The first phase of Windsor’s Civic Esplanade, City Hall Square, is nearing completion with an opening in time for summer events for the dual-season space.
The esplanade stretches from the new city hall, opened in 2019, to the Detroit riverfront, over a kilometre away, and is an ambitious plan to create a multifaceted people and activity space as part of a downtown renewal.
“We’re on track and we’ll have it opened later this year for definitely spring-summer use,” said James Chacko, the city’s director of parks, recreation and facilities.
The $15.4 million project will have a water feature, planters, tables and hard umbrellas, along with featuring private sector “partners” like food trucks or cultural groups, to create ambience and encourage personal and group activities on the footprint of the demolished old city hall.
The fountains will have programmable LED lighting, along with landscaping and hardscaping, allowing for “the capability of a space that can really be very flexible to create as many outdoor community programming opportunities as possible to be a hub to attract people into the city core,” Chacko said.
Meanwhile, permanent seating is being constructed to support summer as well as winter activities, when the space will be converted to an NHL size oval ice rink.
Construction also includes sub-surface infrastructure to allow food trucks and huts “so there are those services in place for vendors to rotate in and out,” Chacko said.
More public attention has been focused on the ice rink with criticism that it’s overly expensive and a monument to Mayor Drew Dilkens, when money could be better spent on general services like street repairs.
But downtown Coun. Renaldo Agostino replied to a barrage of such online posts.
“Great cities have great things for their people to do and every great city has a great downtown,” he said. “Not one single person has ever said that place had great roads and beautiful sewers.”
This dovetailed with criticism that the city already had an outdoor rink immediately north in Charles Clark Square. But though relatively modern its time had expired.
“A decision had to be made to invest in either basically replacing the entire refrigeration system there, which was a costly process and it also had some limitations as to how Charles Clark Square was envisioned as part of the civic esplanade,” said Chacko.
That heavily concrete island will eventually “see some greening” as the esplanade builds out, he said.
As Canada’s most southerly city Windsor had a more moderate climate than a typical Canadian winter and the new rink will feature more sophisticated cooling equipment to keep the rink running longer or in Windsor’s case, three-and-a-half continual months.
“It will be operative and provide ice for a longer period of time than Charles Clark,” which towards its end “really did struggle to maintain ice,” Chacko said.
Also, less sunlight will fall into this footprint, a problem at Charles Clark where light tended to erode the ice.
There were no special challenges as the space had already been cleaned and set aside when old city hall was demolished “with an eye to allow for future development.”
The rink consists of multiple lines of subsurface conduit connecting to chillers in an adjacent building, which will also house a Zamboni and public washrooms.
“I think the intricacy or complexity with an ice rink is a unique component but beyond that it’s probably not unlike any other construction project where you’re putting a building with landscaping and associated features into a greenspace for public use,” Chacko said.
“The fountain itself required a deeper excavation because you have a water retention pit underneath, but nothing would have been anything deeper than the existing footprint of what the basement would have been at the old city hall building,” he added.
The design consultant was Toronto’s MJMA Ltd. and the contractor is Windsor’s Oscar Construction Co. Ltd.
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