Hail Caesar!!
I vehemently protest my blog partners headline. Coincidentally I had a conversation with Urbanrat about Modesto California’s successful change to an entertainment economy. Their first step to ensure success was to form an entertainment commission (Read HRP that I’ve wanted) to protect residents.
Caesars has proven it is not fiddling around, they are going all in to lure conventions to our cities. The only parties that are fiddling around are the educational institutions which are not fully treating hospitality jobs as carreers instead of stepping stones and doing more to train our people to increas value giving the participants higher wages. This industry is a much needed part of our future economy.
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Windsor has always been a border of and on something city. Once we were the wild west frontier for this continent, the largest settlement west of Montreal in the 1700 and 1800’s. And all the images that we have of the wild west, happen here! For settlement westward of this continent Windsor, Sandwich was the stepping off point to the vast west. St. Louis, Missouri the gateway to the American west is a late comer compared to this area.
Today, we still are a border city in the middle of the continent, what a great position to be in. And what a great history! Yes somewhat notorious, but also welcoming for hard working people who came and made this home right along with all the bars, saloons, illegal stills, speak easys, bootlegging and the unspeakable and the official sport of Windsorites.. smuggling!
If you know the history of Windsor, you will know that the city, this core (which wasn’t geographically bigger than it is now) had more hotels, bars, vaudeville theartres, than most cities for five hundred miles in any direction. But it also had hard working. reputable and honest citizenery that laid the foundation for this city living and working right beside each, to still exist in spite of its history. And if you really look, walkable neighourhoods that surrounded the core!
So how did the reputable live along side the not so reputable businesses, they did it, we have to figure out how they co-existed!
As a core resident, excessive noise, the noise beyond construction, daily human traffic, emergency vehicles is something that our ancestors didn’t have to deal with. Plaster cracking, head banging music that exists today, didn’t exist fifty years ago or for the history of this city, if that can be controlled or reduced so it isn’t heard outside of the establishment that is making it and quiet time as the city of Modesto. California did, protect the residents first.
I would like to see the Capitol Theatre mess settled so that we can get on with community based entertainment that doesn’t and can’t compete with Caesar’s but only enhance it. I surely don’t think that Caesar’s is afraid of the Capitol Theatre, I think that they would more than welcome it and even support it in the future.
Mark, we need more adult (let’s say 40ish and over) and family friendly venues downtown at night and on the weekends. At sixty, I really don’t feel comfortable in most establishments after ten at night! The music everywhere is to loud but there are more of us boomers with MORE disposable income than most nineteen and twenty year olds, so figure out how to attract us downtown just not to reside, but to play! I don’t mind being in the company of young people, I just don’t like my ears bleeding!
Personally the casino doesn’t mean much to me and now Caesar’s, a world brand which I think is good for Windsor, still doesn’t offer me anything that I am interested in. Oh yes, when it opens to the public, I will wonder over and look inside but that is about it!
I also would not have built the Art Gallery of Windsor on Riverside Drive, standing there all alone with no walkable attributes to lead you there from downtown or back. I fully support John Morris Russell’s attempt to turn the Armouries into a music venu right in the core, it would have been nice if the AGW did the same thing, they would have had more daily foot traffic.
I’m one for not waxing nostalgically for the good ole days, cities have to be dynamic and changing to survive but they also must be accommodating, and grounded with facilities like a new 21st century central library ( a third place for everybody!), art galleries, symphonic menus right beside EuroTechno Pop, offering something for everyone at different times of the day or night to stay alive. Places that all ages feel safe to be in at any time of the day and again at night, since we live in a 24/7 society.
So let’s take the city of Modesto as a guide and see what they have done right rather than wrong! Can we get someone from there here?
I feel that in conjunction with offering venues for the older crowd, it is important to offer venues for the younger crowd (not necessarily the bar-hopping young adults, speaking as a 24-year-old…).
Young people in this city, along with their more aged counterparts, are hard-pressed to find anything to do. I strongly feel that the city’s problems could be partially solved, or at least abated, by the availability of activities for all age groups. As our economy shifts in the direction of a service industry, this shouldn’t be too difficult to accomplish.
Laughed my arse off at a Letter to the Editor in today’s Windsor Star. The writer was lamenting how their family goes to the casino and keeps losing their money. Wants the slot machines “loosened up”. I’m still not sure if the writer was trying to be sardonic or if they really didn’t understand how casinos work, but reading that was my first smile of the day.
Mark, I interpreted that headline as being aimed more at the Mayor than the institution of Caesers.
I could be wrong though. It’s happened a few times before.
JCS, the reason is that in the Casino’s previous incarnatio as Casino Windsor the slots had the worst payout in all of N. America! I guess they can’t keep up that scam anymore with 3 other casino’s across the water. Loosen up and more people might play.
But for me, I can’t afford it as I have property taxes and water bills to pay so I just don’t go.
Mark, Chris
That was for Mayor Francis not the casino.
Nearly every city of any size in North America has a big shiny convention centre, its not like ours is unique, its just the newest. To be realistic, I wouldn’t bank on convention business. Conventions are corporate tourism and corporations are cutting back and will have to cut back further. Airlines are going bust and the one’s remaining are raising fares and charging customers for everything they can. These changes are inflicting mortal wounds to air travel for the masses.
Todays paper says that Ceasars plans to add a shopping mall and spa among other improvements. The bottom line is this, casinos are designed to keep people inside. Conventions at Ceasars will have little benefit to downtown because they will sell them as packages, including hotel and meals and entertainment. What Ceasars brings to Windsor is a professionalism and expertise that may increase the provincial pay-outs to city hall for a year or two but, their knowledge of the gaming industry and their success means they know how to keep people gambling. As long as folks are gambling they’re losing money and that money is not going to be spent in Windsor.
My prediction, Ceasar’s will enjoy some success this summer. Locals will go to check it out and perhaps see a show (I’d like to see Chris Rock). The chronic gamblers will continue to go to the casino until they’ve lost everything and some high-rollers will fly in. Sure, there will be a couple of conventions each year maybe next year some of the Detroit International Auto Show will be held in Windsor. But, in the long run the shine will wear off, Ceasar’s will have gotten every penny out of the operation they can by the end of their operating contract and our casino will once again be a money loser.
..while the city continues to burn (at least figuratively.)
Just passed the tunnel exit and the traffic eastward is backed up to the new casino! I agree with James, any casino does not want to share their clientele with anything else in their surrounding!, it is the acme of one stop shopping!
I am vehemently opposed to any casino development. Everyone knows (or should know) that casino’s make their money off the backs of some of the poorest people. You can dress up a hog, but it is still a hog.
I spent two years in Las Vegas and saw, up close and personal, the tragedy that is off-loaded onto the social system from legalized gambling.
In essence I agree with James, though I lay the blame for the debacle that will be Windsor on Mayor Francis, Ceasar’s and the province. Leveraging growth on the gaming is akin, IMO, to leveraging growth on suburban sprawl.
We have to treat the core as a comedy club…HUH! Ever wonder why people are seated so close together in a comedy club because the owners know that laughter is infectious! All you need is one customer to start laughing and most of the rest will start laughing also!
It’s the energy of that laughter that feeds everyone. Now look at the core. The casino is to far from downtown and the walk there is mainly desolate. The festival plaza is to far from downtown also and having only two main entrances and a very long walk or to steep steps to climb make it hard on a lot young families with kids in strollers or seniors with walkers or other mobility devices, then there is the hill to the Drive!
The art gallery is to far and sits alone and sterile in splendid isolation and matter of factly the architecture of it does nothing for me! Then there is the new arena..well… enough said! Were Charles Clarke Square sits, is much like the art gallery and the festival plaza alone isolated and devoid of life.
Even some of the “kiddie bars,” are to far south on Ouellette to feed the energy and synergy to feed each other.
The Central library of Windsor Public Library is to far from the core, to really attract the foot traffic that it deserves and can handle!
We need synergy and energy, we need the day life to feed the night life and versa vice. Infilling is a long way off so far, density and intensification are just buzz words at the moment.
Its kind of okay to say all the above are walkable but their distance takes the energy out of getting there and back, there isn’t much in between to keep the energy and synergy alive and moving.
i have walked all these routes to and from each other, stopped and watched others as they move about the core and have actually watched and heard tourists standing at the corner of Ouellette and the Drive, look at the sign pointing to the art gallery, can’t see it for the hotels and St. Clair College and say it’s to far, lets go back the other way! They’re energy had died! The synergy gone!
The Central Library doesn’t have a presence on Ouellette either, just a white big glass facade with a sign hidden by a tree, who would think that the history of Windsor is inside.
The new Caesar’s looks more like a fortress on the blocks that it sits, with huge blank white walls, where’s the street energy!
And I agree with Josh, it’s not the high rollers that casinos feed on, it is those on life support (oxygen bottles rolling behind them) in walkers or wheelchairs sitting there hour after hour playing the slots (i’ve watched them!), the poor and almost poor gambling, hoping to make it big.
The casino is here, it won’t go away and it does employee people that is all i can say about it.
I hear you James and Chris, the only thing is that the headline is one of those ones where our foes will read and use against us without reading the full text of the article.
Casino’s are built to keep people in but convention centers are not.
Separately, I agree with Josh that casino’s main purpose is to suck money out of an economy but Windsor’s an exception to the rule as 80% of gamblers are not from Windsor allowing us to suck from other areas to Windsor’s benefit.
Urban Rat has hit a chord. The downtown is too spread out. Closing down the entire downtwon for extended patio’s might work in the short term or intermittently but I do not believe it is an intelligent long term Strategy. The former DWBIA Executive Director had come up with a plan that I strongly supported that called for a single district to be closed each weekend so that we could further brand that district.
One weekend it would be the Arts District, One weekend Pelissier St. Village, one weekend the Square, one weekend the Avenue, One weekend the Arts, and one weekend the Avenue South. One year Avenue South created a sand volleyball court on Ouellette and I’d love to see that recreated.
We would rotate the closures each weekned so that the public would know that each weekend a party existed but that it would be condensed into a specific area. Everyone would get their turn to be a winner
Thanks Mark! One more idea, use the Capitol Theatre on University as a centre, close that block, the one block Pelissier beside it and the next block north to Chatham and have a theatre festival with indoor and outdoor stages and let it be a fund raiser for various groups, all presenting half hour and one hour plays, skits etc. and music in between and then a written original play/musical by a local on the main stage at night! Children’s groups acting also during the day! A fringe of a fringe festival!
If we can’t block off that one block of Pelissier beside the Capitol, there is a huge parking lot on the southeast corner of Victoria and University!
Windsor’s new theatre district!
After talking with Andrew from Internationalmetropolis he stated something positive about the possibility of a shopping mall in the Casino.
He stated that it would at least give the downtown some retail and may be the catalyst to actually get more retail downtown. Of course the plus side being that if people start coming downtown for retail more might follow suit and we might finally have a real shopping destination instead of the dearth of kiddie bars with a few decent restaurants mixed in.
Plus if there is a spa it might attract more clientele and thus more people the better.