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Community Design: Vacant Properties of Sandwich Workshop

Community Design: Vacant Properties of Sandwich Workshop

The Visionaries learn why there are so many abandoned and vacant buildings in Sandwich town and are invited to make suggestions about how to rehabiliate them.

About the Workshop

Did you know that there are over 100 single family residential lots and units, an entire high school, a large student residence building, a condemned apartment building and the old city jail all sitting vacant and derelict in Sandwich town? This represents literally hundreds of potential residential units that are not available to the citizens of Windsor. Considering our national housing crisis how can this situation be allowed to continue?

We held a community information and design session where residents learned about these problem properties and joined in the search for solutions. Special guests John Elliot (community organizer and past city council member) spoke to his decades of experience trying to address this issue. Many of these properties have been tied up in legal wranglings between the City of Windsor and the Ambassador Bridge Company. Fabio Costante (current city council member for Sandwich) came in to help us understand what the current state of the situation is and where we are in this process.

After the discussion we invited the participants to propose new uses for these derelict buildings by completing the worksheets provided.

About the Worksheets

This worksheet shows participants the extent of the vacant and abandoned properties in the Sandwich neighbourhood. It asks the question, “What types of buildings and services would you like to see replace these empty lots and buildings?”.

These worksheets look at 3 vacant sites in the neighbourhood: The Old Jail, Forster High School and St. Michael’s School. It provides a template where participants can sketch in their ideas for how to adaptively reuse these legacy structures.

Download Worksheet: Old Windsor Jail Download Worksheet: Community Wish List Download Worksheet: Forster High School

In this photo from L to R: Marc Ngui (artist-facilitator), Fabio Costante (City Councillor for Ward 2), John Elliot (long time community organiser and director at Sandwich Teen Action Group), Peter Berry (Harbourmaster at Port Windsor) and Sheila Wisdom (long-time civic activist).

Here are some completed worksheets to show how our participants approached the problem of what to do with these vacant properties.

About the Artist: A. Jamali Rad

Marc Ngui is a Sandwich based multi-disciplinary artist/designer/world builder. He was trained as an architect before venturing into the world of DIY comics, zines and self-publishing.

As a cartoonist, diagrammatician and illustrator, he has published two graphic novels and contributed to many non-fiction book projects (some of which have won awards.) His professional creative practice spans many disciplines, including illustration (for newspapers, magazines and websites), storyboarding, animation, web design, and film and video production (including scenic painting, video editing and art direction).

He has worked as a video journalist for the CBC and a comics journalist for the Toronto Star. His painting, drawing and installation work as a contemporary artist has been exhibited across Canada and internationally. His current practice aspires to help direct our collective creative potential towards generating a more equitable and Gaia friendly future. You can see more of his work at www.happysleepy.com