Our riverfront, held hostage
There’s so few things the Mayor seemed to tell us about this Red Bull Air Race which will happen in Downtown Windsor on June 13 and 14th. Trees were dug up and removed from the riverfront to “improve the view” of the race. Light posts were removed for the same reason which kept the riverfront trail lit at night. Then fencing went up covering a huge area of the riverfront which is now locked off and guarded 24/7. Cyclists of all kinds, including families have to detour onto a narrow stretch of road on Riverside Drive now. People can’t even walk along that stretch day or night anymore. I still don’t understand why the core of downtown Windsor’s waterfront has to be locked off like this for 2 weeks for an event which lasts 2 days.
Ron Drouillard from the Workers Action Center just sent me his thoughts on this turn of events:
“We took our family for a bike ride on the riverfront today and were stopped at Church street and couldn’t go any further with the bike trailer on the sidewalk to get to the other side. The best time of the year and we, the residents, have to take a back seat to the potential tourists and corporations just so the downtown businesses can rake in profits for one single weekend. Again, the “tourists” come before the residents – that’s precisely how not to build a sustainable urban environment.
The saddest thing is that Eddie didn’t sell it to the highest bidder, but the lowest. The city leased the land for $1 and will receive $125,000 for city services (BTW, they just gave landlords a $1,000,000 tax break on Monday – not really related, but important to note). Worse, the provincial government is paying way more for the races to be in Windsor in the first place. Again, our tax dollars and our parks given away to corporations.”
BULLSHIT. COMPLETE BULLSHIT. first we can’t use the river due to strikers and long grass, and now we can’t use it because of giant fences. what the hell, windsor. it was kind of nerve wracking having to ride my bike on one of the narrowest parts of Riverside Dr. cars had to basically swerve into oncoming traffic to avoid my bike. i don’t really understand why they had to block off the sidewalks at the top of the riverfront too. this whole thing made me so angry. especially since there were no signs warning of the fence. dan and i went down that big slanty hill just before the fence started, and we weren’t really expecting a giant fence to be at the bottom. i had to get off my dumb bike and walk it back up. ugh, this city makes me angry.
Thank you for your comment Samantha. Blocking the sidewalks is really terrible too. Such a mess. It’s keeping people away from downtown for weeks now.
is it really going to take them a full two weeks or however long to set up? it seemed like they have a lot done already..
I’m not sure how much they got done since I can’t even get close or want to. Riverside is blocked off by the Chrysler building for an engineering event going on too.
Ron said it – the “tourists” come before the residents.