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  #6141  
Old Posted Nov 24, 2021, 8:31 PM
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Only The Lonely.. Only The Lonely.. is offline
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RE: North Portage

I wasn't around in the good old days (1970s) when that side of Portage had a Porn Theatre and several broken down buildings to be replaced by Portage Place, but apparently, it wasn't much to look at.

As my father explained to me.. "On the Eatons and Bay side, you had dignified old ladies wearing fur coats shopping, and on the other side of the street where Portage Place, Investors Group, and the Air Canada Buildings are you had Bladerunner. That's why those buildings are there."

The 'Portage Village Inn' formerly 'Clarendon hotel' (1903: http://www.mhs.mb.ca/docs/sites/clarendonhotel.shtml) -> later A&B Sound -> later Alt Hotel was one of the most famous drug dens in the city.

There is no point in pining for some lost magical neighbourhood that never existed.

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Last edited by Only The Lonely..; Nov 24, 2021 at 8:45 PM.
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  #6142  
Old Posted Nov 24, 2021, 10:26 PM
BubberMiley BubberMiley is offline
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I don't think the glory days of the Portage Village Inn happened until well after Portage Place was built. I believe there was still an Advance Electronics in that building in the 1980s.
North Portage was not in any way post-apocalyptic in the 80s. There were a few moderately sketchy video arcades like Long John Silvers and Dr Qs and the Downtown theatre, as well as Solar News, which was like Dominion News in every way. But otherwise it was restaurants and record and clothing stores. It never really got bad until the sidewalks were abandoned after Portage Place opened.
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  #6143  
Old Posted Nov 24, 2021, 10:46 PM
BAKGUY BAKGUY is offline
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Originally Posted by BubberMiley View Post
I don't think the glory days of the Portage Village Inn happened until well after Portage Place was built. I believe there was still an Advance Electronics in that building in the 1980s.
North Portage was not in any way post-apocalyptic in the 80s. There were a few moderately sketchy video arcades like Long John Silvers and Dr Qs and the Downtown theatre, as well as Solar News, which was like Dominion News in every way. But otherwise it was restaurants and record and clothing stores. It never really got bad until the sidewalks were abandoned after Portage Place opened.
I can tell you by the early 80's North Portage was sketchy, rundown & the only place to eat was Szechuan & Pantages. They were gone by 1985.
It was not nice or comfortable. Not much to see shop wise.
Portage Places was built to replace that hideousness.
Portage Place was a great improvement but cheap/frugal Whiny-peggers were comparing a city mall to a suburban mall and free parking there so..we almost deserve what happened in some ways. We wanted better and did not support the upscale classy stores a sparkling mall with fountains and loads of trees.

Last edited by BAKGUY; Nov 24, 2021 at 11:42 PM.
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  #6144  
Old Posted Nov 24, 2021, 10:50 PM
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I was in diapers for North Portage's supposed bad old days, but I honestly wonder how bad it could have been... the picture above speaks to a down at the heels but still functional commercial strip lined with retail shops. We don't really have much of that left downtown.
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  #6145  
Old Posted Nov 24, 2021, 11:21 PM
BAKGUY BAKGUY is offline
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Originally Posted by esquire View Post
I was in diapers for North Portage's supposed bad old days, but I honestly wonder how bad it could have been... the picture above speaks to a down at the heels but still functional commercial strip lined with retail shops. We don't really have much of that left downtown.
Most shoppers were on the Eatons / Bay side southside. The luster was gone by late 70's..early 80's..As a youth, it was creepy walking north Portage late 70's/early 80's on a busy Saturday afternoon too..never felt that southside....
Eatons & The Bay were the major draws.. Plus there was a 3 floor Holt Renfrew, a superb, spacious & gorgeous Birks jewelers store, a 2 level Marks & Spencer' also..., S.S.Kresgee, a 2 level F.W. Woolworths, The Metropolitan as other anchor stores catering to all budgets. ..All we have now for anchors are Dollartree, Dollarama etc...Dayton's and other nicer stores like Donaldson's ladies shoes abandoned the beleaguered northside early 80's.There was virtually nothing built on north Portage or north of Portage for decades. Now there is albeit in need of renewal, Portage Place, Promenade apartments, Kiwanis Chateau, Fred Douglas, One Canada Centre, Air Canada, Alt Hotel, Glasshouse condos etc. Some eateries ..Brown's, Merchant Kitchen etc

Last edited by BAKGUY; Nov 24, 2021 at 11:41 PM.
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  #6146  
Old Posted Nov 25, 2021, 3:58 PM
T'Cona T'Cona is offline
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For me, I can easily look past that.

What I wish is that all of the buildings demolished at P&M, including the buildings that lined the south side of Main Street up to Graham still existed. A reconfigured Richardson building could have been built, and the Merchant Bank building spared.
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  #6147  
Old Posted Nov 25, 2021, 4:30 PM
BKB BKB is offline
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Starting at the age of 12, I used to take the bus downtown on the weekends in order to go the various arcades (e.g. Long John Slivers, MagicLand, Circus Circus), record shops (e.g. Records on Wheels) and restaurants (e.g. Mr. Sub, A&W) which were mostly on the north side of Portage. There is nothing that would interest a 12 year old on the north side of Portage anymore nor would many parents permit their kids to do that now.
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  #6148  
Old Posted Nov 26, 2021, 2:56 PM
CoryB CoryB is offline
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Best I recall Advanced Electronics was never is downtown Winnipeg. Also fairly certain in the earlier 80s the Portage Village Inn was actually a comic book/collectables store. I don't recall a lot about the north side of Portage where Portage Place is now as some of my earliest memories are after the demo project has started. Seeing a massive chunk of downtown surrounded by construction hoarding was definitely hard to miss.
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  #6149  
Old Posted Nov 26, 2021, 3:03 PM
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Originally Posted by CoryB View Post
Best I recall Advanced Electronics was never is downtown Winnipeg. Also fairly certain in the earlier 80s the Portage Village Inn was actually a comic book/collectables store. I don't recall a lot about the north side of Portage where Portage Place is now as some of my earliest memories are after the demo project has started. Seeing a massive chunk of downtown surrounded by construction hoarding was definitely hard to miss.
Advance was always on Portage by Polo Park. That was an A&B Sound in the Portage Village Inn building.
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  #6150  
Old Posted Nov 26, 2021, 3:14 PM
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Originally Posted by CoryB View Post
Best I recall Advanced Electronics was never is downtown Winnipeg. Also fairly certain in the earlier 80s the Portage Village Inn was actually a comic book/collectables store. I don't recall a lot about the north side of Portage where Portage Place is now as some of my earliest memories are after the demo project has started. Seeing a massive chunk of downtown surrounded by construction hoarding was definitely hard to miss.
I believe there was an Advance Electronics store in the Affleck Block where O'Calcutta is now. I don't think it was there for a very long time, though.

I vaguely remember seeing a vintage picture of that block with the Advance sign on it and thinking "interesting, I didn't know there was an Advance location there..."
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  #6151  
Old Posted Nov 26, 2021, 5:38 PM
soewnz soewnz is offline
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Originally Posted by lbnevs View Post
I'm from London, Ontario, and we had a similar experience:

A downtown that seemed to be getting shabbier as suburban malls displaced downtown retail.

A new downtown mall opened, filled with high-end luxury stores designed to lure people back downtown. A grand vision of towers built atop it in a second and third phase.

A quick decline from prestige shops to empty storefronts and low-rent retailers (Stitches, Dollarama, etc.) as the new mall fails to attract people back downtown, and all of the remaining downtown street level activity gets sucked into the mall, further killing the pedestrian streetscape. The future phases, naturally, are never built.

What they did now a decade ago was move away from the retail mall: It's now filled with municipal services including a library and performing arts centre, community spaces, offices, medical clinics, and services mostly for office workers and locals (dry cleaners etc).
That's really interesting, especially how much the revamped office space looks like Portage Place.

I wonder if Portage Place could be split apart and the project tackled piece by piece. For example, if they separated section East of the atrium (which I understand has footings for a tower), could the University of Winnipeg Community Renewal Corporation take a stab at turning that into something university related? The city could also buy back what is now the atrium and reconfigure it to a pedestrian mall that connects to Portage Ave to Central Park. I could also see the centre section of the building turned into office space on the second floor and up with a reimagined retail space on the main floor.

Obviously this is all daydreaming, but hey, crazier things have happened!!
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  #6152  
Old Posted Nov 26, 2021, 6:20 PM
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The old professional building - I think it was an Access building at 2737 Pembina Hwy is being torn down as we speak.

They are planning on building a modern day version of all the old slab apartment towers that dot suburban Winnipeg. 8 storey's 180 units.

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  #6153  
Old Posted Nov 26, 2021, 6:29 PM
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befor we do anything we need too look at downtown as a whole and figure out what we want as the exchange if thriving and the other ends stagnint

and in saying this..

we have this mall thats dead? its more miss managed meh from what ive seen
we should get a grocery store in where staples used to be........ to make up for the loss of the one in the bay. portage place can be a community hub serving residents with real accessble hours. this malls been blead by the forks propering it up at the expens of the mall. cant always win. so in this we hurt portage but we used this to build something special up so it cant become sustainable witch is a trade off. is the forks ready too be severd from this cash cow yet?

what ever we do we need to look at downtown as a whole including the forks...
portage place sufferd cause we focused the money into somthing ellls and forgot about it hats whats truey happend....... buisnes did its thing but with tight margins it sufferd cause it wasnt making enough mooney for the owners to honesty care it didnt make sens.... now imagin if the forks had not had that winfall all these years how different it would be today.

theres a cause and effect situation with portage place. we need to merge it under one owner in some forum that will make it more profitable thus more lucritive for an owner to care about whats there vs status quo meh its a loss carry over on my books type dealy

like if u had it and ur breaking even at beast when its rented out full are u going to put anymoney into it when u got other properties that u are making money hand over fist thats easyer to do vs pooring money and lots of work into somthing thats at best going to break even but mostly going to take a loss on...
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  #6154  
Old Posted Nov 26, 2021, 6:31 PM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Biff View Post
The old professional building - I think it was an Access building at 2737 Pembina Hwy is being torn down as we speak.

They are planning on building a modern day version of all the old slab apartment towers that dot suburban Winnipeg. 8 storey's 180 units.

to bad not a 20 story monster o well
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  #6155  
Old Posted Nov 26, 2021, 6:49 PM
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With that, 3021 Pembina, Arc Phase 2, and I think one more 10 storey building on Pembina/Kirkbridge the stretch of Pembina from the Perimeter to Bison is quickly densifying. As a former alumnus in Fort Richmond even seeing the changes from 3 years ago when I graduated from there has been massive.
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  #6156  
Old Posted Nov 26, 2021, 6:57 PM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Biff View Post
The old professional building - I think it was an Access building at 2737 Pembina Hwy is being torn down as we speak.

They are planning on building a modern day version of all the old slab apartment towers that dot suburban Winnipeg. 8 storey's 180 units.

More pics here:

https://skyscraperpage.com/forum/sho...&postcount=245
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  #6157  
Old Posted Nov 26, 2021, 6:58 PM
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Would it kill them to flip it around and put the long side along the street edge of pembina...
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  #6158  
Old Posted Nov 26, 2021, 7:00 PM
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That was one of the planned layouts - a boomerang fronting Pembina....I believe they chose this version
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  #6159  
Old Posted Nov 26, 2021, 7:05 PM
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Disappointing even by Pembina Highway standards...
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  #6160  
Old Posted Nov 26, 2021, 7:07 PM
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Originally Posted by peg View Post
Would it kill them to flip it around and put the long side along the street edge of pembina...
It says the reason for this layout was more natural light for a greater number of units.
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