Windsor Mayor Eddie Francis outlined his three economic initiatives in front of hundreds of people Wednesday, at the Caboto Club, during his State of the City address.

During the address, Francis made several announcements about Windsor’s future.  One of those things includes a modernization to city libraries.   In order to keep up with the ever changing digital age, Francis is recommending city council allocate $5.8-million to renovate the area’s libraries. Several branches will see this modernization; something Francis says is extremely needed.

“Libraries need to be retooled to meet the new realities in the digital information age,” says Francis.

To accompany these modernizations, the city will open a new location inside of Devonshire Mall.

The city currently pays $5.1-million with their current street lighting system, a price that will continue to rise. To combat this, Francis is looking replace the current orange luminous lights with LED bulbs. Francis says this could save the city close to $36-million.

Cyclists will have something to be happy about, that is if the city can allocate $3.5-million for new bike paths. Those funds would come from the 2014 budget.

Francis believes three economic initiatives have the potential to drive Windsor further into the future.

One of the city’s goals is for Windsor to become the first Canadian city to have an all green transit fleet. The “green” push comes mere months after talks with Chinese firm, BYD, halted. Through their search, the city discovered American company Proterra. While, no official deal has been made, the city remains in talks with the firm.

The city is also looking to one of Detroit’s largest employers for potential future endeavours. Francis says he’s in talks with Quicken Loans for a “live here, work there,” opportunity.

The last initiative Francis outlined would see the University of Windsor continue to grow its presence in the downtown.

Windsor’s aquatic centre water park now has an official name. Francis announced the back-end of the aquatic centre, will be named Adventure Bay Water Park.  The name was chosen from over 900 applications.

Finally the mayor announced his intention to build a new city hall. Francis says the new facility is already budgeted for and would carry no extra cost to the tax payer.  Francis hopes the facility can be built by 2017.