Quote:
Originally Posted by esquire
Well said. That is precisely why I was so down on the announcement.
I mean, it's great that SCO stepped up to take on Winnipeg's headache, but let's not kid ourselves, HBC was not doing this as a favour to anyone but themselves. It's a sad indictiment of the state of downtown Winnipeg. There's a reason they gave away the downtown Winnipeg store but not any other city's.
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Sorry guys personally I'm not buying the negative "we're so pathetic" B.S.
This is great news for the city and the Indigenous communities behind this project.
Did HBC "give away" the building because it was not profitable? Of course, it hasn't been a profitable location for years, and business generally try to
make money. That being said, they probably
could have sold the place for the land value to a developer like Shindico who would have torn down the "worthless" building and put up some more damn strip malls with oversized parking lots. But they didn't. They were at least aware enough of the benefit of the good optics of a real-world bricks-and-mortar act of reconciliation to convince them to donate the building.
Why "just" in Winnipeg? Yes, the economy of Winnipeg doesn't match the economy of Toronto or Vancouver. Knock me down with not being surprised. That being said, the Bay building was/is a HUGE piece of real estate on par with their locations in either of those larger more affluent cities. The fact that there just wasn't the number of big bucks developers here as in T.O. or Vancouver is a fact of life we should be used to by now. It's not a knock on the city, it just is what it is.
What Winnipeg also had in addition to a huge building is the largest urban Indigenous population in Canada. If there's anyplace that
should be leading the reconciliation cause, it's Winnipeg.
I personally don't see the value of my city as being solely determined by the number of people or companies that think they can extract a suitable amount of $$ from it's population.
Can't wait to see how this project progresses.