Canopy a ‘monstrosity,’ says widow of riverfront champion Roy Battagello

The widow of former city councillor Roy Battagello, who for decades championed the creation of Windsor’s riverfront parkland, says she felt sick to her stomach when she learned this week of plans for a massive canopy to cover the Riverfront Festival Plaza.

“I have been all week and I’ve lost sleep. I just can’t believe it,” Nancy Battagello said Friday, expressing how the $32 million proposed plan that goes to council Monday contradicts the original vision for a riverfront of greenery, devoid of buildings. “Actually, I’ve been in shock all week. It’s such a monstrosity.”

As of Friday afternoon, about a dozen people had either written letters or registered to speak on the proposal — a mixture of proponents and opponents. A city report recommends that council endorse the plaza’s final design, direct administration to seek public input and include it as part of the 2022 capital budget deliberations. If the project ultimately gets greenlighted, the city would seek to change its longstanding rules that forbid structures to be built on the riverfront that rise higher than the crown of Riverside Drive. The canopy would rise 14 metres above.

Nancy Battagello said she and her husband, who served five terms on council in the 1960s and 1970s and died in 2005 at the age of 78, always believed it was the river that was the attraction on the riverfront, not structures. For decades he campaigned to acquire railroad and industrial properties along the river to create a ribbon of green that’s become one of the city’s gems. While most agree something must be done to address the “heat island” that is Festival Plaza — opened 10 years ago as a stage with a mass of shadeless asphalt — she believes the asphalt should simply be ripped up and replaced with grass and trees.

It opens the door for all kinds of other development

Howard Weeks, whose father the former mayor Bert Weeks also championed the creation of riverfront parkland, said the canopy proposal goes against his father’s desire to keep the waterfront clear of structures.

“It opens the door for all kinds of other development,” said Weeks who along with Nancy Battagello made similar arguments last year when council was pondering building the Celestial Beacon to house the restored No. 351 streetcar in a building that would stand seven feet above Riverside Drive.

“If they are allowed to do this, a monstrosity on the riverfront 46 feet in the air, they can do anything,” said Weeks, who was critical of the eye-popping $32-million pricetag instead of a much cheaper grass-and-trees approach.

“It’s so much overkill,” he said.

But Pooya Baktash, co-founder of Toronto-based Partisans architecture firm responsible for the Festival Plaza’s design, emphasized Friday that the canopy is just one component of an overall design that includes a massive lawn to the east, a central “eddy” with a water feature, and multiple islands filled with landscaping with walkways meandering around them — emulating a river in recognition of the adjacent Detroit River.

“People say $32 million, but it’s a huge space, two times the size of a football field,” he said.

He said the project started with the design of a public space, with a vision of creating a 24/7, four-season public space. Then, based on public engagement in 2019, it was clear that something like a canopy would be needed. The majority of people, 85.1 per cent, said they would never go to the Festival Plaza unless there was some specific event happening there and were critical of the mass of asphalt. Sixty-three per cent criticized the lack of shade.

“It’s one of the few cities where you see this endless park and suddenly you have this big asphalt black hole in the middle of it, right in the most important part of the city,” said Baktash.

The canopy alone would cost $13.5 million, with $8.3 million going to landscaping, lighting and converted shipping containers for amenities like washrooms. Capacity would top 5,000 people.

Baktash said rather than a monstrosity, the sleek, modern canopy is designed to look like it’s gently hovering over the water.

Its height above Riverside Drive is unavoidable he said, given that it must be positioned above the Festival stage wh ich reaches 7.8 metres above the drive, must take into account snow load and be designed with shapes and angles carefully calculated by structural engineers. But the canopy won’t block the view of the river, he argued. It’s designed so the river can be viewed from within, and it will be made with a combination of cloth-like material and translucent material, with the translucent material at the top.

“I would say it would frame the river, it wouldn’t block it through that translucent material,” said Baktash, who will make a presentation to council Monday.

The translucency will help provide shade in the summer but light in the colder months like March and November when a circus-like tent would cause people to freeze.

“You can have a jazz festival starting at noon with natural light and go all the way to the night with light shows and the concert,” he said. It was also designed to welcome in the prevailing winds during the summer to cool things down, while blocking the cold prevailing winds in the fall and spring.

“For us, it was how we can design a project that all the time gets used,” said Baktash, explaining the Festival Plaza meant to be open all the time for use by everyone.

bcross@postmedia.com