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The State of Downtown · Kvetch & Release

• 0:00
  No pleased everything. Ye, good morning everyone, John Lydkey here on AM
• 0:12
  eight hundred ckl W. We just wrapped up the Thursday round table and we're
• 0:18
  shifting gears from spinning records to going down town. I saw a post on
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  social media that really caught my eye. I have to do a little bit
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  of paraphrasing here and editing for radio sake. It was post it said,
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  it's a it's a message that was sent. I just walked by two people
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  fornicating in the Capitol Theater entrance and one person was handing the woman a crack
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  pipe. That message was sent at two am in the morning. And you
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  know, it might be surprising for some people to hear that. It is
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  pretty shocking and outlandish, but it is I think representative of what the state
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  of our downtown is to a certain extent. Joining me to talk about this
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  is the person who actually who posted that image someone shared that with him is
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  the owner of two downtown windsor businesses, Meteor and Fog Lounge. Tom Lusher
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  joins me right now, Tom, you know I was saying during the round
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  table when we were teeing this up, there's the downtown that everybody's talking about
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  right now that needs to be strengthened the Core and we're gonna revitalize and we're
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  gonna have an esplanade and it's gonna bring it all back. And that's great
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  because you know, during the nine to five hours, and we've seen over
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  the past couple days increased police presence in terms of people will police walking on
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  the street, vehicles station throughout the Core, and I went, oh,
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  wow, you know what, it actually has a completely different vibe down here
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  than it did just a week prior. But that's during those nine to five
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  hours. Of course, you're operating businesses that are open till two am.
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  You're there until three, three thirty four in the morning. Were you surprised
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  when you got this message that one? Yeah, because I have my eyes
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  on the street. Because of the layout of my space, I see a
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  lot of things and it's funny. I feel like I need to remind people.
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  And that's why I made that post. It was like I'm just and
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  again, it wasn't an image. It was you know, it was a
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  text message, an image of a text that I received from a customer who
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  was just giving me a heads up, like hey, this is happening.
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  You know, thirty yards from your front door, and I posted it because
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  I take for granted what I see down there every day, and it is
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  important that people know what's real. You know, it doesn't matter if there's
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  and I've been railing against this kind of situation downtown for a lot of years.
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  I'd say ten to fifteen. It's just important to me that some people
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  understand what is real down there. And it's funny because I'm I'm a pretty
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  positive guy. I don't like certain things. I'm going to talk about those
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  things I don't like passionately, but I want people to come to our downtown.
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  But when stuff like that is happening, if you're focus of a downtown
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  strengthening is let's tell our story, which is another way of saying it is,
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  let's gaslight the entire city of Windsor into thinking it's a wonderland down here,
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  so that when they come down and they see what's real, they go
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  I'm never believing these people ever. Again. I'm not gonna trust anything they
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  have to say. I'm not gonna trust these businesses, these city councilors anything.
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  And by the way, I have nothing against any counselors. They're they're
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  doing this like thankless work. Ronaldo and I play basketball together like every week.
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  We're friends. But you cannot solve this problem by telling people everything's amazing.
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  You can tell nice stories, but you've really got to focus on and
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  tackle the real ones, because if you don't do that, it's it's it's
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  dishonest, and it's not gonna get to the root problem. If you have
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  a rotten core, you can't just breathe life into it like with some magic
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  serum and police. I love that they're there. I love that there's gonna
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  be a sense of security down there. But like, too little, too
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  late is like the understatement of the decade for this project. Again not to
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  be run on, but like to have a press conference or even have a
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  discussion we need to strengthen the court, Yo, what are you talking about.
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  This isn't even a discussion. That's like saying, hey, we decided
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  to start putting fires out. They when they start, Yeah, because that's
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  what you're supposed to do. This isn't a thing that you have to make
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  a plan for. This should have been maintained, consistent effort period. It's
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  been in the news for like fifteen twenty years, that this stuff has been
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  needed. So I was looking at the plan and there's a heavy policing component
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  to it. What I thought was really interesting was at the bottom of the
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  list they said, we're going to be spending what one point eight million to
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  get dedicated officers in the downtown court And the last bullet point was something along
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  the lines of and they're going to start to enforce open drug use laws to
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  stop it from happening in the core. And it's like, oh, doing
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  the job, like it just it hit me like a brick to the face,
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  going why is this even listed. I am like, very compassionate about
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  all the players there, the people who are sick, so there's uncared for
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  mentally ill, there's people who are dealing with addiction, and the solution is
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  not working. So I look at things that have happened in other cities.
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  Housing first, stuff like this where it's like, okay, first thing we
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  do, we give you place to live. Next we work on you know,
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  dignity and counseling and all these things that are necessary. But right now
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  it's just a free for all. There's no activity downtown for lots of reasons,
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  and I think the core reason I'd like to get to core. Keeps
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  coming up is the fact that if you don't have people living critical mass businesses
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  operating a lot of them, you don't have anything A to come down there
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  for, and B don't have eyeballs on the activity to change it. It
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  doesn't even need to be police, it just needs to be human beings.
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  So the steps from having affordable rents for entrepreneurs that is not a thing anymore.
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  You need that to allow people who have ideas and passion to exist down
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  there to make reasons for you to come down. Step two. Now you've
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  got people down here, and again I think, as I said earlier,
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  I think they'll crawl over heaps of corpses to be at things that are fun
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  and exciting because we did it in Detroit for forty years. Man. Downtown
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  Detroit was scary, was bad, and guess what, we still went because
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  there were things to do. So you've got to first give people things to
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  do, which means you've got to give people an affordable rent in a space
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  which is not happening right now, and then people will come down. And
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  then this the homelessness and addiction, is like a step two or three or
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  four that you can work on. It doesn't need to be the main thing.
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  That's not why people aren't downtown. It's one of very few reasons.
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  It is that critical mass thing. There needs to be things happening for more
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  things to happen, and it all evolves out of that. We've lost some
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  pretty significant anchor tenants in our downtown course and more are going and people don't
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  know. I'm not about to docks the people that are also going to be
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  leaving downtown, but I have it on not good authority, on factual information,
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  there's more people leaving, more businesses. News flash to anyone who that
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  concerns people who you know should be concerned about having tenants downtown, there's more
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  leaving. Your downtown is not going to be recognizable Winsor, Ontario in a
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  very short period of time, not with what you've been experiencing the lifeblood and
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  activity down there. And I don't think anyone's going to be able to afford
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  to come down and make it any different because right now the people leaving are
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  doing it because they can't afford to. So we've already seen a lot of
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  closures. I think people would be surprised when you here that there's more to
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  come because when I'm doing a mental checklist right now of like the businesses that
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  are notable in the core, I mean, the list is very dwindling.
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  And I'm not asking you to go docsing anyone. I get it. We'll
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  understand what business decisions are made when they become public. It is. It
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  is wild, though. Have you ever seen our downtown in the state that
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  it's at right now? I mean you guys are twenty years old. Yeah,
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  no, it's never been like this. I mean you have almost entire
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  blocks that are just empty. I mean, I love when people do a
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  thing, right I just said, we need activities, so rinaldo in the
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  city. They did this, you know, NFL draft thing downtown. It
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  brought a ton of people downtown. The point is after that's done, or
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  during that, like, what else can they do? What's the thing that
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  they can do next, even if it's a coffee shop, Like, what
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  else is the thing that they can do? But when there's nothing left to
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  do, having those events are going to become less and less significant because you
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  need core anchor businesses, museum galleries, stuff that people can window shop,
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  can go into. And right now, it's like it's a wastelam and I'm
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  sorry, and it's upsetting because if I had a property, then no one
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  was in because it's in disrepair and I'm paying city taxes, I'd be dressing
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  it up and getting a client in there. I'm sorry, Like that's what
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  matters. And so the sense of community in the land owning business in Windsor
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  is nonexistent. Challenge me, tell me I'm wrong. It isn't because if
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  you want people in those spaces, you figure it out, or you don't
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  own the land, you sell it and you let someone who's got some got
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  some guts and some fire in their belly to get people in there and get
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  businesses in those spaces and make it a welcoming space, make it a community,
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  make it a neighborhood. They can't just be investments. I'm sorry,
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  Like, how do you police that? I don't know they do it in
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  other cities, you know, Like, I don't know how you can prevent
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  out of town interests from coming here, buying buildings and just letting them rot.
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  I don't know how you do that, but I'm pretty sure there are
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  programs in other cities, other municipalities that are hands on that are more aware
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  of who's moving into their cities right now. It's dire, dude, and
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  it's sad because I don't want to leave downtown. I love it down there,
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  despite all the crazy, despicable stuff that people are seeing. I want
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  to be down there. Well, we're gonna take a break right now and
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  we get back on this side. We're going to keep this conversation going with
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  you Tom Lucier, who is the owner at fog Lounge and Media, and
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  we're gonna be bringing on as well Ben Snow, who is the owner of
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  men in Kilts Windsor, to have at a little bit about what the state
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  of downtown is actually like from his perspective. So don't go anywhere, folks.
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  John Lydkey here on AM eight hundred CKLW. We're back right after this.
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  Hey, we're back, folks. John. Let's here on AM eight
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  hundred CKLW. We're talking about the state of downtown. Joining me in studio
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  is Tom Lucier, owner of fog Lounge and Meteor, And joining us on
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  the phone is Ben Snow, who is the owner of men in Kilt's Windsor,
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  who observes a lot of things that are going on in the downtown.
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  How are you doing today, Ben, I'm very well. Thank you,
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  Sarah, how are you doing very well? Thanks so much for joining us
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  here. So my producer was telling me, well, he shared a photograph
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  with me of some commercial equipment in the core that unfortunately had some damage.
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  Yeah. Yeah, we we were cleaning one of the couple prominent buildings we
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  do downtown, cleaning some windows and it's a two day job. We rent
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  lifts to get our guys up there. And the guys did the job the
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  one day. They came back the next day to finish it up. A
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  larger job, so it takes a couple of days. And they realized the
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  lift wasn't working, and they looked underneath and they saw a bunch of wires
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  missing and a couple I guess fine gentlemen decided to cut a couple of feet
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  of wire for the for the cop R. I assume and anyway, that
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  is is probably going to end up costing me anywhere between nine and ten thousand
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  dollars too. This rent this rental machine because well, it might not be
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  covered by insurance for one reason or another. But that's a whole different and
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  a whole different story, the reputation that insurance companies have. They have that
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  for a reason. But I won't get into that issue. But I hopefully
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  we get some cooperation on there. And but but yeah, we're we're kind
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  of hooped as of right now. And uh, there's really nothing we can
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  do. But it's really like like the Tom said, you know, you
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  gotta there's there's the trickle down effect, right and you know you have officers
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  that are getting paid to work on this file you have, you know,
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  insurance rates are going to go up, which then gets passed down to the
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  customer. Whether we take on more downtown jobs is another thing we've had.
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  Our our vans try to get popped open when we're working down there so that
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  they can take some I don't know, pressure washing hoses or some squeezes.
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  I don't know. But if we could stop people buying the copper, that'd
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  be great because I would have much rather left a twenty dollars bill taped to
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  the machine as opposed to cutting a couple feet of copper for a ten thousand
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  dollars fix, which is going to come out of my pocket, which then
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  trickles down for my I mean, we're a small business. Just me and
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  my wife and a couple of guys, right, so it all trickles down
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  and it's it's unfortunate. But I'm just like Tom said, I want to
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  have been to a couple of his establishments. They're awesome. I always have
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  a great time there. And you know, I all want to bring it
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  back to the six dollar pictures at Pepper's. You know those days right when
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  downtown was bumping and there wasn't wouldn't that be nice there was you know,
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  there there wasn't knives and guns and anger and you know, close down businesses.
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  And I mean one of my friends and competitors, Andrew from Thunderstray,
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  he had to do some graffiti removal at the YMCA. It's it's tough out
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  there, Ben, I can definitely appreciate that. And you know, as
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  a former business owner, I mean, expenses that you don't expect to happen
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  suck, especially when it's not through your own fault or anything, but rather
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  from someone else. So you know, my empathy and sympathy out to you.
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  Ben. Thank you for joining us right now. I really appreciate it.
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  It's all good. Thanks for the chat. I have a great day.
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  Guys. Thanks. Hey, So Tom, let's go back to talking
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  about something that you did about a decade ago. I remember when we first
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  started getting to know each other, back when my band had first started out.
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  Oh my god, it's even longer. That's probably twelve thirteen years ago.
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  Now, you were doing a thing for the Downtown Business Improvement Association.
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  You had a blog. Back then, there was a lot of like hope,
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  there's a lot of things happening, a lot of businesses opening. I
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  remember specifically the newspaper and the windows of frenchies my job. I pitched the
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  BIA to be the Beat reporter. So if anyone knows news stuff has been
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  struggling, especially print publications, and I'm like, hey, remember the Beat
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  reporter. It doesn't exist. I'll be the Beat reporter. I'll go and
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  I'll talk to all these business owners. I'll write about the good stuff that's
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  happening. We tell the good stories. And I did that for a year.
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  So anyone who's right now what feels like gaslighting, I was not doing
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  that back in O nine. I was like celebrating some life that was coming
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  into the downtown. And a lot of businesses have come and gone, but
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  mostly gone since that time because of the things I'm talking about completely unaffordable rents
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  and all the other things that we've listed about what's happening downtown. I loved
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  doing that blog personally. It's the best work I've ever done. I ran
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  a bar for twenty years and created community and helped foster community. That meant
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  more to me to meet the business owners, to know who they were,
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  and to promote them, and it was easy to do. Doing that now
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  would be almost impossible. That's why tell the good stories. When I hear
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  that in a news conference, I'm like, bro, that was my job
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  and I'm telling you there aren't enough. Well, I'm just trying to think,
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  like what is like, what are the good stories to tell right now?
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  Sure, we had the NFL event that just happened with the draft,
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  and that was cool. I was down there, there were a bunch of
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  people and stuff. But it does seem like overwhelmingly when you're faced with a
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  reality of you know, bad situation, bad situation, bad situation, bad
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  situation, it is gaslighting. Like at some point you have to be like,
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  what am I doing here? Yeah? Man, look the sinkhole,
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  the thing in front of the Capitol theater happening, this building that burned down
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  last night, this rainbow painted building. If that isn't the example of hey,
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  lipstick on a pig doesn't work. It doesn't matter how many eyeballs are
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  on this thing, or if it is worthy of eyeballs, is what I
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  should say. There were no eyeballs on it because there's no one down here.
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  And this is I'm going to say this right now. That's going to
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  make every listener nod in agreement, almost every single one. The cliche that
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  we don't talk about. We talk about windsor pizza. We talk about all
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  these things. The thing we don't talk about is the windsor cliche is this
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  sentence, Oh, I can't even remember the last time I went downtown.
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  Everyone listening to this, you've said it, you've thought it. And when
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  I'm introduced to people, they introduced not as just a guy who's a dad,
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  it's Tom from Fogg. It's downtown, and they go, oh,
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  yeah, I'm sorry, I haven't been I can't remember, like that's their
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  automatic response to me, shaking their hand. And that conversation is known everyone
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  on city council, everyone in any business community. They know it because they're
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  saying it, people don't come down because like, that's the mentality. This
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  is a very old statement. This is going back to when we first started
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  opening, where I'm I'm trying to convince people like, yo, that is
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  not a thing to be proud of that you haven't been in your downtown.
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  Don't like I don't like hearing that, But that sentence is part of our
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  reality. It's part of being a Windsor at that sentence and it's that's not
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  good. And I just don't know why no one's ever talked about that.
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  It should be on a T shirt crying out loud because it's frankly one of
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  the most repeated things verbatim in Windsor, Ontario. And if I could add
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  on to it, it's not because of a lack of parking either. Oh
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  absolutely, let's not get started there. That's not it. I have so
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  much appreciation and faith in entrepreneurs who come downtown. They are taking a massive
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  risk and they are like me, it's like the toad in the boiling water,
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  Like I'm assuming it's just got worse and worse and worse. I'm just
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  looking at it, being used to it and still finding the reasons to be
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  down there, which is community. I've luckily kind of helped maintain a community
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  that comes down here no matter what. I'm lucky that way. Not every
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  business is going to be that way. Doctor Disk for instance, they are
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  the same. They have this community. Like the guys you just had in
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  people are going there no matter what because it's such a niche specialized thing.
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  But we need more. And I have so much love for people who come
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  out and tough out all of the conditions to make downtown better or to make
• 18:53
  our community better. And I want more of these people to come down.
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  But I guess what. You start looking at those LEAs signs and start making
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  those phone calls, you entrepreneurs out there, and you're gonna be stopped in
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  your tracks. And that's a huge problem that they can't actually make a move.
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  You got to be a crazy person generally speaking to open up a business.
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  Quite frankly, I agree. I agree. I said to me,
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  I'm like a rambling maniac. But like if you were today, and I
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  have. You know, I give so much credit to the people that have
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  decided to open up in the core in this reality, because I can tell
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  you one thing, if today, if it was like this back in twenty
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  sixteen when I opened up Higher Limits Canabis Lounge, I wouldn't have opened up
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  Higherlan It's Canbais Lounge in the downtown Corps. Well you just said it all
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  right there. That's the mentality right now, and it's tough. By the
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  way, your rent would have been quadruple what it was back then. That's
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  the reality of these spaces right now. I'm sorry, like I, like
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  I said, if people think I'm just running my mouth, make some phone
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  calls. Look in these windows when you come downtown, which you probably aren't
• 19:55
  doing. Look at those numbers, call and check it out. Tom.
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  I want to thank you so much for coming on. And you know,
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  it's a tough situation, tough topic to address because there is a lot of
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  work that's going on in the city to address it. But whether or not
• 20:07
  it's the right track, if you think it'll address it. But I really
• 20:08
  just appreciate you being so out vocal and outspoken about it. Thank you so
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  much for your time. Thank you. I just wanted to get better.
• 20:15
  I think we all