It appears the Windsor Port Authority is now listening to proponents who want to save Ojibway Shores.
CEO David Cree tells CTV News they are putting the industrial development of the land on hold, and support the idea to preserve the 33-acres of environmentally sensitive land.
Cree adds they are looking for a fair market price for the property, but will consider land exchanges.
This would be the first time the WPA has publicly indicated support to protect the land along the shores of the Detroit River, which is managed by the port authority and owned by the federal government.
But it doesn’t go far enough for some environmental advocates who appeared before Windsor city council on Monday night.
"The port does a fantastic job of protecting it, restoring it, doing what they can,” said Tom Henderson, the chair of the public advisory council for the Detroit River Canadian Cleanup. “However if you go to their website, they still have it open for development and I'm not aware of any commitment they've made to save the property forever.
“That's why it's so important that we get it.”
Council on Monday formally requested the federal government conserve the property as an environmentally-protected area and says it will continue discussions with the port authority.
"We'll meet again in a few weeks’ time and I hope we move the needle forward with the ultimate goal of trying to preserve Ojibway Shores in a natural state in perpetuity," mayor Drew Dilkens said after the meeting. “I think this is a very significant piece, it's a piece worth fighting for.”
Members of the public and local politicians have made a number of attempts to stop the potential of developments on the land that connects many of Windsor's ecologically diverse Carolinian forests and species with the Detroit River.
The city budgeted $1.5 million dollars to purchase the land a few years back -- an amount that seems to fall short of what the authority wants for the property. The WPA valued the shores land at more than $10-million in a recent submission to have it included in the community benefits portion of the Gordie Howe International Bridge construction.
Windsor West NDP MP Brian Masse, who has long been advocating to protect the land, took the fight to Question Period in the House of Commons on Tuesday.
“My community will never allow it,” said Masse. “We've stopped them before, we will stop them again. We won't let this happen to this ecological treasure for all of Canada."
Masse called on federal Transport Minister Marc Garneau to work constructively with the port authority.
