A city councillor and the vice-chair of the Downtown Windsor Business Improvement Association say there are three fundamentals to improve the downtown core - safety, cleanliness, and beautification.
Ward 3 councillor Renaldo Agostino and Andrew Corbett, the vice-chair of the DWBIA held a town hall meeting Wednesday evening to meet with residents about their concerns for the downtown, and to gain ideas through discussion to make improvements.
Agostino says that he wants to encourage downtown business to make their stores and restaurants look nice, encourage cleaning up the streets daily, and wants community members to contact 311 if they have issues.
He says that by having residents and business owners contact 311, all reported issues are documented and complaints can be used to collect data to ensure that issues get resolved in the downtown core.
Kyle Reid has lived and worked downtown for 30 years for various businesses.
He says he sees how bad the downtown has gotten on his walk home from work.
"There's needles, there's people spinning out of control, they have no idea where they're at. Constantly, every day, and it's not the same people, it's always different people. People sleeping in door ways. Defecating in doorways. I mean I have to take a bucket of water once a week and wash off my doorway because somebody's urinated or defecated in one of my neighbours properties. That's not cool."
Reid says homelessness has gotten worse, especially since the COVID-19 pandemic, and something needs to be done to help those who need it.
"They're totally unfamiliar, so I mean they're coming from other municipalities, and they're all having the same problem. It's bad in Toronto, it's bad in Guelph, it's bad in Brantford. Everybody's dealing with the same thing, and I would love to see somebody come up with a solution because what's happening now, it's just not doing it."
Jim Arbour, owner of Lefty's on Ouellette Avenue, says his business has been affected from the homeless and rowdy people downtown.
"I've had my windows busted, two, three times. I've had to call the police numerous times just to get homeless people out of in front of the place, or walking in the middle of the street because no one's paying attention to them."
Around 50 business owners, stakeholders, and interested residents turned out for the discussion.
Councillor Agostino also spoke on how many individuals from Michigan no longer cross the border into Windsor like they used to, and is hopeful that by revitalizing downtown, more people will visit the city.
-with files from AM800's Aaron Mahoney