Winnipeg Construction X

[BlackDog204]

Originally Posted by pspeid

There's 76 of them. Take your choice.

https://restaurants.subway.com/canada/mb/winnipeg

we can have the best of both worlds...

[soewnz]

Originally Posted by biguc

Welcome to the board!

These aren't bad ideas. I don't know what kind of resources FNP has these days, being balls deep in railside and all, but there's merit in the idea of the city taking charge of the redevelopment instead of leaving it entirely up to private interests to try to make a buck off.

I like the idea of creator spaces. The city's art scene has lost something since the days when the Exchange was full of cheap space for artists. I'd like to see that for the second floor of the Bay. And a market on the ground floor; farmer's/food market in half and market space for arts and artisanal products in the other.

There shouldn't be this tension in DT Winnipeg between what the market wants (low rents) and what the people in charge think it should be (bougie or nothing at all).

Thanks for the welcome!

Agreed that FNP might not have the bandwidth for this, although being owned by all three levels of government might give them the juice they'd need to get traction. Maybe a new subsidiary organization should be formed in consultation with the steering committee that has been struck for The Bay.

It's an interesting challenge to bring in diverse groups and yet have a cohesive vision, but I feel like bringing in those diverse groups would be a key part of making a Bay/Portage Place redevelopment work.

Also, the name Portage Place has to go. Portage Market maybe? Maybe something totally new? Portage Place has too much baggage attached to it!

[1ajs]

[esquire]

Nice photos! The Pumphouse has a pretty sleek look at night... I like the restaurant signage too. It's nice to see all the stuff that's going on around there.

[buzzg]

Originally Posted by pspeid

My guess is that all these moves are preparation for the Union Station BRT plans.

This could be a good thing for the rail museum. It was kind of hidden away in the Union Station. This is a chance for them to partner with other organizations and organize a push to create a higher profile space downtown.

Originally Posted by bomberjet

Regarding Union Station. The fact the museum is moving out is very good news for the RT plans. Step 1 if you will. I'm not up to speed on the spaces taken up by EC and RRC Polytech (get used to that one).

Hopefully the City is actually moving ahead with the downtown elevated portion in the near future. IMO that part is locked in, in terms of planning.

The rest of the outdoor site, specifically the outdoor parking lots, can be redeveloped. More specifically, the lot at York. The smaller lot to the south is going to be the RT area.

I wonder if hte museum can work with Prairie Dog to get something pulled together. PDC was/is looking for commercial opportunities. They looked at rail car storage and cleaning operations in the recent past. Developing a bunch of new track on their site. Quite expensive though for such a small operation.

This is definitely all part of the long term plan. EC took up a significant amount of space in the north wing, including a massive mail room on the main floor (with 1 employee who used her union powers to keep her private 8000 ft office) that was right in the middle of TFNP's office. If you've seen TFNP's weird floating wall board room - it was built like that because it's temporary. Longer (maybe not very long though) term plan is for TFNP to move into the former mail room, and that north hall off the rotunda would be the public connection to the future build on the lot north of Union Station, which right now is designated as mixed use parkade.

RRC took up a large amount of space in the south wing upper floors. I don't know if anything ever went into the old grocery store space.

Originally Posted by soewnz

Hey all! First time posting, but I've been keeping an eye on this forum for a while. Good place to keep up to date with things.

I'm just going to do a little brain dump and I'd love to hear what people's opinions are:

Portage Place - with the Starlight deal looking like it's dead, I think this is a great time to go in another direction. I've been thinking of Pike Place Market in Seattle, which is such a popular and fun place to visit, yet it still has that gritty downtown kind of feel to it - I think this is what we need for Portage Place. Forget the polished shopping mall vibe, and leave that for the Polo Park redevelopment.

Let's definitely take advantage of those footings and get some residential towers, but create a space on the main and second level for entrepreneurial people living in the area to open businesses! Have a market where you can get traditional food and goods from Indigenous, Asian, and African people who live nearby. Bring in something like St. Norbert Farmer's Market. There's so many interesting things that could be done.

The Forks North Portage already has a mandate to improve this area, so give them the resources to buy the mall and make this happen! Look at what The Forks was 40 years ago - take Portage Place in a similar direction. For that matter, tie The Bay into the project. Branch off a separate organization if necessary and call it The Bay Portage Place Development Corporation.

Anyway, that's my rant for today!

That mandate is actually ending/over. The whole reason for trying to sell the parkade is because TFNP's board and the city have decided they're reached the peak of what they can do for North Portage and should divest all their NP assets. Once they're out of NP, their resources from that part of the business would shift to waterfront redevelopment and they'd become The Forks & Riverfront Development Corporation. (I made that name up, but that is what they will be in charge of).

The Friends of Upper Fort Garry have also been trying to force them to take control of the managing UFGP which they don't want to and I'm sure with COVID have even less interest in doing now. They voluntarily maintained it to be nice out of concerns if they didn't do it, no one would, but again not sure where that's landed since their mass COVID layoffs. It's weird, it's technically a provincial park but the province essentially said we'll give some money to build it and the odd maintenance funding, but we're not going to oversee or run it. In effect it's more of a Manitoba Parks sponsorship than an actual provincial park.

[esquire]

Originally Posted by buzzg

This is definitely all part of the long term plan. EC took up a significant amount of space in the north wing, including a massive mail room on the main floor (with 1 employee who used her union powers to keep her private 8000 ft office) that was right in the middle of TFNP's office. If you've seen TFNP's weird floating wall board room - it was built like that because it's temporary. Longer (maybe not very long though) term plan is for TFNP to move into the former mail room, and that north hall off the rotunda would be the public connection to the future build on the lot north of Union Station, which right now is designated as mixed use parkade.

RRC took up a large amount of space in the south wing upper floors. I don't know if anything ever went into the old grocery store space.

I believe the citizenship court is in the south wing of Union Station, along with other CIC offices. Unless they moved out and I didn't realize it?

FYI there was never a grocery store in there, just Union Station Market for a few years in the mid 90s in an attempt to capitalize on The Forks Market's success. It didn't last long. Prior to that CN had offices in that space.

That mandate is actually ending/over. The whole reason for trying to sell the parkade is because TFNP's board and the city have decided they're reached the peak of what they can do for North Portage and should divest all their NP assets.

It's kind of comical how you put it... TFNP laid waste to a huge area of downtown, spent a fortune on building a mall, a parkade and some apartment towers and stood by as the value of the development plummeted. Now it's just an unwanted, poorly occupied, badly deteriorating complex, and TFNP is looking at it saying "well, our work is done here!"

[buzzg]

To be fair, Cadillac Fairview built the mall. And TFNP did get quite a lot of other stuff done and improved around there.

[esquire]

Originally Posted by buzzg

To be fair, Cadillac Fairview built the mall. And TFNP did get quite a lot of other stuff done and improved around there.

They clearly built stuff, no question there. Whether or not they actually revitalized anything relative to how it was 40 years ago is another question.

[soewnz]

Originally Posted by buzzg

That mandate is actually ending/over. The whole reason for trying to sell the parkade is because TFNP's board and the city have decided they're reached the peak of what they can do for North Portage and should divest all their NP assets. Once they're out of NP, their resources from that part of the business would shift to waterfront redevelopment and they'd become The Forks & Riverfront Development Corporation. (I made that name up, but that is what they will be in charge of).

The Friends of Upper Fort Garry have also been trying to force them to take control of the managing UFGP which they don't want to and I'm sure with COVID have even less interest in doing now. They voluntarily maintained it to be nice out of concerns if they didn't do it, no one would, but again not sure where that's landed since their mass COVID layoffs. It's weird, it's technically a provincial park but the province essentially said we'll give some money to build it and the odd maintenance funding, but we're not going to oversee or run it. In effect it's more of a Manitoba Parks sponsorship than an actual provincial park.

Interesting... Where did you hear that their mandate is over for North Portage? Any publicly available documents on that?

Again, maybe a new entity can be struck for the Bay building, and could also roll Portage Place in too. That might actually make more sense, since The Forks & river front tie closely together, and it would be an entirely different strategy needed for North Portage.

[OTA in Winnipeg]

Originally Posted by esquire

They clearly built stuff, no question there. Whether or not they actually revitalized anything relative to how it was 40 years ago is another question.

There were a lot of streets, retail, nightclubs and restaurants that got bulldozed. Housing and old theaters too. PP was NOT an improvement.

[pspeid]

Originally Posted by OTA in Winnipeg

There were a lot of streets, retail, nightclubs and restaurants that got bulldozed. Housing and old theaters too. PP was NOT an improvement.

This makes north Portage sound like a vibrant neighbourhood. i remember a pretty shabby stretch of one-storey buildings with some pretty sketchy businesses. Memory, eh?

[buzzg]

Originally Posted by soewnz

Interesting... Where did you hear that their mandate is over for North Portage? Any publicly available documents on that?

Again, maybe a new entity can be struck for the Bay building, and could also roll Portage Place in too. That might actually make more sense, since The Forks & river front tie closely together, and it would be an entirely different strategy needed for North Portage.

You can look through old AGM presentations and annual reports. There's one called "Go To Waterfront..." or riverfront, can't remember. It's the reason they're selling the PP land.

[OTA in Winnipeg]

Originally Posted by pspeid

This makes north Portage sound like a vibrant neighbourhood. i remember a pretty shabby stretch of one-storey buildings with some pretty sketchy businesses. Memory, eh?

It was a mix. Either way, PP didn't improve things much. And that was evident almost immediately after opening.

[esquire]

It didn't have much of a lasting impact. The entire North Portage development seemed pretty tired and dowdy by the time it turned 10 years old.

[biguc]

A mix of small-scale buildings would have had a better chance of turning around little by little than the megablock that took their place.

[EndoftheBeginning]

Don't think this has a separate thread yet, but noticed the Shell at Tuxedo and Corydon is now closed and fencing is up around the site, presumably in preparation for soil remediation before demolition.

Reminder of what is planned to go up on that spot (2025 and 2071 Corydon).

[CoryB]

Originally Posted by buzzg

To be fair, Cadillac Fairview built the mall. And TFNP did get quite a lot of other stuff done and improved around there.

TFNP is pretty fortunate that their mandate was "north Portage" as their work had a fairly detrimental impact on south Portage. You have to hand it to TFNP though "Great Wall of Downtown" they built did a fairly effective job of delineating between Central Park and those problems and the "safe and clean" downtown business area.

[lbnevs]

Originally Posted by esquire

It didn't have much of a lasting impact. The entire North Portage development seemed pretty tired and dowdy by the time it turned 10 years old.

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).

During its late decline:



Now, reconfigured as office space:

[esquire]

^ Very similar trajectory to Portage Place.

Portage Place only held on to its premium mall identity for one lease term, like 5 years. Many retailers left before that. So 1987-1992.

It was kind of a "normal mall" from 1992-2002.

Since 2002 it has declined to a strip-mall like collection of low end retailers. Since covid many retailers that were barely hanging on left entirely. Much of the retail space has been converted to office and other functions. The movie theatres closed down entirely.

So the retail component of the complex is a bit of a writeoff. I guess the office and residential uses are still chugging along but even those have underperformed. The recent horror stories about the apartments having their water shut off for weeks did not give much confidence in their current condition.

[CoryB]

Originally Posted by esquire

Portage Place only held on to its premium mall identity for one lease term, like 5 years. Many retailers left before that. So 1987-1992.

When Portage Place first opened Cadillac Fairview apparently was requiring retailers that wanted spaces in Polo Park to also have space in Portage Place, especially ones that did not already have space in Polo Park. The 90s era recession followed by the Cadillac Fairview bankruptcy in 1994 which saw them exit management of Portage Place likely played a significant role in the shift that happened around that time at Portage Place. It also likely did not help that Portage Place proper had no anchor tenants and that Cadillac Fairview didn't own the property or control the profitable parking underneath.