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“I know this project has been sitting idle for awhile, but we’ve got big plans for the project, exciting designs, new architecture, different retail uses,” describing Graffiti as a mixed-use project all the businesses and residents come together to build a community.

We like the historical character of the building

“We are really looking at this is a destination for the City of Windsor, where people will flock there and give another reason for people to be a part of this development.”

Photo by Dan Janisse / Windsor Star

He was at Monday’s meeting to watch council approve a package of incentives under the city’s Brownfield Development Community Improvement Plan, which were designed 10 years ago to encourage the cleanup and redevelopment of the city’s 559 acres of potentially contaminated former industrial land. AIPL is getting $3 million in incentives, including $23,795 to help with environmental studies and $94,217 in reduced development charges. The biggest component of the package are rebates on 70 per cent of the increased municipal taxes paid when a property is improved. In this case, the development will increase annual taxes from $44,490 to $441,736, so the grants will add up to $2.9 million in savings over 11 years.

Singh said the grants were “very, very important” because they help make the project financially feasible. The remediation of contaminated soil is 95 per cent complete, he said.

The property was used starting in 1783 as a horse-drawn passenger carriage operation. It later (around 1890) became the trolley and bus storage and maintenance operation for the SW&A Street Railway and eventually a hardware store.