h&ms are usually a good couple of floors/levels. i dont think mcnally's space is enough.

then they should put them in the avenue building!!!

or a&b sound??

hmm that would be a good hole to fill to

You lure H&M to Portage...watch the crowds of people...

Really:haha:

i dont understand? it seems like your sentence is missing a bunch of words.

it's gotta start somehow! make h&m work downtown an experiment for this new downtown biz shopping czar i say. it will cost less than another arena or hydro tower and might have more bang for buck...

^ Wasn't Mountain Equipment supposed to do that? Before that A&B...

H&M is exactly the type of retail we need downtown. It will not only attract the daytime student/office worker crowd, but will draw evening & weekend shoppers (e.g. before a hockey game or concert), and act as a catalyst - attracting other similar businesses to the area.

Just don't bury them in the gallows of Portage Place; they need a street level storefront that sizzles.

totally! H&M has high-profile downtown locations all over the world, and its arrival could be a catalyst for similar retailers like Urban Outfitters etc.

a&b closed cause the company was going tits up nation wide had nothing to do with winnipeg.

Any outside retailer would take one look at downtown Winnipeg and say "Not a chance." Sorry guys, I'd like to see downtown grow too but the bums have to go first.

Every major city I've been to has homeless people in the downtown... I don't think that that is the major deciding factor...

Unfortunately the bums (including the general riff raff hanging out in Portage Place) currently outnumber the people wearing ties in downtown Winnipeg.

No it won't.

If a couple retail outlets were the answer to downtown Winnipeg, you would have seen it turn around when MEC moved in.

Unfortunately the revival of downtown Winnipeg does not start with retail expansion.

A&B Sound left Winnipeg 5-6 years before the company went under.

There were locations still in Calgary up until early 2009.

ur example fails to work though u had a company that went bust along with most of ur music stores at that time......... also a&b is just best buy now

calgarys downtown location closed around ours i remember this cause i shopped at both winnipeg and calgarys downtown locations, and shoped at the big blow out in calgary's.............

stop being so blutty negitive about our city we need to stop looking at the negitive shit from the last decade and take note of alot of positive we have an opertunity to make downtown the hub of the core of the city for shoping like the suburban shoping areas are for those regons and i feel thats what downtowns shoping needs to focus on being the hub to fill a whole thats there

The A&B Sound in downtown Calgary went under because the building they occupied was sold.

If you don't like my example with A&B Sound what happened to all of the higher end retailers that left Portage Place and were replaced by a big box Staples and locations of the dollar store and other discount retailers?

Why is the Holt Renfrew location nothing more than a makeup counter? Meanwhile in Calgary it has expanded to the size of a department store.

Why is The Bay a hell hole with no merchandise and no shoppers?

Regardless. Retail in downtown Winnipeg will continue to struggle until there are enough people working downtown and the core becomes an attractive place to hang out and shop.

Right now the only people spending time downtown outside of business hours are the people that loiter in the Portage Place food court nursing a small coffee from Tim Hortons to get out of the cold.

I wonder what would happen to the downtown core if you actually saw beat cops walking the streets on a regular basis?

My guess is that anyone with anything to hide (outstanding warrants, drugs in their backpack etc) would flee like cockroaches out of fear that they would be recognized or busted. Its nice to have the Winnipeg BIZ or the generic rent-a-cops but they don't really do much except ensure things don't get completely out of hand.