I was down at the University of Winnipeg the other day and it was nice to see that Winnipeg is actually capable of some interesting and attractive development.
The buildings, environment and general architecture is very nice. Nothing earth shattering, but certainly a pleasant and appealing little quarter. So much better than the 1960s style monstrosity it was back when i was there…not in the sixties i may add…they just never updated.
It goes to show that if left to do the work, Winnipeg is quite capable of doing development well.
In the area i work too, there are a number of interesting buildings going up in the U of M Smartpark. It is such a pity that work could not be done downtown. How interesting our downtown would look if some of that development was directed to North Portage….blow up a few of the dives and get that sort of business down there. But, with the sort of crap that is going on downtown now and the general perception of seediness the downtown is starting to exude it would be a hard sell.
Although it is time to start making that case and taking the steps to make it happen. As has happened so many time before, the downtown is at a tipping point…either work to attract the sort of investment and development dollars that are clearly out there or let the downtown continue downward. To fail to do so will ensure Winnipeg will become a mildly attractive doughnut around a depressed, slimy and corrupted empty core.
Today, there was a report that the old garage on Market Square may be turned into a patio as part of the Republic nightclub. I have always thought the space could be refurbished and there was talk of a cafe going in there back when I owned a business in the district. With a glass roof and the front glassed in it could be an awesome space. Not sure about it as an extension of a night club, but as a cafe, restaurant or coffee place it would be a great addition to the area.
Of course, as soon as it was announced as a possible project everyone who has a condo in the area was out complaining about the possible noise. On one level these people may have a point. But it has gotten to the point where I don’t even want to give people the benefit of the doubt. The constant bitching about everything is too much. It has to be said that living downtown, any downtown, is going to involve a certain amount of noise. A vibrant area is better for everyone and every piece of development is going to improve the area and make it more attractive.
And I dont know how noisy it is really going to be. I dont think any condos actually back on to the garage or even overlook it. I just think the people are whinging about the potential for people to be wandering around at 2. am half pissed. Well, move to Whyte Ridge then. Nice and quiet out there.
Bring on the development and let’s hope this isn’t another false announcement that will fizzle.
But i am still dry
Perhaps someone can explain this to me. Now, before anyone gets all huffy and all Canadian about this, let me be the first the say that the English have yet to figure out how showers work….so sit back down there Captain Canuck.
But here we go. The Romans had this thing called the Cloaca Maxima. Pliny the Elder called this the greatest engineering achievement of the Romans. It was started 500 years BC and was added to for a few hundred years. The Romans exported the technology and everyone, with perhaps the exception of the French, adopted this wonderful innovation wholeheartedly. Even the English, especially those Victorians, managed to expand and refine the technology.
The technology?
Drains and sewers.
Bet you thought I was going to say stadiums (stadia?)
So how come Winnipeg hasn’t learnt about this great leap forward? How is that after every rainfall that exceeds a damp sprinkle, half of the city is brought to a standstill. Underpasses are flooded and main arteries grind to a halt. The local media inevitably feature a picture of some sap running into the flooded underpass to “save” some dolt who thought that “while the Jeep Cherokee ahead of me got stuck in Lake Jubilee, my Chevette couldn’t possibly flood.”
The drain and the sewer are pretty simple things to engineer but Winnipeg seems a little lost by the concept.
And it is not as if we don’t get rain here. It is not like England or Vancouver, we don’t get that constant drizzle, but when it does rain, it is like a monsoon. It is not a global warming thing either. I think it has always been like this. We also get the massive spring thaw. So again, why haven’t we figured how how to deal with a little excess water?
Big hole and a tube. Really that is it. Maybe if we called it a Lite Water Transit System, we could find the funding to get them put in.
I am just asking. Now, to get my chevette out of this lake.
My Company, Canadian Redevelopment And Procurement (TSX:CRAP) will be building a new retail, apartment, condo, executive habitation space in downtown Winnipeg. Leveraging new tax incentives and pulling financing from Manitoba’s Investment And Redevelopment Subsidy Exchange (MI ARSE) the company will build on land yet to be determined – but somewhere downtown. Ish. An infill project to revitalize downtown, increasing safety and supporting the city’s new redevelopment plan, which we haven’t really read yet but it has a nice cover and the exective summary was a good read. The project will feature a 75-storey building made of Manitoba limestone, glass, steel and magical dreams, designed by a very famous architect, or my friend Ron, depending on financing. Around the building will be water-colour trees and couples strolling along broad streets holding hands and lattes.
Cost is estimated at ten beellion dollars and work will begin soon. Very soon. Honest. No, really, it will.
Now, just to get one of those awesome executive photos of me half sitting on the edge of my desk clutching important papers, looking serious. Then get a quote from the local development agency hailing this development as the most significant in the last millennium. “This will be to Winnipeg what the Sydney Opera house is to Melbourne.”
I am as happy as anyone to see those cranes pushing up the Human Rights Museum, which looks much bigger than I thought it was going to be. And they look like they are actually hauling out the tons of pigeon poop from the Union Tower finally in preparation for the RRC cooking school. mmmm…insert own joke here. But the Winnipeg skyline is hardly Dubai during the boom. Although you would expect that if you keep reading all the mega projects that are being announced almost weekly.
I am growing mighty tired of projects being trumpetted with big spreads in the paper never to be heard of again. There was another announcement yesterday for a huge in-fill development to go behind Jubilee Avenue to tie in with the rapid transit, or is that light train, corridor…big announcement, ubiquitous shot of developer on desk hailing the mega project. Appropriate burblings from agencies and city hall. Well, excuse me if I am a little underwhelmed. I really will believe it when I see it.
Why so cynical? Well, what of the odd looking medical building on Assiniboine, the huge hi-rise apartment on Assiniboine, the Fort Garry museum, the infill housing on Taylor, the tall apartment building in Kildonan, the rock and roll museum, the St. Charles hotel, the Albert hotel, the 25 lakeview hotel projects downtown, the bigger convention centre, the first nations centre, the Avenue building. And this is just the last year or so.
What’s the other thing still missing?….oh yeah, the stadium. Still no diggers out here at the south end. Just a nice grassy field. Perhaps that is the plan. Play the games on the field and just have us all crowd around the pitch ala Wembley in 1928. Just need a cop on a white horse and a taser to keep us all back.
That whole stadium thing is long on photo ops and vague promises and really short on actual numbers, designs, plans and budgets. Apparently, it is going to cost way more than originally envisioned. Really, I did not see that coming at all. So, either we pay more money to get what we want or scale things back. Nice choice. I can see where that is going. Enjoy those wooden benches chaps and look out for the rain.
Whenever someone comes up with these sort of development ideas, can we just all scream, “Show me the freakin’ money!” No money — no playee. No shovel — no executive photo. I recommend that, in future, we don’t publicise any new developments until there is a shovel in the ground or better yet until the roof guys actually show up with buckets of tar.
Is just me or is it every time there is an announcement about the football stadium the image of the thing changes?
Yesterday, all the political big wigs walked onto a flat piece of grass at the University of Manitoba, got a big digger to dig a hole and then announced construction of the new stadium was underway. The diggers were gone by 2.00pm by the way…so not a lot of construction then. But its all about the optics, and two guys in donkey jackets with a measuring tape and a can of pink spray paint wouldn’t have really cut it as a backdrop for the most significant announcement since the MTS centre broke pavement.
But here is the picture of the new stadium.
Doesn’t quite look like this plan, which was the one bandied about just a few months ago.
Or this one that was posited just a year ago.
Or these from two years ago.
None of these are bad, (and i know the last two were from a different proponent) but it leads me to think that there really is no final plan for the stadium and these fancy graphics are just to appease us masses before some ugly pile of crap goes up. Cynical – perhaps. But there have been a few recent example of that sort of thing….WHRA stand up?
Still I live in hope.
I guess it speaks to the difference between a city with a Premier League side or an NFL team and one with a Canadian football league side. Winnipeg does have the same population as a city like Leeds in England and Elland Road sits about 39,500 Neanderthals quiet comfortably. So why is Winnipeg only building a 33,000 seater? Leicester City, a city of just under 400,000, or about half the size of Winnipeg , built a brand spanking new state of the art 33,000 seater a couple of years ago (below).
So why is Winnipeg being so chintzy on this stadium? As the baseball diamond and MTS centre proved, if you build something swanky people will come out. So a better stadium will mean more ticket sales. I am sure there is a core of people who don’t go to the current stadium because they don’t want to sit on tin benches, exposed to all elements hot and cold, and breathe in the exquisite and piquant aroma of decaying hotdog, popcorn and piss.
Winnipeg’s new stadium will cost around 120 million Canadian dollars (which is either 90 million or 110 million US depending on what day it is). Compare that to Tottenham’s proposed stadium (below), which is being pegged at 400 million quid.
And Minneapolis’ new proposed, although as yet unapproved and not paid for, stadium which is close to 800 million dollars.
News comes down this week that Winnipeg will finally get a new football stadium. After farting around for about 20 years about building a replacement for the heap of crap at Polo Park, the city, province and a private owner, Leonard Asper’s Creswin company hammered out a deal a year or so ago. Then came the financial crash, which didn’t mess up the financing per se with Creswin but the deal was based on Creswin taking over the existing stadium site and converting it into a high-end shopping mall which would finance the stadium build and be used to repay the loans from the government. A lot of big name retailers have suddenly got cold feet about the project, which suddenly put the whole plan on ice. Or Astroturf.
But the belief is now that the economy will come around and that mall will work out at some point. Scary but sometimes you have to be bold. And kudos to those who decided to be bold. But let’s be real here, the reality is that taxpayers are really open to being stuck with the tab.
How Asper pays back 90 mil in five years from the revenue from a shopping mall is a bit of a stretch. The financing, which is based on some tax credit thing that is highly dull is also being credited with getting a deal in place to help developers convert buildings in the downtown into apartments and condos. It is a subsidy and apparently a cheque for 40 grand is enough to help overcome all those objections to rent control and lack of infrastructure. It is a bit frustrating that it was apparently so easy and yet took so long.
The usual suspects are already crowing about how much the stadium deal is going to cost hard working Manitobans. Then again not a peep from anyone when someone earlier in the week suggests spending 300 million bucks on a road to small, isolated northern communities with a combined population of under 1,000. I am not saying that is a bad thing, but why is it anything to do with sports gets people into the streets. Football fans are not parading down Main street bleating about the money being poured into the Winnipeg Symphony. “Food Banks not Faure!”
There is some comment already that Winnipeg isn’t a high end mall town. Really? Have you been out to Pritchard Farm recently and seen the houses out there…or those huge places going up in Waverly West? There is plenty of dough in Winnipeg and the sooner the city puts this “wholesale city” moniker behind it the better.
It will be interesting for me, given my office is next to the proposed site, so it look forward to watching it going up. The concern for me is the way the project is being pulled back somewhat. What was going to be a 40,000 seater is now being downsized to 33, 000. Which I think is slightly smaller than the existing one if I am not mistaken. It concerns me that such a huge decision gets made off the cuff, which leads me to think the final stadium will look nothing like the stadium in all the pictures. But then it wont be a poohole. One hopes the designers are at the forefront of design and do for the Bombers what the baseball stadium did for the Goldeyes and build a world class structure.
Museum for Human Rights
If you drive through downtown Winnipeg, you may be excused for thinking it is the berg that development left behind. The same empty buildings, the same tatty graffiti-tagged derelict dumps waiting for some deus ex machina to drop in and solve the core’s woes.
But the funny thing is, Winnipeg led the nation in growth for building permits over the last two years. Now, that is growth rather than value, but it is an odd stat.
It also points to a continuing problem. There isn’t a lack of money in the city, or a lack of confidence in building, but there is a distinct lack of either will or ability to direct that money and willingness to build toward the downtown.
Each morning, I drive by a couple of large and interesting buildings being built at the Smart Park at the University of Manitoba. I know the concept is to have these research facilities close to the teaching and science centre, but imagine if Winnipeg had someone figured a way to get all that development downtown. What an interesting place the downtown could have been. And with all those boffins and egg heads downtown, the sort of housing and support businesses would also have been pretty cool.
But alas no such luck.
It is also pretty clear that the key to more downtown development is residential. So where are the incentives to put reasonably affordable apartments downtown? There are developers and money enough for this, but most incentives haven’t worked. So time to put up the incentives.
The area near my house has condos and seniors’ places going up all over the place. Why isn’t the city leveraging its money to get some of that development into the Exchange and downtown? And not just more expensive condos on the river drive.
A large chunk of the building in Winnipeg is government funded. The University of Winnipeg buildings, the airport, the museum for human rights, the WHRA building. But this isn’t sustainable. The idea is an expensive one — that if you build these types of buildings the support infrastructure will move in. It has yet to be proven. Winnipeg has a long history of urban renewal projects that have failed. Time to be radical.
The time is here for the city to make some assertive and aggressive efforts to redirect development away from the ‘burbs and back to the downtown. Create communities and development zones that can take the drive, capital and creativity of those who are willing to build in the donut around the core and direct it downtown. Build it and they will come.
It is time for a plan, and a bold vision. For once.
Blue Bombers playing at Osborne Stadium c. 1950
Shameful plug and rambling post alert.
First the plug. I have been working for the last year with my animator friend on three documentaries on aspects of Winnipeg History or more specifically buildings in Winnipeg that have been lost to the wrecker’s ball. The documentary shorts, Reconstructing Winnipeg, are now playing on MTS television. One of the shows is on the old Osborne Stadium, which was home to many of Winnipeg’s sport teams both football and baseball.
The Winnipeg Blue Bombers played at Osbourne Stadium, which sat where the Great West Life Building now sits. The Bombers, along with baseball teams like the Maroons and Goldeyes, played there for many years and it was their success that ultimately doomed the old barn. That and trying to play Canadian football on a soccer field. The Osborne featured ten-yard end zones. I’d like to see how today’s players would have handled that.
But in my research for the doc I answered a question that had always bothered me. What is a “Blue Bomber” anyway?
It has to be one of the oddest names in sport. I always thought it was something to do with the city’s aerospace industry; that being the reason for the name of the old hockey team the Winnipeg Jets. But the name has a really odd beginning.
Winnipeg originally had two teams: the Winnipeg Johnnies (stop snickering back row) named because they originally played at St. John’s Park and then moved to the Osborne, and the imaginatively named Winnipeg Winnipegs, who played at Wesley Park Stadium behind what is now the U of W. Both teams were regularly smoked by the Regina Roughriders and so merged and called themselves the Winnipegs, or the Pegs. A little later, American boxer Joe Louis was being called The Brown Bomber, in a vaguely racist short of way down south. Local Winnipeg sports writer Vince Leah saw the combative style of the Pegs and likened them to Louis and just started calling them the Blue Bombers (after their shirt colours) in his stories. It was a case of the public preferring the weird nickname over the lame official name and the Blue Bombers were born.
It got me thinking about the entire CFL. I always thought the name Hamilton Tiger Cats was a bit redundant. Aren’t all Tigers cats? But again, it was a merger of two teams that created the name; the Hamilton Tigers and the Hamilton Flying Wildcats joined in the 50s. How could you dump Flying Wildcats? Now, that is a team name.
And when you think about it, the Toronto Argonauts is another strange one. What does Toronto have to do with Greek myths, especially seafairing ones? Turns out the team was born from the Argonaut Rowing Club, which makes more sense.
The Roughriders of Saskatchewan and Rough Riders of Ottawa are both named after the guys who ride logs down the river. Makes sense for Ottawa, but not so much for prairie, treeless, flatland around Regina. The BC Lions take their name from two mountain peaks over Vancouver, The Lions, while the Montreal Alouettes (which is skylark in French) take their name from the old Quebecois working song “Alouette.”
Stampeders is pretty obvious, but tell me, is Eskimo the best name they could have come up with? Still, it could have been worse, they could have stuck with the original spelling of the team — Edmonton Esquimaux.
The Met Theatre in Technicolor
There’s a maxim in real estate that a house is only worth what someone is willing to pay for it. There should be a similar maxim for vacant buildings. Its usefulness is only equivalent to the use someone is willing to make of it.
Take the Metropolitan Theatre. Please. Boom Boom.
The Metropolitan encapsulates Winnipeg in a nutshell. Built when the city was a rocking boomtown — a mix of Chicago and Deadwood — it was the biggest, gaudiest and most over the top theatre around, filled to the brim with happy punters and agape audiences. A gilded confection of plaster and paint. Then vaudeville didn’t have the same bang anymore and it was turned into a movie theatre and then closed when even that didn’t attract anyone. Then it sat empty, slowly crumbling and gently filling with pigeon guano.
Meanwhile, outside, the beard and cardigans chained themselves to its shuttered façade and demanded that someone — someone else — do something and save it.
Because it was formally beautiful, famous, decrepitly elegant and, above all, old.
Well so is Elizabeth Taylor but I would want to go into her either.
The former gem has been vacant about as long as I have been in Winnipeg. Sure, it was famous for its vaudeville. It was part of Winnipeg’s fabric. A rich part of the heritage of the city’s golden age. But now it sits like a lump next to the shiny new arena and shiny new library reminding everyone Winnipeg used to be dingy and built of bricks.
The value that is put upon it is an abstract thing. And if some use could be found for it, it would be more valuable. There was talk of it becoming a rock and roll museum. A hotel company took it over to do that, but as with so many other projects around River City it just turns out to be a plan with some fancy graphics on a website…artist’s interpretation of potential future maybe planned envisioned and projected hall of fame. Not to scale…either size or time. Hey, if this is still the plan, then great….but I don’t see any of Neil Young’s guitars heading in there, do you?
People form an illogical attachment to things and then people can’t bear to be parted from them. Some people still hold on to LP records. “You can’t compare the sound quality to an iPod!” No, but then it is a bit cumbersome to pull out your turntable and speakers and play that Pavlov’s Dog LP on a plane.
If we didn’t evolve a but, I’d still be wearing a trilby hat to work, driving a ‘49 Buick, getting a martini from my wife when I get home, relaxing with a pipe and my dog while my wife does the housework…hey hang on.
I am still attached to my Brooke Bond tea card collection. But even I realize it can go on ebay any day now. It is worth nothing, only something vague to me. I know that the minute I kick the bucket they are going in the garbage. So even I am resigned to tossing my Race into Space cards out for the good of my basement storage and for my own campaign to put away childish things.
So the Met theatre. It is time the city stood up and said “OK for one last time, can anyone come up with an idea to do something with the theatre and, if you do, you have six months to get it done or at least started. If not, it comes down. ASAP.” Sure we need to preserve things. But if we can’t come up with a plan and some money to do it, we might as well let the markets decide and move stuff along and free up some space. There is a ton of development going on all around Winnipeg and the city could spend more of its time attracting people to spots downtown than trying to find some developer who will sit on empty building for ten years with some vague plans. It isn’t a heritage building if it’s vacant and crumbling.
It’s just old and empty.
U of Winnipeg Enviro Science building
The drive home today featured a segment on whining students going on how about how expensive things are, how much books cost and how hard it is to find apartments . Same as it ever was. I bet if you went back to the Academy in Athens around 400 BC there be a whole bunch of toga-ed youngsters sitting around waiting for Plato to show up and going on about how hard it was to find a decent hut in the plaka and how much scrolls cost these days. Although it being ancient Greece they would be saying “Are not the price of scrolls expensive?” “Is not the lack of affordable rooms evidence of a lack of virtuous landlords?”
I digress
The thing that got my attention was the Pres of Red River College who indicated that their housing issues were not so bad because they will be bringing their new residence building in the old Union Bank tower “ in a couple of years or so.” And there is the rub.
Everything planned for downtown always seems to be “in a couple of years.”
It is disheartening.
I see plenty of cranes around and half the roads seem to be dug up these summer but the big projects, the exciting and important buildings seem to be stuck in the design or promised phase.
Not to harp upon it again, but the Fort Garry thing is still a crap parking lot and old curling club. But hey they bought that gas station at Broadway and Main. Whoop de freakin do. Where is the effing fort?
The Union Bank building has been empty for as long as I have been in the city and I don’t see anything going on in it to indicate the new residence is anything but a vague plan.
The Museum for Human Rights seems underway but it is very slow. It hasn’t moved much since the beginning of the summer, which probably indicate some shenanigans re funding shortages and they are trying to figure out how to cut back on the plans. It remains a forest of pile drivers and huts and a hole in the ground.
The U of Winnipeg is doing a good job of rebuilding in their little section of downtown but the excitement over that development seems to get overshadowed by those sections of downtown that remain run down.
Really, it is time that the city buy out the Avenue Building blow it up and build something in there….who knows what can go there but think of something. The old court house and jail could be turned into a museum or something. Pull down the Public Safety building and rebuild the old market building and revamp that area ala Byward Market in Ottawa.
Ideas, people not excuses. The city should be awash in infrastructure money although I don’t see it. Sit down greenies, a glorified bus lane isn’t it.
Away from the downtown there is a ton of development. Look at the airport rebuild. The retail and housing stuff in southwestern part of the city.
I have been a booster for the downtown for a long time but even I am running out of steam. The previous mayor understood the importance of momentum and the perception of a sea change. The current admin has yet to capture that and as downtown projects seems to collapse like old flans in the oven the cynicism of people are confirmed and people continue to stay away.
I got a little insight into the NIMBY anti-development thing this morning from a co-worker who is affected by the developments on Taylor Avenue or to be more specific Parker Avenue.
Are my knee-jerk reactions to anti-development protests as annoying as the knee-jerk reaction to development announcements? Perhaps.
It is always good to hear the other side. Sometimes they are right. I can be swayed.
In this particular case, I think I may soften my opinion. A tiny bit.
I don’t think I have changed my mind about the narrow-minded attitude of a lot of people in this city. And if this was the only protest, I might have been initially more sympathetic. As it was, it was one of three going on at City Hall at the same time.
There are two issues — the development and the process. As far as the development goes, there are some things people need to be concerned with and I wouldn’t trust a developer as far as I could throw him. There are plenty examples of promises made that are then completely reneged upon with zero consequence. Waverley West anyone?
In the Parker case, this piece of land has been used as a park but it isn’t a park and everyone knew the potential for development was always there. And if someone proposed huge mansions that would pump everyone’s home values, the locals would be saying “fuck the trees.” So, I still hold that development isn’t inherently wrong there are some good aspects re infrastructure and roads. Local residents may even benefit from now not having those evil Linden Woods types driving through the neighbourhood as a short cut to Pembina Highway.
The real problem lies with deals being done at City Hall behind closed doors between people who have personal relationships, which are then sprung on everyone with no notice. The result of this is the perception of dirty dealing and insider trading. Add in a rubber stamp city hall and everyone immediately suspects the worst. And in the vacuum of no information the worst case scenario is always suspected. This could be the best thing the city has ever done but the perception of slimy palm greasing makes it smell.
In the Parker case the worst case scenario is thousands of public housing spots being plopped down in a semi suburban neighbourhood and then filled with refugees from the core. Could this happen? Well, without info to the contrary it might.
But the reality could well be a new version of Tuxedo’s Portsmouth Bay. Or something in the middle, which wouldn’t be so bad. Although as it was explained to me today, if it would be so great then why was it hidden and then rammed through at the last minute?
Which brings me back to my point that if the city had a plan then these sorts of things may be avoided. For example the plan could indicate this land is slated for development and these are the three types of housing that will be considered – single family houses, mixed residential units or apartment building no higher than three stories and 30 units per. Everyone can then make decisions based on those criteria. If people object they can do so in plenty of time. If someone wants to invest in the surrounding area they can with the appropriate facts at hand.
So, I can see where people are coming from. If there is anything I hate more than lefty beard and cardigan types protesting anything new it’s greedy monopoly board developer types pulling off Brechtian play-like scams.
So perhaps a little transparency might end a lot of this NIMBY like behavior.
