Windsor-Detroit architect pleased city will build on legacy project

What's the right thing to do to make downtown a success? CTV Windsor's Bob Bellacicco looks into it.

Matt Woods knows the Festival Plaza very well.

“It started in 2010. We built out the stage. I was part of the lead design in that with Ada architects here locally. We built up the stage, we got grant money,” Woods explained. “It started off with the right wheels. We just haven’t touched it for 15 years. It’s time to keep moving.”

A creative director at X Identity Detroit, Woods continued to describe how the building was built with a canteen for food and drink so people could hang out and enjoy the space.

“We did not have funding for the plaza itself to finish it. There’s design that was ready to go and this was never implemented,” he said.

Usage dwindled, especially after the pandemic.

“Unless we start planning towards the future, we’re going to be stuck in the present and sometimes we’re going to be riddled with the past,” City Coun. Renaldo Agostino told CTV News.

According to the city, the plaza is used 40 per cent of the time during a 26-week period starting in the spring. The new plan for the Festival Plaza is years’ worth of consultation and engagement.

“We certainly look forward to a time when council approves us to actually implement the plan and approve the funding necessary to undertake that plan,” said James Chacko, executive director of Parks, Facilities, and Recreation.

Woods likes the flexibility of the space offered in the city’s plan that could be used for wedding ceremonies, small events and shows, and everyday leisure.

“As a way of keeping a better flex space then you kind of create other venues around there where you can kind of subdivide it up into smaller pieces, two events at once or something maybe not always using the stage, but you can have different things going on,” said Woods.

Woods said some projects he has worked on in Detroit were tried out before being finalized. He feels the same could happen here, for example, with food trucks in the plaza space.

“Then you build off of that, you know, then you decide that this is something we can go further with. Let’s build an infrastructure, bring in a couple small restaurants. Leamington has a master plan as they redevelop their waterfront and that offers a spin off effect. That’s an added benefit if that attracts or draws tourism, awesome but the original intent is for our own people,” he said.

Council spoke of forming a conservancy to create funding for the plaza project. Agostino said he would like to see the project done in the next five years.