How’s this for a lesson in downtown revitalization?
More than a decade after London city hall invested millions in core developments – Budweiser Gardens and Covent Garden Markets, to name two – Fanshawe College is mulling what could be another landscape-changing purchase.
The college has made a conditional offer to buy the Market Tower building at the southwest corner of downtown’s troubled Dundas-Richmond St. intersection – and their arrival there could completely change the public’s perception of the core.
Fanshawe is already renovating a huge building just west of Dundas-Richmond, the first part of what could become a multi-site downtown campus.
Market Tower is owned by downtown land baron Shmuel Farhi. Fanshawe officials say several conditions are attached to the offer, and the next few months will be spent sorting through them.
The building, home to a McDonald’s on the ground floor, houses several city hall offices. The Ontario Works offices are already slated to be moved, and CTV has reported the remaining city staff could be headed to another Farhi-owned property, the Bell building.
http://www.lfpress.com/2013/08/10/fa...owntown-london