Ward 3 councillor wants to end drinking and noise in one Windsor riverfront parking lot

City administration is being asked to explore options to prevent people from drinking, making noise and gathering with their cars at all hours of the night in a parking lot along Windsor's riverfront.

Ward 3 councillor Renaldo Agostino made the request for a report due to a number of complaints he's received from people living in apartment buildings near Lot 16.

"They say councillor, these people are out until 4 or 5, 6 o'clock in the morning performing burnouts. I went down there myself and there's people sitting there on lawn chairs, smoking hookah, drinking booze and it's one o'clock in the morning. I'm looking at them, 'what are you guys doing here? You can't be doing this here.' They just look at you like they're an alien," he says.

The parking lot in question is along Riverside Drive near the foot of Ouellette Avenue, right near the Spirit of Windsor train display.

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Agostino says he's looking for ways to potentially repurpose Lot 16, if that means removing the parking spaces and turning it into green space, or forcing people to pay before they can even enter by installing an electronic gate at the parking lot entrance.

He says they can't just keep calling police and bylaw enforcement to deal with this ongoing problem.

"It's not a battle that is new to that particular lot. It's a battle that myself and the previous councillor before me worked really hard at trying to accommodate the residents in those buildings," he says. "But we've lost that battle and we have to find a different way to win. We're not just going to give up and say you guys get to do whatever you want."

Ward 3 councillor Renaldo Agostino says they need to look at other options.

"If you want to come into that parking lot, you have to pay before you get in there. Whatever it takes, I need administration to come back to us with an answer that's better than we'll send bylaw and police down there for a blitz, because it just doesn't work. We've lost every round," he adds.

Administration is expected to come back with a report on the issue at a future meeting of city council.