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Since the bridge company often registers the ownership with numbered corporations or lawyers, it’s possible it owns even more Windsor real estate than that. The analysis identified 182 total real estate transactions involving the bridge company or affiliates, with billionaire bridge owner Matty Moroun spending a total of $52 million on Windsor property. They’re behind chain link fences, with a security company’s logo stamped on the plywood covering the doors and windows, shingles and siding peeling off a little more each day.Ī painstaking analysis of property records conducted by The Star reveals that spring day in 1996 was just the beginning. Now, of course, it’s easy to tell which homes the bridge company owns. Because the bridge company kept the homes reasonably well maintained and occupied by renters until the mid-2000s, nobody really noticed. Thirteen of Clifford’s Indian Road neighbours also took the men in suits up on their offer that spring, with the deals all closing on their homes in the 600 and 700 blocks on the same day – May 21, 1996. He sold his home to the Ambassador Bridge. Head built his family’s home and many others on Indian Road. Article content Home builder Cliff Head stands by his pickup truck in this photo taken in the mid-50s. The neighbours literally would cut their lawns with hedge trimmers. The whole roadway was covered over with trees. “It was one of the most beautiful streets in Windsor. “I remember thinking, ‘It’s a good thing he can’t be here to see this.’ It would have broken his heart to see what they had done to Indian Road,” Terry said.

The offer – $134,000 cash for his home, plus legal and moving expenses – wasn’t coming around again.Ĭlifford and his wife took the deal and moved to Amherstburg. The truck plaza was coming whether he sold his house or not, Terry remembers the lawyers saying. Or he could live with a massive truck plaza the company was planning to build in his backyard.

where he had lived since 1950, the year he built the house and many others in the neighbourhood. The men were lawyers from the Ambassador Bridge company, and they were there to offer his father a deal.Ĭlifford could sell them the home at 670 Indian Rd. Clifford’s son Terry Head was home at the time, and remembers it like it was yesterday.

Bridge baron