With less than two weeks until election day, Windsor mayoral candidates Drew Dilkens and Fred Francis released more parts of their platforms.
Drew Dilkens presented his plan for downtown alongside Ward 3 incumbent Renaldo Agostino and downtown business owner Chris MacLeod.
His plan includes moving the Downtown Mission to deliver services at the Homelessness and Housing Help Hub.
"We've been working with the Downtown Mission to try and find the pathway that would have them move off Ouellette to deliver services at the H4," said Dilkens. "We know that council already approved filling in the pool, upgrading the HVAC, adding more showers and washrooms to expand operations at H4. We need a good operator, we believe the Mission does a good job with their operation; we just believe it would be better done off of Ouellette Avenue."
To continue his Strengthen the Core plan, Dilkens says he would implement a new economic development area to attract an anchor tenant and build a new Central Library adjacent to City Hall.
"I'm talking about a stunning state-of-the-art library with two floors of books and materials, programming and opportunities. It will be home for the Windsor Star's important archives collection that we obtained just a couple years ago and it will open onto City Hall Square," said Dilkens.
The City of Windsor is still in negotiations with Infrastructure Ontario to acquire the property that formerly housed the Ontario Tourism office.
Dilkens says he's also committed to redeveloping the Festival Plaza to include more green space.
"I want to make our community more beautiful. I want to create gathering spaces where the community can go to listen to music and to events in public," said Dilkens.
Francis made his latest campaign stop at the former Grace Hospital site on Crawford Avenue, where he announced his plans for more housing, which include a larger emphasis on affordable housing and incorporating community-benefit conditions on any development on city-owned properties.
Francis says the city needs over 6,000 affordable housing units in the next decade.
"We are nowhere near that target, and we're losing time every single day. That's why the fact that there's no activity on [the former Grace Hospital] site and other sites in our land portfolio that can be actioned right away is just not acceptable," said Francis.
He says when working with developers on city-owned properties he'll encourage them to hire local workers and businesses where possible.
"We will ensure that there's a community benefit; it could be more trees, it could be a park, it could be a community centre, it could be a recreational facility and those options will be ranked by surrounding neighbours," said Francis.
Francis also wants to expand the downtown development-charge-free zone to include Ford City and Sandwich Town to encourage new investment.
Election Day is October 26, 2026.
There are nine other candidates running for Windsor mayor including Benjamin Danyluk, Aaron Day, Dylon Graves, Tara Grayer, Nick Kolasky, Tristan Ty Morencie, Kat Pasquach, Patrick Sutherland, and Louis Vautopic.
