Plans for the relocation of the Downtown Mission to the former Central Library building have been scrapped.
In a twist to the ongoing saga on its future, the Mission's request for a mortgage on the former library building was withdrawn by its bank, thus pitching plans to relocate across Ouellette Avenue.
Instead, to ensure the Mission can maintain its programming and retrieve the cash deposits it placed in the former library, an unnamed developer has been signed to take that building.
The development created an urgent need for new space. To that end, Reverend Ron Dunn, the executive director of the Mission, announced Thursday evening that it had secured the property at 819 Ouellette Ave. to build a brand-new expansion.
Dunn said the move would enable the Mission to take the land without a mortgage and keep its critical outreach services intact.
"I've said it a number of times, this is ground zero for addiction, for mental health, for homelessness, and the housing crisis," said Dunn. "All those things come to a head here, yet we remain unsupported by government. That also leads us to the fact that we're going to have to stage in. This is about living to fight another day."
The collapse of the library building mortgage plan is the latest complication to affect the Mission this year. While $3.5 million was raised in 2019, the Mission came up $750,000 short of its goal for 2019. An increase in the demand for services has put a strain on the Mission's chequebook.
The change in plans throws a wrench into creating an affordable housing option. The idea was to place 29 affordable-housing units and over a hundred emergency shelter beds in the Central Library building. Dunn said that the housing plan is on hold due to this development, but he pointed out that the Mission had to be creative on the fly.
"This decision was taken from us, right?" said Dunn. "We were out of time. We were not given any more time, and so we had to make a new plan. We looked at other properties. We needed something that we could secure immediately, and that [819 Ouellette] was the property available to us."
Dunn confirmed that half of the $1.2 million needed to purchase and develop the land at 819 Ouellette was donated by Wesley United Church, which provided the Mission with the gift two years ago. The other half came through an anonymous donor.
The Central Library building first opened in the mid-1970s as the headquarters for the Windsor Public Library. The City of Windsor sold the building to the Mission for $3.6 million in the spring of 2018. The library's central operations and collections have been temporarily relocated to the historic Paul Martin Building.
The Mission hopes to start construction on the 819 Ouellette site this summer.
