Biz Blogs

A public meeting has been scheduled Wednesday night at 6 p.m. at the Drop-In Centre of Thompson Towers to allow residents in and around Water World to vent over the proposal to close the 15-year-old facility and consolidate its activities at a new aquatics centre on the other side of the city core.

Water World has become a fabric of the Glengarry community, and outrage has been the initial reaction to the sudden news of the pending doom of Water World and Windsor Arena. The feelings run the gamut as follows:

• This arbitrary decision is not fair. The city is always taking things away from us.
• This happened without consultation. Since we are low income, our voices don’t matter.
• There are already many properties sitting empty in the neighbourhood and criminal activity is already in evidence. This will turn the east side of downtown into another Detroit.
• Many of the over 1000 inhabitants of the Glengarry housing units are on Ontario Works or Ontario Disability pensions. They have discounted admission fees to Water World.
• Transit Windsor buses to the western anchor lands, and admission fees to a proposed new $64-milllion aquatics centre, will be prohibitive.
• The bus route is circuitous across town and a round-trip costs $5, which adds up in a hurry for low income people, especially those with children.
• The Water World gym is used for community meetings, health care events and after school programs for Begley and Immaculate Conception School students.
• A successful, five-year-old homework club has been drawing 40 kids per night five days a week. Free swims and basketball games in the gym – which normally rents for $75 – have been a vital drawing card to the homework club, run by the University of Windsor's school of social work.
• The programs delivered by the university partnership have been stuck together with band aids and bubble gum as it is.

The common room at Thompson Towers can pack in 80 people. Many of the Glengarry inhabitants are new Canadians and have a hard time articulating in English. But except the room to be overflowing for Wednesday night’s meeting.

A second pushback to the aquatics centre development will be the impact on 1000 vulnerable residents at 920 Ouellette Ave., another public housing property with a population of seniors and people with disabilities and ethnic origins.

The city’s central library is next door, and many 920 residents attend programs there after a short walk. Mayor Eddie Francis plans to shut down the central library and attach a new one to the aquatics centre.
I anticipate a public meeting or two is on the horizon over the library situation also. I have recently stepped aside from the library board, and the central library is no longer in my ward. Nor, for that matter, is Water World in my ward.

Both facilities are in the new Ward 3, represented by Counc. Fulvio Valentinis.

The negative  impact spills over into Ward 4, however, with Howard Ave. being its western boundary. So I do feel obligated to stick up for people who may have a hard time articulating for themselves.