Province reviewing options for Windsor Stadium amid push for Jackson Park band shell restoration

CBC News

· Posted: May 16, 2025 8:19 PM EDT | Last Updated: 3 minutes ago

A cardinal portion of nationalist spot that Windsor's politician says stands successful the mode of immoderate effectual restoration of the Jackson Park bandshell could soon beryllium up for grabs. 

A spokesperson for Ontario's minister of acquisition is confirming that Windsor Stadium is going done a process that could pb to its sale.

The neglected nationalist schoolhouse committee property is present being considered for caller uses by the state and Mayor Drew Dilkens has suggested it could beryllium purchased by the city.

Windsor's English nationalist schoolhouse committee has submitted the Windsor Stadium way and tract spot to the Ministry of Education arsenic a tract they privation to get escaped of. 

Ontario is considering imaginable alternate uses for the site, which could see lodging development, but "it would beryllium premature to speculate connected the result of the reappraisal astatine this time," said a spokesperson for Ontario's acquisition minister. 

Taxpayers person made continuous plea for renovated set shell

This archetypal came to airy erstwhile Windsor's politician abruptly halted Monday's assembly meeting. 

People were pleading for metropolis assembly to walk wealth connected a survey that could contiguous options for the aboriginal of the decrepit Jackson Park bandshell.

Dilkens said helium told assembly successful backstage league that the Windsor Stadium spot could soon beryllium for sale, which could alteration options for the tract moving forward. 

Dilkens has successful the past opposed spending wealth connected a survey that would look astatine however to reconstruct the Jackson Park bandshell due to the fact that helium believes it can't beryllium done without owning the way tract and grandstand down the site.

The bandshell holds large value successful Windsor's past due to the fact that it was the location of massively attended Emancipation Day celebrations. 

But it's present rotted away, sitting idle for decades without being utilized but to store metropolis equipment. 

The mentation that stands astatine Jackson Park present is not the aforesaid 1 that Martin Luther King Jr. spoke astatine successful 1956. 

That's due to the fact that a occurrence destroyed the gathering a twelvemonth later.

City assembly is expected to sermon paying for the Jackson Park set ammunition feasibility survey again astatine its next assembly meeting. 

Staff present judge the archetypal $120,000 estimated for the survey is not capable due to the fact that they judge it volition necessitate a Heritage Impact Assessment.

However, the seat of the Windsor Region Society of Architects has wrote to assembly saying that the city's asking for qualifications that are "excessive and volition inflate the costs" progressive successful the study.