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A lookalike replacement for the Charles Brooks Memorial Peace Fountain along Windsor’s riverfront will cost $2.4 million more than anticipated — but still less than the year-round alternative that gave city council serious sticker shock over the summer.
City council will decide on Monday whether to spend $10.5 million on a new floating fountain for Reaume Park, where its iconic illuminated predecessor shot streams of water into the air for more than four decades.
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According to Windsor Mayor Drew Dilkens, that’s not as much as the lowest bidding proponent said in July a fully winterized fountain would cost, after the price came back so over budget that council — never revealing the price tag — voted to scrap negotiations during an in-camera meeting.
But it is more than the $8.1 million council approved for the project more than two years ago.
“The Peace Fountain is one of those iconic features that I think everyone appreciates in the City of Windsor,” Dilkens told reporters Monday.
The cost has come down “dramatically on the like-for-like replacement, so city council will have to make a decision.”
Although council is faced with a challenging budget year — property owners could see their highest tax increase in decades in 2025 — Dilkens said the operating budget is what’s posing difficulty, not the capital budget that would fund a new fountain.
“The operating budget is where council really has to focus their attention and try to bring down the annual operating costs,” he said. “We want to continue to use our capital budget to make investments in roads and sewers and quality of life amenities.”
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The Charles Brooks Memorial Peace Fountain, the biggest and only international floating fountain in the world, was disconnected and barged to the city’s Lakeview Marina for the last time in the fall of 2023 after 45 years in Reaume Park.
The fountain, which had outlived its original projected 20-year lifespan by double, became a floating memorial to founding CAW Local 444 president Charles Brooks in 1978. Brooks was murdered by a fired Chrysler worker the year before.
Council voted in May 2022 to replace the fountain, with a lookalike made from parts available in Canada and the U.S. Maintenance on the original fountain had become a costly challenge, because it required replacement parts from Europe that were hard to come by.
Those plans changed during a closed-door meeting this summer, when council voted to cease negotiations with a proponent that could have built a replacement fountain — one that would stay in the water year-round instead of being hauled out each fall — for significantly more than what had been budgeted.
City staff were then directed to explore “cost-effective options” for a new fountain.
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A staff report council will discuss next week identified two options: a like-for-like floating fountain with LED lighting that propels water up to 21 metres in the air; and a land-based fountain, also with LED lighting and with 137 programmable swivel nozzle jets that propel water up to 12 metres into the river.
The first choice, which administration recommends, would cost an estimated $10.5 million, while the second would cost an estimated $18.8 million.
The annual estimated maintenance and operating costs for Option 1 are $160,000, which is similar to the historical cost of the previous fountain, the report said.
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