Bridge company says it's 'ready, willing, and able' to demolish the homes and transfer property to the city.
The Ambassador Bridge company says it’s ready to hand over derelict houses to the City of Windsor and spare taxpayers from costly expropriations in exchange for a few “surplus” municipal roads.
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It’s a plan the company says city council agreed to in principle before abruptly ceasing negotiations, though Windsor’s mayor refutes that claim.
“There is an easy solution where we demolish all of the structures — the City just has to permit this — and then transfer almost all of these properties to the City,” the Canadian Transit Company, which owns the Ambassador Bridge, said in an email to the Star.
“The city is well aware that CTC has been willing to do so for years in exchange for those portions of roadways needed for our plaza expansion project.”
Instead of completing the transaction, the company said, “the city ceased negotiating with us and has been unwilling to meet in 2026.”
The company’s comments come in response to news that Windsor city council had voted unanimously to expropriate 45 Sandwich Town properties, most of them owned by the Ambassador Bridge company.
Some of the properties are vacant, but many contain boarded-up homes that the company acquired as long ago as the 1980s. That’s when it began to purchase land that stood in and around the footprint of its planned second bridge span, a span that never came to fruition.
Months ago, Mayor Drew Dilkens told reporters the city was pausing its efforts to resolve various disputes with the bridge company after having “wasted” as much as $3 million in legal and engineering fees in pursuit of a resolution since 2018.
On Thursday, Dilkens said it’s time for the city to start restoring Sandwich, a neighbourhood residents “have watched decay in front of their own eyes, with property owners either taking no action or certain actions you know have led to decay.”
Later Thursday afternoon, the bridge company said the city “appears to be deciding that it would rather litigate than negotiate, a decision that could cost taxpayers millions of dollars.”
“The city could have received these properties without cost, by trading parts of surplus roads that have already been approved to become part of CTC’s plaza.
“Indeed, if the city is successful in expropriation, it will cost the taxpayers millions of dollars in just compensation. But the taxpayers don’t have to pay. CTC is ready, willing, and able to demolish any remaining vacant houses and complete the transaction with the city, saving everyone time and money, and finally putting an end to the saga of the vacant houses in Sandwich.”