leagues.
“At the end of the day, we have to see what deal shakes out, what’s needed from the city and how it compares to the other proposals,” Bortolin said of the process.
It’s expected administration will sit down with the proponents, followed by the proponents submitted reworked plans with council choosing one and then negotiating a final deal. The process will likely take months.
Willis wouldn’t reveal the price tag for the Express project, “but it’s something that is very reachable.”
Whether the Express would buy or lease the property is still being discussed.
Opened in 1925 as the Border Cities Arena, it was the home arena in the inaugural season of the Detroit Cougars, who became the Red Wings. It’s listed on the Windsor Municipal Heritage Register. The Express have engaged a historian for the project and established a website to collect stories and plug the project at savethewindsorbarn.com.
The Express arrived in 2012 as a National Basketball League of Canada expansion team and won championships in 2014 and 2015, playing at the city’s 6,500-seat WFCU Centre.
Though the Express recently renewed its lease for two years at $3,500 per game, Willis said the WFCU location has never been a great fit for the team. With attendance much lower than Spitfires games, the environment is less than ideal, he said.
Attendance to Express games started in the 2012-13 season with 644 per game on average, rising to 1,031 in 2015-16 and dropping to 677 last year, though only about half of that was paid, according to a city report.
The new venue would have about 1,500 seats, plus standing room, floor seats and standing room on an upper porch bringing maximum attendance to about 2,500.
Willis said he fully expects attendance to rise at the Windsor Arena location, citing the great results when the Express held games at Caesars Windsor. Those four games were tests to see how attendance would improve at a downtown location, he said.
“The city has a nice facility in the WFCU that is centred and focused on hockey. This (Windsor Arena) facility will be centred on court activities and it creates a very intimate environment where the roof will be rocked right off the house for tight games. There’s a different feel, different environment.”
Willis compared the Express moving downtown to the recent move by the Detroit Pistons from suburban Auburn Hills to downtown Detroit. People love to go to a game and then go out to a restaurant, he said.
He added that last season’s NBA championship win by the Toronto raptors—when thousands attended lively outdoor Jurassic Park broadcasts of the games at Charles Clark Square — “really put a spark under a lot of people for basketball.”
“And I think the time is right now,” he said, adding that he’d like to see the team playing at the new arena by the 2021-22 season.
But he said the Express would only comprise about 10 per cent of the use of the building. Mario Iatonna, the recently retired business superintendent at the Catholic school board who is now the project lead for the Express, said the plan is to have multiple uses, so there’s activity not just on game nights but every night and day.
“We’re looking at revitalizing that whole area,” said Iatonna, who was also project lead for the school board when it was planning to move Catholic Central high school to the site. After he retired and that plan fell through (Catholic Central is now being planned for a site on Mcdougall south of Jackson Park), Willis tapped him to be project lead because he already knew so much about the Windsor Arena site.
Iatonna said the Express has already had discussions with the Y about their respective projects.
“We will definitely be sitting down with them and seeing what we can do,” he said of the council’s suggestion that the two work together on a proposal for the Windsor Arena/water World site.
Andy Sullivan, the Y’s regional manager of operations, said the Y was already supportive of the Express’s plans. “It’s a natural relationship,” he said, adding that a collaborative effort could work “really well.”
The Y is interested in using the Water World site — the city closed the Water World pool about five years ago but continued to run community programs — for its Newcomer Services program as well as potentially some new programs, said Sullivan. He said the Y’s downtown home on Victoria Avenue is old, worn out and was built for swimming and fitness.
“We’ve tried to make changes to the facility as much as possible, to kind of keep up with what we’re doing, but it’s not what the building was designed for,” he said.
Newcomer Services attracts nearly 400 people per week.
Sullivan said the Water World proposal is still conceptual. The Y moved its fitness programs to Central Park Athletics on Central Avenue about three years ago.
“We’re definitely committed to staying in the downtown core,” he said. “So this was something that was really interesting and intriguing to us, to be able to deliver those programs and maybe even additional services as well.”