The councillor for downtown Windsor wants to make use of the former Greyhound bus station right away after it was returned to the city.
The University of Windsor terminated the agreement last week and returned the property, citing rising costs to maintain and secure the site, along with it no longer being needed for a proposed downtown campus.
Speaking on AM800’s The Kyle Horner Show, Ward 3 Coun. Renaldo Agostino says the site could quickly be reopened for parking.
“We always need more parking downtown and there’s a parking lot. I’m going to ask that we reopen that parking lot right away and get some passport signs up there. We don’t have to put meters. We can use the app,” Agostino said.
He says adding capacity in the core wouldn’t take long.
“We could just fence the bus station, open up that parking lot right away, and add an additional, I was down to this morning, I think I counted 90 spots,” he said.
Agostino is also backing a proposal to repurpose part of the structure as a greenhouse.
“There’s an interesting idea being floated around by our Good Greens program, and our Downtown Windsor BIA, where we could potentially use the bus shelter as a greenhouse to provide food for some of our shelters that exist downtown,” he said.
Agostino added the priority for now is to activate the long-vacant site immediately, while the city works toward longer-term redevelopment plans.