Posted Nov 26, 2012, 3:34 AM
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Registered User
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Join Date: Mar 2012
Location: London, Ontario
Posts: 44
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Misleading title, but news nonetheless.
Source: http://blogs.windsorstar.com/2012/11...-the-downtown/
Quote:
400 jobs coming to downtown Windsor
About 400 Sutherland Global Services call centre employees are moving to the company’s downtown offices, joining 600 who are already there.
“They’re going to have close to 1,000 people in there,” landlord Italo Ferrari told The Star Thursday, confirming that his 500 Ouellette Ave. building, which had been 50 per cent occupied for a number of years — ever since the City of Windsor moved out — will be 95 per cent full.
The employees at the company’s College Avenue offices should be moving in before the end of the year, he said, expressing relief the deal is done. For a year, there had been worry that the entire operation would bolt from Windsor, answering the calls of economic development suitors from other Ontario cities.
“There was this dark cloud that they might be going out of the city,” Ferrari said.
“It’s been a roller coaster for a year. Finally, I offered them the right deal. I really trimmed all the bells and whistles.”
What sealed the deal, he said, was the attraction of being located downtown, plus Ferrari’s offer of parking in his garage located near Ouellette and Wyandotte.
“I think it’s a big score for the downtown, bringing all these jobs.”
Downtown BIA chairman Larry Horwitz completely agrees.
Adding hundreds of employees to the downtown mix will help create the congestion you need to rejuvenate the area, he said.
“You need people working downtown, you need people living downtown,” Horwitz. When you combine the Sutherland impact with more than 2,000 college and university students moving downtown, as well as new construction of the city’s aquatic centre, downtown is being primed for rebirth, he said. “I’ve watched the downtown decline all these years and to watch the turnaround is a really good thing.”
Part of the space going to Sutherland is Ouellette Avenue storefront occupied by the BIA offices, so the BIA will have to find a new home, said Horwitz. But that’s fine, he added. “I hope we get kicked out of where else we go,” because that means more businesses moving into the downtown.
Ferrari said Sutherland is taking about 70,000 square feet in total at 500 Ouellette.
A spokeswoman for Sutherland, Nancy Breed, was unavailable for an interview Thursday due to the U.S. holiday.
In an email, she said: “Sutherland is very committed to the Windsor community and takes great pride in its spectacular workforce there.”
Coun. Ron Jones, who represents the west-end area the Sutherland is leaving, said he’s confident the west side will be OK, despite losing the jobs.
There are operations moving from the downtown to the west end, he said, citing the HMCS Hunter and the harbour commission office. “It’s a tit for tat,” said Jones. “I don’t see this as a body blow to the west side.”
Mayor Eddie Francis said he’d been kept informed that a Sutherland Global move into the downtown was in the works.
While there had been speculation that the library’s central branch was being eyed by the company, Francis said that building remains in play for a large potential new private employer.
The library’s main branch on Ouellette Avenue “continues to be a piece of property we may require to facilitate an economic development project we continue to be engaged in,” said Francis.
The previous library board had agreed to move out and establish a new downtown presence on the main floor of the Art Gallery of Windsor building, but the mayor said it wouldn’t be moving until a new tenant is ready to take its place.
“The bottom line is this, if we need that building tomorrow, the library’s moving,” he said.
With files from Doug Schmidt
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