General Hospital developers seized opportunity where City of Windsor fell short

City councilor Sandra Hollingsworth questioned Italo Ferrari when he came to city council recently, about if he owned other buildings in Southern Ontario that his company planned to develop into long-term care facilities. He refused to answer. We found another to add to the list and this one is in Windsor, Ont.

It is located at 930 Marion Ave. and was the former Science City Museum.

When Ferrari and his partner Mike Anobile rezoned it recently, a Windsorite echoed much of what other Saultites are saying about the General Hospital and former St. Veronica School: “since this property was sold, the owner has failed to maintain said property... The property was a home for drug sales and homeless groups living on the property. The owner did not physically maintain the building, grass, parking lot, etc. The Windsor Police service has been called numerous times and responded to neighbour complaints regarding this building. It’s hard to imagine how an owner that cannot take care of a vacant structure is going to provide a suitable building for others to call home,” wrote Jonscot Gibbons of Windsor.

“I think it’s time we look at out of town investors, who fail to maintain their property,” he also said.

A common theme of the numerous companies that Ferrari and Anobile use to buy property is that many are in need of severe repairs. It is actually the business model of these many, many companies that they use to purchase or mortgage property all over Ontario.

So when the City of Windsor, which promised to help out the Science City Museum that was located in 930 Marion Ave. with repairs and did not fulfill its promise, Ferrari and Anobile swooped in and bought the building.

The 50-year-old building, which housed exhibitions about climate change with Science North, exhibits from the Canadian Space Agency, which received an award for community achievement from Windsor Working with Immigrant Women, and was presented by Dr. David Suzuki with the Canvas Campus Mother Earth Award was given 60 days to move out in Sept. 2015.

The museum made a request to the City of Windsor for further funding and for another lease extension but was not granted either.

The CBC reported that the previous city council had agreed to provide $500,000 to help make repairs to the ailing building, but that never was approved.

The building was said to have needed $2-M in repairs at the time, including repairing or replacing a leaking roof and failing floor but the museum couldn’t apply for many government grants unless the City of Windsor allowed the museum to own the building or have a long-term lease.

There were buckets to gather water from the leaking roof throughout the building.

So when the museum was forced by the City of Windsor to move out, Ferrari and Anobile swooped in under a company named Berkshire 930 Marion Inc. and in May 2020 asked for the zoning of the building to be changed from institutional to lodging house, multiple dwelling or residential care facility.

Despite pleas from citizens, that city council passed it unanimously.

Ferrari and Anobile presented that their plans were to add a third story for a residential care facility, or add a third story for a lodging facility or to make it into a residential apartment building.

Although these ideas were presented to council and citizens came to council to express their disgust with turning the building into a lodging house, Ferrari said these plans were not economically feasible and that the residential care facility was the goal.

That long-term care application, like the one for the former General Hospital site, still has not been granted.