‘It’ll be amazing’ — Gordie bridge expected to super-boost Windsor-Detroit tourism

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The Gordie Howe International Bridge may still be under construction, and the international crossing’s opening date not yet announced, but American two-wheeled tourists are already lining up to bike into Canada.

“It’s quite surreal … we already have people talking about it and planning,” said Todd Scott, executive director of the Detroit Greenways Coalition. He said those conversations are taking place in Detroit, Chicago and across the U.S. Midwest.

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It took some political lobbying, but the new $6.4-billion bridge connecting Windsor and Detroit will include safe and separated (and free) access for pedestrians and cyclists.

“This instantly goes on everybody’s bucket list if you’re a cyclist,” Scott told the Star. “I think you’ll be surprised how many cyclists start using that bridge as soon as it opens.”

North America’s longest cable-stayed bridge is expected to open next fall.

Scott was one of three co-chairs at the latest binational State of the Strait conference, hosted Tuesday by the Great Lakes Institute for Environmental Research at the University of Windsor. Over 200 people from both sides of the Detroit River participated, and the Gordie — and its potential to significantly boost local tourism — was a big part of the conversation.

Cycling the Gordie will be a challenge for some. The 2.5-kilometre span boasts a gradual rise, but the five-per-cent grade “can be a little steep for some people,” Heather Grondin, chief relations officer with the Windsor Detroit Bridge Authority, told delegates.

The bridge authority has yet to announce the days and hours for pedestrian and cyclist access, but Scott, as well as other cycling and tourism spokespeople at this week’s gathering, told the Star they’re pushing for 24/7, year-round.

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Visitors to Detroit are gonna be blown away

Waiting in Detroit to greet cyclists who venture over from Windsor will be the starting point of a multi-use urban and riverfront trail that has seen over US$1 billion invested over the past 10 years, with even more to come.

“It’ll be amazing,” said Scott, adding visitors to Detroit “are gonna be blown away.”

One of the leaders of that “transformative” urban undertaking said it’s the result of “hundreds and hundreds of public meetings.” Karen DuPerry, construction executive with the Detroit Riverfront Conservancy, told the Star that, rather than telling residents what the city was planning, citizens were instead asked to tell the planners and architects what they wanted.

The result? A 5.5-mile ‘Detroit International Riverwalk‘ packed with parks, amenities, green expanses and event spaces geared to the recreational desires of local neighbourhoods. And it doesn’t just passively sit there — DuPerry said it’s being “activated” year-round, with concerts, events and gatherings already attracting millions of annual visitors, about a fifth of them from the Canadian side.

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“Our riverfront should be for everybody and anybody,” DuPerry said during one of the State of the Strait conference panels.

An architectural designer with 40 years at General Motors, DuPerry has been “on loan” the past 20 years to the Detroit Riverfront Conservancy. Her current focus is the 22-acre Ralph C. Wilson Jr. Centennial Park, opening next year. Seen from Windsor’s shoreline, it’s the waterfront industrial area in front of, and next to, the U.S. Post Office building west of the downtown highrises. It will include sports courts, water and play gardens and host regular events.

That park and the riverfront trail are also part of the Joe Louis Greenway, a 50-kilometre biking and walking trail under development — and budgeted at about US$350 million — that will loop around downtown Detroit.

Christina Peltier, a City of Detroit public works deputy director, told this week’s Windsor audience that community engagement resulted in developers looking at a half-mile’s width along the trail and focusing on neighbourhood enhancement and development. Safety and opportunities for new businesses and affordable housing are important considerations, Peltier said, adding about a quarter of Detroiters don’t have access to vehicles, so public transit is also emphasized.

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Visitors on bike, said Scott, “can see the beautiful side of the city, the gritty side and the food side of Detroit.”

Cyclists can enjoy a meal in Mexican town and Polish specialties in Hamtramck on a single trip, he said, “an amazing thing to do.”

Scott’s Greenways Coalition launched in 2007 when a group of non-profit grassroots organizations felt “Detroit was not doing what we wanted” and citizens demanded action. The City of Detroit and the Detroit Riverfront Conservancy eventually “took our job away,” Scott told the Star, but his group continues with support and advocacy.

DuPerry’s involvement began after a sit-down with a local foundation that asked her what she needed to get started. Tuesday’s audience members laughed when she recalled asking for US$50 million and the response was: ‘OK.’ She said she regrets not having asked for more.

Since then, however, hundreds of millions more — including from public-private partnerships — have flowed into the mega-project transforming Detroit, including turning former industrial lands into what DuPerry calls the city’s “ecologically beautiful waterfront.” For several years, it was named America’s No. 1 riverfront walk.

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Across the border, naturalist Phil Roberts, a former parks and recreation director in Windsor and Amherstburg, told the conference that same “enormous opportunity” exists in Windsor, with major parts of a multi-use trail to encircle the city already there — Herb Gray Parkway; Little River Corridor and Windsor Riverfront Trail.

We want trails

When he was Windsor’s parks director, Roberts said green space “connectivity” was identified as the No. 1 desire of citizens in a public survey as part of an in-house effort to develop a parks master plan: “The public said … we want trails.”

But when it comes to attracting new industry, or identifying lands to build new housing, Roberts said it’s “easier to clearcut woodlots,” drain wetlands and develop remaining natural areas.

“We’re still losing green space in this city,” added fellow panelist Anneke Smit, a University of Windsor associate professor and director of the Centre for Cities at Windsor Law.

“The politics in this community are tricky, always,” said Smit.

Working closely with others on development of the Ojibway National Urban Park, Smit said opening up green space access to the public and getting citizens to connect to it, “that’s when they step up.”

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Pointing to the challenges in getting there, Roberts referred to the long 30-year campaign it took to protect Ojibway Shores, an ecologically important link between the inland Ojibway complex and the Detroit River.

Persistence is key, according to Detroit Greenways’ Scott, whether it’s protecting and preserving urban green space for public use or building bike lanes and other active transportation options: “Our strategy has always been — start with good, then work on better, and then best.”

The Bridge Authority’s Grondin told delegates that public transit discussions have already started with authorities on both sides of the border. Currently, Transit Windsor offers international bus service through the Windsor-Detroit Tunnel.

Pointing to the increasing popularity of e-bikes, Scott said he can foresee some of the thousands of health sector workers and other daily cross-border commuters switching to bicycles to get to work.

“E-bikes change the whole thing,” he told the Star.

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