Community kitchen to be a 'safe space' to unite a core neighbourhood

For 40 years, the location at 309 Wyandotte Street West was a Chinese restaurant serving up barbeque pork. Soon it will be serving up meals again, but this time with a greater purpose.

The Downtown Windsor Community Collaborative is renovating the gutted space to become a community kitchen.

It won't be a soup kitchen, but a regular restaurant that will offer training opportunities and on a regular basis attract community members and families to eat a free meal together to foster a sense of community.

"So this will be an ongoing program, but the hope is that once people experience that they will want to contribute and they will find ways...we can help them find ways to contribute in our kitchen here in our other programming," said community developer Alex Song.

Song said businesses, organizations and tradespeople are pitching in to help fund the $40,000 renovation to bring the establishment up to snuff.

Song said the kitchen will help people from one of their programs who are recovering from addiction get job training.

"Once people have gone through that program we found that the success rate drastically increases as long as they stay connected to different community groups," said Song.

Alex Song is the community developer for the Downtown Windsor Community Collaborative. (Dale Molnar/CBC)

Ward 3 Coun. Renaldo Agostino says it not only will help people with food insecurity but also help bring people together.

"It's grassroots and it's a fantastic thing for the area," said Agostino. "The potential is huge. You just look down the street where the food bank is and you see the lineups there and you could think that the majority of those people will come and use the kitchen facilities at that place and get help from that place," said Agostino.

"I've been working with the youth downtown here for about three years and finding that many of these children are not sitting around in their houses. They're outside a lot of the day. They have families, they're not homeless, but they are continually coming to us for food, coming to us for programming, coming to us to find a safe space," said Song.

Song expects the renovations will be finished in time for the kitchen to open in April.