Ellice Liquor Store

Ellice Liquor Store

Ellice Liquor Across from Centrepoint

The schism between urban and suburban has been growing for many years now. Politically, culturally and economically the differences are becoming easier to see and harder to reconcile.

The war between urban and suburban is played out in the anonymous comment section of the Free Press and CBC every day. A lot of those comments have to be tossed because they amount to personal attacks or cross into intolerance based on any number of factors.

In addition, the limited amount of characters of Twitter are ideal for snark and it is generally easy to heckle and be boorish when done anonymously.

What is generally seen in regards to suburban commentary on urban areas is that people there are all scumbags and criminals. The urban commentary generally runs along the lines that suburban people are selfish users and takers.

Thoughtful commentary is often shunned for one liners.

The fact of the matter is that if a city is to function well, all of it has be to considered not just one tiny corner of it. The solution isn't to just keep fleeing farther and farther till the city reaches provincial borders. Nor is the solution to bulldoze large swaths of the city to create some sort of doughnut hole.

That is not to say that some bulldozing can't, shouldn't and won't happen. While some mourn the loss of the Wagon Wheel restaurant, the objective of a higher density mixed use land covering almost one block is excellent. The fact of the matter is the block in question has been under utilized the last decades despite some private efforts, specifically when it comes to the hotel/A&B Sound/MTS Exhibition Hall.

Long standing businesses shut down such Discreet Boutique or moved like Wild Planet. The complaint of their owners and those of Kraut King about aggressive street life was that it was driving them out. Happy to report that the former Kraut King location at 295 Garry Street is impressing as the Famena's Famous Roti/Curry and even out of town guests are writing glowing reviews.

But look what is just down the street from Famena's...

Famena's Famous Roti-Curry

The Garrick Hotel's clients are generally on the sidewalk out front most likely as a result of the smoking laws.

This little block seems to struggle. Sonar Night Club shut down and is now a gay club called Fame. Aqua Books shut down. A few storefronts remain stubbornly vacant.

Connection to Garrick? Think many would say it is.

For this reason, CentreVenture has been on a crusade to rid the downtown of small drinking establishment based out of hotels. They have bought a few over the years and that process has accelerated with the construction around the Winnipeg Convention Centre.

I have no problem with confronting drinking establishments that cause trouble. If you have murders inside or outside the establishment, chances are you need to look at how things are run. And it doesn't have to be down and out dive bars. It could be nightclubs that attract a bad element along with its regular crowd. It could be hotels, it could be sports facilities.

Public drunkenness and aggressive panhandling can't be ignored and there does seem to be more patrols on the street to address this issue. However, the police in the city have been lukewarm on community work and still favour cruiser cars.

This is what one retired city cop had to say:

The problem was, general patrol (the officers in cars), considered the ownership officers glorified social workers and would not only avoid having anything to do with them, but would resist helping out when transportation of a drunk was needed, or the transportation of an arrested person or just any kind of assistance.

Was it just me who felt this? No. When we got together, all 20 of us had occasion to run into resistance from our sergeants and from general patrol (there were a few exceptions)

At the end of the day, crime and the perception that downtown is unsafe will die down if the police foot patrol is constantly there, always watching, always ready to stop a crime, move a drunk to the tanks, arrest an assailant.

That is pretty harsh stuff. Officer needs assistance being ignored due to the fact they think he is a social worker?

The work has been handed over to cadets as kind of a way to earn your stripes to police constable and a car. And perhaps this is the cheaper way to do it. Still, you wonder if there is strong value in having ground coverage for problem areas by the Winnipeg Police Service itself in a meaningful way.

Serious questions are mounting about the costs of policing and the promises that crime will drop for every 50 officers hired.

The amount of overtime, ticket quotas and higher crime respective to the rest of the country gives people pause. I am no expert in policing but hearing some officers say they didn't feel supported seems to indicate a conflict inside the organization.

Which brings us back to the Ellice Liquor Store. Is this store the source of problems in the area? And by this I mean: Is the store itself a source of public drunkenness and panhandling?

I can't answer that. I don't know. I won't go into the greater issues of alcohol, poverty and homelessness. My question is more specific: is this store the cause of trouble surrounding the area or it is a mere inconvenience for a nice new development across the street?

If the answer is yes, the store is the source of problems...is the first answer not to serve intoxicated customers, patrol the parking lot and seek assistance from police in ensuring public security?

The Ellice Liquor Store, celebrated in song by a ska group in the last years along with the Royal Albert Hotel, has a small parking lot that seems to serve downtown commuters intent on quick service. This cannot be fulfilled by Cityplace with a mall location. Likewise, there are many apartments and condos going up in the area who probably might find things like a local liquor store convenient.

It is a fine balancing act that CentreVenture does but it is worth remembering that Osborne Village has had its share of ups and downs but the liquor mart was not driven out. The client base changed over the years and the location there reveals a full realized neighbourhood with grocery, drug marts and liquor store for the community.

Centrepoint under construction. Liquor just north

Kudos to the Longboat and Artis for their investment across from the MTS Centre. The offices of Stantec Engineering, the Alt Hotel, Glasshouse Condos, parkade and restaurants Milestone's and Chino Libre are going to be the biggest thing to hit Portage Avenue in decades.

Let's not get ahead of ourselves by clearing out places like the Ellice Liquor Store before seeing how one development interacts with established businesses.

Downtown Winnipeg will be won over one block at a time. Some of it will be organic such as Famena's carving out a home on Garry Street. Other times, it will be a development like Centrepoint transforming a larger area.  Let's give it all careful consideration as we proceed. But while we do it, let's make sure we have the people on the ground to ensure security and civility.

What makes you feel safer, a police car headed west down Portage Avenue or two patrols walking down the street? If the answer is the latter, should that not be what we are doing more of?

Freeloading at City Hall

It was bound to happen sooner or later.

The empty civic parkade begged the question: Where did those displaced find parking spaces?

I had heard of some councillors getting rental space in the very tiny Centennial Centre indoor parking. Other councillors found space at the Bedford Parkade two blocks away on King Street. Many staff had to take a commuter bus from the Centennial Library even further away.

The Centennial Centre was renovated as recently as 2010. I can find no listing of how many spaces are there but I can't imagine it is more than a hundred. And most of the those spaces are allocated already to provincial employees of either the Museum or Concert Hall.

The mayor and a few councillors managed to get space there. The rest managed to find spots in the recently built five floor parkade at King Street (There is also a heated underground part of the lot).

I'll bet city councillors would have never bet they would need the Bedford Parkade this badly when they gave it $1.5 million three years ago. The parkade also got $500,000 for CentreVenture. This created 160 parking spaces in a building the city had allowed to fall apart in years previous.

The Civic Parkade was a 450 stall parkade. The Centennial Centre's possible 100 and Bedford's 160 stalls barely scratch the surface of what was lost.

The Grain Exchange Parkade has around 270 spaces but that has a lot of stalls spoken for by the Portage and Main crowd and it isn't exactly that close to City Hall. Nor would it be appropriate for city police cars.

The police and some city fleet vehicles have had to take over the space on James Avenue for the 134 cars they have lost space for. There is also an underground component to the Civic Parkade that is used for an undisclosed amount of police cars. I am still not sure what the structural integrity of that underground portion is.

How did we get here?

It was years of a tax freeze and taking money from the parking authority to balance budgets without fixing city owned infrastructure. The fire sale auction of the Winnipeg Square Parkade is directly related to the city's need for money and not wanting to invest in upgrading the lot.

And are we talking about what will happen next? No.

The budget is passed and I assume that what we are waiting for is the police to move to their new building on Graham Avenue. At that point, maybe some hard questions will come in regards to what to do with Public Safety Building and the Civic Parkade.

It has been pointed out the land must remain public and the city has no right to sell it off. Once the police go, the buildings are likely to be cost a lot to maintain as we have seen from the Kapyong Barracks debacle.

Ultimately, the decision to do something will have to come down to council.  If they were even more inconvenienced, that decision might be sooner. But how inconvenienced are they? A heated spot at Centennial and underground walkway to council is not bad. A little more inconvenient at Bedford Parkade but perhaps a little less bitter in the underground heated part.

A bus trip from Centennial Library daily would probably have resulted in an emergency meeting and a budget of tens of millions for a new parkade.

In some cases, free loaders have the best space in town.

JOE BRYKSA / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS

The Free Press picture of Phil Sheegl is the inevitable conclusion of the question of where are city officials parking now.

It is hard to believe that no one considered it. Or more likely they didn't care or figured it would not be important enough for people to care. How anyone thought parking permanently at a loading dock made good business sense, political sense or safety sense is beyond me.

I am sure the reaction from the top official is suck a lemon.

There are 450 parking spaces no longer in place for City Hall campus. If Joe or Jane Citizen need to do business with civic officials, they are fresh out of luck for spots close by. It isn't good enough telling people to use public transit. One day we might have that type of public transportation system but that day isn't here yet.

It is highly likely that if the Public Safety Building and Civic Parkade come down that we will see at least a $50 million structure.

The Tecumseh Parkade completed in 2009 cost $40 million at Health Science Centre.

Tecumseh Parkade at HSC

You can bet that we won't hear this bitter pill till after the next city election. However, a decision will have to made when people here it costs hundreds of thousands and perhaps millions to keep the decaying ruins of these buildings up.

The Sports and Entertainment District

There has been good coverage of CentreVenture's continued push on the sports and entertainment district surrounding the MTS Centre in the newspapers and blogs.

Too few projects in the downtown are devoid of any public financial help. This, of course, is the bane of not just Winnipeg but a lot of cities. A larger debate about how to get the private sector to be the the driving force and take complete financial responsibility would be a worthwhile one. However, it would appear to be that after years of neglect of our downtown and private sector alike, a public agency has to pick its targets and draw increased private investment.

The idea of a sports and entertainment district is a sound one. It is easy to see that CentreVenture has eyed what has happened in Toronto and other cities carefully. Around the Air Canada Centre, Maple Leaf Sports & Entertainment built Maple Leaf Square. Ultimately, it was a huge project that cost upwards of $500 million and had everything from hotels, to condos, a sports bar and daycare.

The Real Sports bar as in short order since it opened last year and ESPN has named it best sports bar in North America. Best place for women to pick up men in Toronto and wear heels and not step on peanut shells. In short, sporty but classy.

The MTS Centre has already attracted a big sports bar in 4Play Sports. At 19,000 square feet, it is not exactly small. By comparison, the Toronto sports bar is 27,000 square feet. The big question that has to be asked is whether the True North people, owners of the MTS Centre and the Manitoba Moose, want to own and operate their own sports bar. On the face of it, it could be a winning idea. It is possible for a city to have more than on sports bar. In addition to the Real Sports bar in Toronto, there is Wayne Gretky's and Wendall Clark's sports bars.

So back to the public plaza idea. Aside from the Maple Leaf Square mentioned above, there is the L.A. Live in Los Angeles and the Victory Park plaza in Dallas as examples. Both projects cost a few billion dollars.

CentreVenture figures the cost of their project will be around $40 million and mentions a boutique hotel, offices and plaza as part of the mix. What is missing is housing. This was a major component of Maple Leaf Square and it should be part of what happens in the immediate area around the MTS Centre. If between $40 and $50 million in condos and apartments go up with the project, the total would be about $100 million in investment for the area, mostly private. That is about 1/5 of the total of Toronto's square which makes sense given the population of Winnipeg.

What the city doesn't need is windswept plaza with few people using it. A population that lives nearby will be more likely to find a use for the space especially if it is safe and has things that make it vital and useful. Note to CentreVenture: Maple Leaf Square has a daycare. Want to build a community, gathering space and general fun place to be? Make sure people live nearby, make it safe, make it useful, make it exciting.

This isn't brain surgery. Winnipeg does get things right a number of times. The Forks has been mostly done right. It is a gathering spot, it is safe, it is useful and it is exciting. Instinctively though, Winnipeggers know that people should not live there lest it make the area less inclusive of all residents. This is not the case for the area around the MTS Centre. People living there would be most welcome. In fact, it will be necessary for the area to survive and support a host of businesses that don't hang up the "closed" sign art 5 pm.

The Avenue residential units down Portage Avenue shows with effort and some public seed money that housing can be built where it has historically not existed. However, we need a condo alley such as Toronto's to give the district greater vitality. Rental apartments are needed as well but actual home ownership along Portage Avenue could and should help transform the street from simply being a commercial and office strip.

Winnipeg needs businesses who build downtown to think in terms of a residential component to any project. Imagine if Manitoba Hydro had done what Telus is doing for Vancouver this week. They are not only building their 22 story office building. They are building 44 story condo as part of a $750 million investment in Vancouver.

There are a number of prepared pads awaiting office towers that have never come. Perhaps developers needs to create Winnipeg's own condo alley such as we have seen in Toronto. It certainly might help create the downtown population base that could make use of variety of public spaces already available in the area. By the way, those pads that could use a condo are both ends of Portage Place and the Trizec building atop Winnipeg Square.

In the end, let's keep the ideas coming but remember it would help to have a population living in one of these developments.

A&B Sound building transformed for Bodies Exhibiiton

BODIES…The Exhibition



Free Press pic of how the A&B Sound building will be transformed.

In a bold move that got all the media talking and will have them to continue to talk, the MTS Centre have announced that presentation of BODIES…The Exhibition. The travelling tour has brought in large audiences and controversy everywhere it has been. The show was considered front page material for the Winnipeg Sun.

To add to the excitement, MTS has said it will be utilizing the A&B Sound building across the street as an exhibition hall for the 100 plus day run of the show. It is innovative thinking that will bring people to the 22,000 square foot facility and surrounding area.

True North has hinted that there might be another exhibition after that but the property holds greater value to them. They have said a hotel or other unique restaurant similar to Tavern United is what they in the future.

Bravo to True North and CentreVenture for this project. Look for crowds and controversy in the next weeks.



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