A New Core Area Initiative

 

Considering how important the Core Area Initiative was from 1981 to 1991, it is odd to think it has faded from many memory. The big thing is that for all public money from the city, the province and the federal government, it attracted a ton of private money as well. The territory it covered was expansive over downtown and into Osborne Village. The $196 million was spent on such a variety of things that had impacts in so many areas that helped Winnipeg for decades to come. Certainly without the program, we might not have see The Forks develop nor Portage Place.

And while Portage Place is derided as a failure, it got the parkade built that has been the funder for The Forks for decades. No lie. Money from that parkade kept The Forks afloat. It is also the most attractive feature for the Chipman/Thomson bid. The $3 million or so revenue from the parkade will help pay for their purchase and support the True North Arena.

The connectivity of all the different areas of development and renewal has to be understood to assess it's success. The example above with the Portage Place parkade. Quite simply without it, there would not be the money needed to keep The Forks going through the roach patches. Portage Place investment helped other private interests such as Air Canada, Investors Group and Relax/Holiday Inn from setting up shop on north Portage.

So was Portage Place a failure? The apartments, commercial building all around it say no. As a mall, it has faded. But on the bones of that development, residential and medical towers will go up. The problem with Winnipeg's downtown, as has been described many times before, is that it is fairly spread out which means there are large gaps where there is open space usually of parking lots. A city like Toronto, for example, has much closer distances between city and provincial government offices, central hospitals, universities and shopping. Winnipeg seems to be blocks away from everything.

The plan for the Core Area Initiative redux has various interest groups thinking it mostly will go to this or that. Bike interest groups believe it should go to bike lanes down every street. Business Improvement Zones believe it should go into street beautification programs. This ignores how widespread and how much leverage the old CAI had in getting millions upon millions from the private sector for work small and large. It wasn't supposed to go to one group to gorge themselves on. What is the point of bike paths on every street if there are houses on it?

The 1981 to 1991 CAI triggered so much downtown development but it also renovated tons of housing improvements from Osborne to Centennial. Unlike the 1960s urban developments the feds did across Canada that cleared land for major developments or concentrated a big low income housing project, money was allocated over a longer time to a larger variety of projects and social services and to a greater size area. There could have been a risk of diluting everything but the key always was to leverage other investments in the area in terms of people and money.

As mentioned before in this blog, 1980 was a horrible year for Winnipeg. The deep recession hit here early and hard. We lost the Tribune, Swift's and Canada Packers plant and thousands of jobs all within a few months. It was a deep recession and a long one. It hit all of North America but places like Winnipeg lost their place in Canada. Edmonton and Calgary with resources to pull themselves out of the slump, surpassed us in population and we saw head offices migrate there over the 1980s from the city.

The north part of Portage was always the poor sister of the south of Portage. The Eaton's and the Bay and stores on the south side were still a going concern. Movie theatres were still well attended downtown. However, the north side was often video and pinball halls and adult theatre. There were a few areas of strength like Kennedy Street which had Stagewest Dinner Theatre, Benjamins nightclub and a few other businesses but the northside was losing buildings to fire and there was a worry of steady decline extending to the south side.

This wasn't an idle concern. St. Vital Mall and Kildonan Place were very recent additions to suburban malls and population in the suburbs was booming. That is not to say there were no malls going up downtown. Winnipeg Square and Eaton Place went up just as the 1980s were starting. To a certain extent those malls achieved what they hoped for those areas of town. Winnipeg Square was a fine business mall with a very large parkade and Eaton Place gave Eaton's a new lease of life and additional parking while preserving the catalogue building.  However, neither mall was going to be able to forestall the difficulties elsewhere in the downtown.

Despite a very diverse economy, Winnipeg was in for a a much slower growth rate than our western neighbours. Population was leaving in steady numbers for the oil economy of Alberta. And for retirement, Winnipeg couldn't beat Vancouver's temperate climate. Still, as many will attest to Winnipeg was a good place to live in but in need of a plan.

At the time, Lloyd Aworthy made the jump from provincial politics to federal politics and became a powerful cabinet minister in the west. Some of that came as a result as being one of the only Liberals in the west. As an urban studies academic, he was well aware of what most cities were facing across Canada. Winnipeg became  a petri dish to see what would happen over a ten year period.

So what did happen? The Forks was probably the most successful outcome. Extensive consultations, funding for river paths, a national park and the clearing of rails but not the buildings for a long term plan. And The Forks continues to add piece by piece. Still, without Portage Place's parkade providing money every year, The Forks would have failed economically. It is where it is now because of that money. 

Portage Place is considered a failure. However, that can only be considered true if only the mall is looked at in isolation. The Prairie Theatre Exchange is a successful long term tenant. The mall had the first IMAX Theatre for the city. The three movie theatres were gorgeous. The parkade was the best. Axworthy had wanted an arena but local merchants were more keen on a mall. By the time Portage Place went up Winnipeg was over-malled. Polo Park went through a doubling up with a second floor which only added to the problems of downtown malls.

Portage Place was not the first mall to falter in Winnipeg. That honour went to Unicity Mall. Other malls like Garden City suffered as well. The end of Portage Place as a mall is likely in 2025 when the east side becomes the Pam Clinic tower and the west side becomes a residential tower. It is the in between part that will be interesting.

Lloyd Axworthy has identified in 2024 what might make the federal government interested. He has indicated it could be the relocation of the CP rail yards or the Little Forks National Park proposal. Both have transformative implications. One is where the Seine River meets the Red near Higgins while the other is an enormous tract running east-west that separates the downtown from the North End. The size of it should intimidate. The Forks was an enormous reach for Winnipeg but once the rails had moved it opened up huge opportunities.

A new Core Area Initiative could have a broad geographic area. The 1981 certainly did. Not all the money has to be dumped into one area. Nor does a project have to be completed within the timeframe outlined. The Forks started very late into CAI. And it continues to this day. The first Core Area Initiative had a lot of components to it and helped a lot of areas leverage investments in other projects for years to come. In recent years there seems to be a rush to spend in one area lest the money disappears and the planning is awful and the execution worse. A lot of planning went into The Forks and that has contributed to it's success.

The Core Area Initiative of 1981 to 1991 was followed up by the Winnipeg Development Agreement/Partnership of 1994 to 2001 and the Winnipeg Housing and Homelessness Initiative of 2001 to 2012. The fall off of any plan up till 2024 is probably one of many reasons we seem to be ill prepared for what comes next in the city. Taking a dozen years off has left sustainability off the table. One of the things that CAI did was not just invest in infrastructure but in people as well. Nothing works though if you don't do both. Later development plans invested in people but not enough in infrastructure to support/leverage other investments in the area.

It is a tricky business building sustainability into an initiative. A program should have a beginning, middle and end. In other words, it isn't solely an entitlement programs like old age security or an income support system. The program should be set up to help in such ways like renovate a home, help someone buy a home, seed money for some street renewal, plans for a park, consultations on larger projects, fund a security system, establish patrol offices and so on and so on. The first CAI was very much like this. While it did try to be leaders in some projects, there was an effort to repopulate central areas of the city and create more reasons to come to the central areas. And that was usually done as a secretariat or clearing house in partnerships with many other groups and levels of government.

A new CAI would probably be a good thing. Unlike past decades though there seems to be groups looking to gorge themselves on money directed to them alone. This will cripple the program if one neighbourhood wants $200 million of work or one lobby group wants that type of work only used for them. Quite simply, one neighbourhood getting $200 million for housing will only beggar other central areas or $200 million of bike paths won't revitalize the larger community. The success of this program will be covering a lot of areas with a revitalization and re-population goal. And if there is a very large project such as rail relocation or the Little Forks proposal, know that it the initial outlay of money should large come from other sources. But for the consultation stage or smaller projects that help launch the project, it can be the start of something great as it was with The Forks.

What is needed is vision. The big question is whether the province or Feds will be turned off by other requests for billions for suburban roads that look like highways. It sends the wrong message if the city keeps supporting sprawl it can't pay for later.