Seasons of Tuxedo

Seasons of Tuxedo from SPINE on Vimeo.

It has been busy in terms of Kenaston Route 90 and the IKEA/Seasons of Tuxedo site.

Two separate announcements but related in every way. The first is that there is a video showing what Seasons of Tuxedo will look like. Yes, it will be different from a lot of malls: It will have traffic circles. Most likely they will work better than the ones in River Heights.

As far as malls go, it resembles what Polo Park once was which was a mall with open air components. At 1.5-million-square-foot commercial feet, the site will rival Polo Park. The 395,000 square foot IKEA is proceeding well. Lots of construction on site and the opening remains fall of 2012.

Seasons of Tuxedo is slated for 2014 or 2015. If I had to guess the first components might be earlier than that. For example....a movie theatre complex. My view is there might be a race on to capture the new market with three malls forecast in the near future: Seasons of Tuxedo, the new mall west of Assiniboia Downs and the stadium site at Polo Park. Add to that the proposed factory outlet mall with no start up date or location announced for Winnipeg yet.

As this all goes on, Kenaston creaks and cracks. A city committee has targeted houses for purchase to expand to 6 lanes of Route 90 traffic. Keep in mind that there is no budget to purchase, no plan for the St. James bridge, no timetable on the Kapyong Barracks and no end in site to probably the most expensive traffic corridor in the history of city of Winnipeg.

Helllo? IKEA is in a few months. Hundreds of houses are being built every few months in Waverley West.

Danger, Will Robinson!

Think we need a tri-level meeting of government now as this is problem that will go boom. It is already going boom.

Anyways, nice mall by the looks of it. Too bad the best traffic management is probably inside the site itself.