Central Canada Comic Con 2013

Me and co-worker at Comic Con

Another Central Canada Comic Con (C4) in Winnipeg has gone by and once again it has surpassed the previous years.

Next years will be 20 years since the start of the trade show and fan exposition. Things could not have been more humble. In 1994, the convention was held in a smaller hotel ballroom and was shared with antiques and toys through Manitoba's Collector's Expo. Six years later, comics pushed to the fore and the convention was named Manitoba Toy and Comic Expo. Add another six years in 2006, the name became Manitoba Comic Con.

The addition of celebrities from TV, film and beyond came just a year later in 2007. It exploded attendance and there was no choice but to seek a larger venue.

In 2008, the Winnipeg Convention Centre became home to Comic Con and its present incarnation as Central Canada Comic Con. It is a non-profit organization and now hosts four events a year with the marquee event being C4.

 

Me and co-worker and friend at Comic Con

In 2012, attendance at Comic Con rose to a whopping 34,000. There are only two other comic and fan expos in Canada that pull in more people in Toronto and Calgary. It is uncertain what attendance for 2013 is but line-ups were even greater than years before. The three day event in November has become a huge media event.

Costumes have grown each year as well as make-up and the addition of wrestling and wrestling stars in recent years as brought more and more people downtown for the three day event. Cars like Back to the Future's DeLorean and Scooby-Doo's Mystery Machine were displayed in the loading dock along with the wrestling ring. This was a brilliant and unothodox way to get more space on the floor and I can't believe the fire marshal didn't say: whoa!

As attendance moves past 35,000, the limitations of the RBC Winnipg Convention Centre begin to show itself plainly. Even with C4 moving to three floors next year, the space will be too small. 

The RBC Winnipeg Convention Centre is expanding and doubling its size. There are now several trade shows and conventions that challenge the present configuration with their attendance.

Here is something interesting to note: In addition to Comic Con, there was a football game with 30,000 plus people and a hockey game with 15,000 people going on...at the same time! In the afternoon, it seemed that all of the city had gotten into their cars to go out and take part in events. 

And what an amazing day it was. Sunny, warm and the downtown was filled with Jets uniforms and Jedi Warriors. Some wag said that all the losers were attending hockey, football and comic convention on Saturday. Well, that mouthy dude had his shirt pulled over his head, was taped to the uprights and was hit with phasers on fabulous for his troubles.

Winnipeg, you did yourself proud Saturday. Just one quibble: who set the time for all three events for Saturday afternoon! Yeek!

Delta Hotel Winnipeg Renovations

Delta Hotel Winnipeg

The exterior renovations in 2012 cost $1 million and now roughly $9 to $10 million worth of renovations are taking place inside Winnipeg's largest hotel, the Delta Winnipeg beside the RBC Convention Centre Winnipeg.

The hotel on St. Mary has been the largest hotel in the city since the 1970s with 393 rooms. Sometimes it seems as if renovations take place there all the time and in truth, it is around every 10 years according to industry standards. This latest work is stretched out over three years.

The convention centre next door was built for $23 million in 1975 and it triggered $50 million in private spending by Lakeview for a five tower complex that included a Holiday Inn, office tower, parkades and two residential towers. It is often believed that that convention centre came first and the hotel after but construction on the Lakeview development was well underway with hotel and one residential tower complete.

The hotel at 17 stories and constructed in 1972 has had three names since being built. The Holiday Inn was first and many years later became the Holiday Inn Crowne Plaza or simply Crowne Plaza. It was an attempt by the Holiday Inn company to distinguish difference between some of their hotels. And in their mind, the Crowne Plaza beside the Winnipeg Convention Centre was a marquee product.

In 2000, the Holiday Inn Crowne Plaza became the Delta Hotel Winnipeg and so began a dizzying name change for hotels in the city. Previously, the Delta had been on Portage Avenue in the old Northstar Hotel (now the Radisson). At the time of the conversion, the hotel underwent a $12 million renovation.

And so it goes again for the Delta, a very intensive reno to the outside and now the inside. Apparently, the reconstruction was already in the works and was not triggered by the $180 million expansion of the RBC Convention Centre Winnipeg.

New Skywalk connection completed in 2010

Delta exterior renovations in 2012

The Delta will continue to be the largest hotel for the foreseeable future and the primary hotel for the convention center. The two and now three block convention site area will likely be joined by one or two more hotels in time. However, talk about those hotels has gone on just under 10 years.

The underground parking and skywalk connections has made the area a prime convention site. Delta has 170 underground stalls off of St. Mary. The RBC Convention Centre Winnipeg has 560 parking stalls and will be adding 150 more in the new building. The Lakeview Square lot off of York Avenue has 512 parking stalls. All in all, quite a few spaces to accommodate people coming in for trade show and conventions and needing hotel space.

Photo by Esquire on Skyscraper Forum

The parking lot at York that is the site of the convention centre expansion is land the province has squatted on for years. It has been a parking lot for provincial workers during that time. By my calculation and I have not seen it listed, there were around 300 cars parked on the site. The parkade under the 340,000 expansion will have 150 stalls. I doubt very much whether provincial workers will get monthly parking there.

If and when Lakeview develops a new hotel on Edmonton across from the convention centre, a further 75 or so stalls will built over although I suspect the hotel will have underground parking to make up for it.

None of the missing parking on the surface will be mourned. The Delta Hotel, Lakeview Square and RBC Winnipeg Convention Centre did the right thing and put parking below grade. They also ensured mixed use of retail, restaurants and in the case of Lakeview, residential buildings.

The Delta Hotel is also doing a major upgrade on Elephant and Castle. This is a good thing as people forget how important the restaurants such as Boston Pizza in Cityplace and Elephant and Castle do for foot traffic.

It will be curious to see how long the Delta Hotel will continue to be the largest hotel in the city. It has held that position for decades and there seems to be no threat to that position even now.

RBC Convention Centre Winnipeg

RBC Convention Centre Winnipeg

Winnipeg has been not surprising practical throughout its history in naming facilities that serve a public function. For example: Winnipeg Auditorium, Winnipeg Arena, Winnipeg Stadium and Winnipeg Velodrome.

Naming rights have been around for a very long time. In the absence of a corporate owner and a company name, a famous citizen or citizens have often been chosen. Sometimes a sports facility might be called Memorial or Veteran's stadium. In other cases, named after a special event. The best Winnipeg examples are the Pan Am Pool and Pan Am Stadium.

The fully funded government brand new sports, convention and entertainment facilities dried up after the 1970s. The best these aging facilities could achieve was piecemeal upgrades from time to time. In the 1980s, the first real effort directed by the federal Liberals for a new arena downtown failed to gain traction.

It wasn't until the late 1990s that a new sports facility was built in Winnipeg and by that time, fully funded facilities were just not in the cards. Canwest Global Park (later Canwest Park and now Shaw Park) was a mish mash of funding sources and was built with various money including Crocus labour investment funds which have never been repaid. The baseball park built in 1999 was expanded to its present size in 2003. To this day, Sam Katz has said the baseball team has never made any money.

There has been a trend to transfer ownership of sports facilities to the operators of the teams that primarily call them home. This was done ostensibly to help with the viability of those teams but the amount of public investment advanced and the continued help needed for "infrastructure" almost seems limitless. Both the arena and the stadium replacements in Winnipeg have resulted in transfer of ownership to their respective teams.

The Winnipeg Convention Centre in Winnipeg is a different sort of animal. No team calls its home and no particular user has said they need the building along with the public support to be viable. I have written here before that a convention center is not just a white elephant that serves no purpose.

A campaign against the expansion of the convention centre was fairly vociferous.
The main complaint was that it was a perennial money loser. It is true, the facility has not made money. Heck, it has not even broke even. However, it was never designed really to be a profit maker. I do tend to agree that it needs better financial management and more revenue generators and user fees to operate by.

The biggest critics that the convention centre doesn't make money should not be surprised that the facility has sought out sponsorship. It seems a bit of a surprise that Royal Bank was the winner. This is no knock against the bank. They have operations all over Canada but execs mostly centered in Toronto and Montreal. The bank has had a strong presence in Manitoba over the years but has not show any particular affinity for the province over any other province.

In truth, it may be that the naming of a convention centre in Canada is a rare thing. How rare? Well, we probably have the first major sponsorship of any facility in Canada. I believe Ottawa has been looking for a sponsor but Winnipeg may have won the day because in the end, the Winnipeg Convention Centre will be the shiniest bauble in the country when done.

Sometimes there is no real explanation for a sponsorship. For example, General Motors sponsored the new arena built in 1995 in Vancouver despite the history of operations in Ontario. It always struck me as unusual but with a NHL team and a new NBA team that same year, the thought may have been that that it fit well with aggressive car marketing on sports channels.

Regardless of why Royal Bank sponsored the Winnipeg Convention Centre, it will help with revenue and raise the profile of the facility. The naysayers of public funding of the facility will probably never really be happy about it but the benefits to businesses in trade shows and the hotel and hospitality industry cannot be denied. It is entirely reasonable that the various governments might actually recoup their costs in taxes from various events associated with conventions and trade shows.

There are probably a few people who are not comfortable with corporate branding of buildings. I see it no different as naming streets, parks and neighbourhoods though. Someone named the neighbourhoods in the city of Winnipeg. Most of the times it was a developer. Seems a little too late for someone from River Heights to knock the naming of our convention centre as being awful when their own neighbourhood was branded in development.

Still, provisions have to be made for the failure of a corporation when naming a building. The Canwest Global name no longer exists and we have seen it stripped away from a few places. The ball park was seamlessly re-branded as Shaw Park but our tallest tower awkwardly became a number.  People can't forget the old name in some cases for a building or facility. To this day, some people will still say Trizec Building.

The Winnipeg Convention Centre has been an important asset for the city and will continue to be so. It attracts thousands upon thousands of people downtown. The year the building came on stream, it anchored two square blocks of vital activity in the district. The upgrade is likely to double or even triple the building surrounding the expansion.

Probably not every building is desirable for a corporate sponsorship but in this case, it does not harm and definitely helps the facility achieve its financial goals. I don't see it as being a problem going forward.

In Defence of the Winnipeg Convention Centre

Winnipeg Convention Centre Expands

There continues to be naysayers to the Winnipeg Convention Centre's expansion or to whether even the present operation should continue to be run. The main argument is that the city and province should not be in what is a declining business, compete against other venues and hotels and be subsidized.

The Canadian Taxpayer's Federation said a scaled back version of the expansion was more desirable. They fell short of some other critics who said the whole tri-level government government project was a fool's game. Some media have said the facility has been a sinkhole since inception and has no value. What seems to get them most riled up is the $3 million split between the city and the province to cover the loss of operations. The city and the province contribute around $4 million to Economic Development Winnipeg as well. Do critics think that is ill spent too? Or is their dislike for the Convention Centre even greater?

I'm not big on losses either and definitely think there are ways to keep from having to have the city and province backstop the building. For example, I often wonder why food services are not a whole lot better. The Centre Place Cafe often only operates Monday to Friday. Attend any trade show and you will find the food vendors to be too few and the selection of food more what you would find at a football game. Um, is it too much to ask for a Tim Horton's or other franchises? Wouldn't they make money?

Aside from food services, one wonders if the $3 million could not have been made up from parking fees. Portage Place raised its rate to $10 for a hockey games. Raising the rates to $10 for three hours at the Convention Centre all the time could potentially bring in half a million in a year.

The absorption of  surface lots this year plus changing the parking times and rates on the street has made the parkade more valuable. And the expansion adds another 150 parking spaces bringing the total to 710 spots. And even that won't seem enough when attending many of the trade shows.

For those who seem adamantly opposed to the convention centers, I agree we shouldn't be trying to compete in attracting conventions that might come our way once in a blue moon. But what about tried and true local trade shows and conventions?

Where do they go if we shut down the Convention Centre? I have not heard any suggestions and one suspects that some of the critics don't care. They will say if there if there is a business case for it, the private sector will step up. Well, you can make that case for everything including the entire system of government. I am not quite sure having the Hudson Bay Company take over country operations again is the way to go.

Throughout our history, public facilities have been used to host trade shows. The Winnipeg Auditorium built in 1932 during the Depression was served as the place for conventions and trade shows right up till the 1960s. It also served as the home for the home or fulfilled the purposes of our present Winnipeg Art Gallery, the Manitoba Museum, the Centennial Concert Hall and the MTS Centre. In all the years this Art Deco style building operated, it was only once made money. It was established to serv a "public good." Today the building still serves a public good as the Manitoba Provincial Archives.

I am sure that some of the crankier people out there would say if an art gallery or museum can't make a business case for their operations, they don't deserve to be around. Well, I for one am glad that these institutions all had a place to call home even if no money was to be made.

I believe the city does need a hall to host trade shows and conventions. I don't know how easy it is to measure the economic importance such a facility has but consider this: Downtown hotel rooms and restaurants are filled for big shows and parking lots are packed. Lots of business gets done in terms of people purchasing wedding items, boats and home renovations among a number of products and services at shows.

How much business do some of these companies make in a year when they fill a whole order book for new kitchens? Does it not make sense that maybe through a variety of business, sales and personal taxes, the government gets back what they invest?

Winnipeg has benefited strongly from having trade shows and conventions. Moreover, they are fun. Now, this in no way means we should aspire for the new renovations at the Convention Centre to mean poor management and greater supports from levels of governments. I think it is possible to get close to break even or even small surpluses based on fees, franchises inside and possibly advertising.

The outright skepticism and cold water poured onto the Convention Centre and namecalling it a white elephant is not exactly accurate. But if silencing the critics by generating more revenue helps, then by all means it should happen.

Milestone's Grill and Bar To Open Downtown

Milestone's Grill and Bar to Open Across from MTS Centre

Sometimes development corporations let the cat the cat out of the bag in corporate releases without realizing it. Some recent examples are: Fairweather Properties partner spilling it about Lowe's Home Improvement coming to Winnipeg or the Metropolitan Entertainment Centre showing a re-branded Radisson hotel as a Canad Inn.

In the last days a magazine of what Centrepoint across from the MTS Centre and developed by Longboat and Artis shows that Milestone's Grill and Bar is opening at 311 Portage Avenue.

It is one of two restaurants proposed for the site. The other, revealed by the Free Press, is a local restaurant owner and his latest development. Pizzeria Gusto's owner on Academy Road will open a restaurant facing Donald Street. No word yet on what the style will be.

Milestone's Grill and Bar in Vancouver

Milestone's Grill and Bar started off in B.C. in 1989 but it was quickly snapped up by Cara Operations which owns Harvey's, Kelsey's and Swiss Chalet. They are now also in Ontario and Alberta.

The style of the restaurant is higher end than Swiss Chalet and many of the locations have patios. The menu ranges from steak, chicken, fish to pasta and salads with some gluten free items.

Standard Milestone's Grill and Bar in the Suburbs

It is going to be a while before opening day but all the pieces are starting to come together for Centrepoint. The Alt Hotel, Stantec Engineering central office, a parkade, condos and street-side restaurants.

It is sad that a Winnipeg Jets season is delayed due to the labour shortage. I know that some people dismiss it as overplaying positive effects downtown and elsewhere but one only has to be present to see that the crowd is larger, more prosperous and more willing to spend time and money before and after games.

All of the restaurants near the MTS Centre have seen a positive impact. Boston Pizza, Tavern United, Moxie's, Elephant and Castle. The effect expands beyond as well to Earl's and The Keg and Pony Corral.

The trick for the downtown is to connect more of the successful pieces. And yes, there are some successful pieces. It is not all a burned out ruin with death awaiting you at every turn.

To review the successful areas of downtown, let's make a list.

* The Forks

Only the most petulant of people would describe the site as a failure. It is a safe central gathering point with unique offerings of food, stores and entertainment.

* Broadway

It is a people watching plaza of office workers and street-side food trucks. Plus, some of the greatest concentrations of people live in apartments and condos stretching down to Assiniboine Avenue.

* Convention Centre

By far one of the most consistent draws of people for events. It is a two block area that has contributed to the economy and entertainment of people in the city for years.

* Waterfront Drive

Most successful new development and biggest contributor to new housing downtown.

The MTS Centre is a successful downtown facility. Some said it didn't live up to the hype as it didn't draw any new hotels and few newer restaurants. I think some people miss the point though. The MTS Centre was to replace a huge empty Eaton's building. And now the owners of the Jets along with other developers are looking to expand the footprint.

In many respects, it is the slow and steady work that worked well for The Forks.

Let's see what the presence of a few high traffic restaurants do for Portage Avenue. Welcome Milestone's.

Government Building Downtown

The provincial government has stepped up moving and consolidating offices in the downtown area. Some people have said this is not true development as it is government, others are against it for the simple reason that it is government pure and simple.

I'll set aside the libertarian view we should not have government or extremely little of it. Suffice to say, Winnipeg has had a high level of all three governments making a base of the city for delivery of their services. I don't have to go back far in our history to see what unbridled private delivery of business services meant. In some cases it meant a shoot out if we go back to the Hudson's Bay and Northwest Company rivalries.

However, as I said, I won't go into an anti-government or anti-business screed. I believe we try to limit the overreach of government but I happen to believe that there needs to be balance. To that end, I think all three levels of government need a strategy in the province of Manitoba to promote density, sustainability and best land use through re-development. And wherever possible use this strategy to leverage private investment.

If you look all up and down Portage Avenue, for example, many of the office buildings there have had some form of government office in them. I am not exaggerating in the least. While some of the buildings had a geographic reason to be in the area (such as the former post office building...later CJOB building), many of the other offices were leased just because space was needed.

In short, government offices have helped fuel suburban office development for years.

The provincial government as well as the federal government have always had offices downtown but not so much a plan. The province has placed lots of offices on Broadway over the years and it has helped give that street vitality. It has made sense given the fact that the legislature was right there on the same street. Only problem is that the province's strategy meant sitting on surface lots behind Broadway for decades contributing to a lack of density around the Convention Centre.

The province has been hit and miss in recent months about leasing or helping fuel a building cycle downtown lately. It is leasing space in an old Air Canada building at 352 Donald Street and a space at 287 Broadway and then again at 777 Portage Avenue. Those are the hits. The misses are calls for companies to make offers of property and then not following through.

Even a small amount of leased space can trigger millions of restoration. And so it is the case with 111 Lombard Avenue where Brick's Fine Furniture used to be located. It is an attractive building with a parkade across the street and surface parking lot beside. Despite the fact the building reno will include an expansion into vacant space, it seems the province probably can't help think it is attractive with the parking.

The proper investment by government in offices that they need can be the beacon for further development. Some interesting things are happening in terms of this investment now. It could and should be even better.

A plan should be in place to slowly move things to more central locations in a community here and elsewhere in Manitoba. Placing a very large building with tax people near the fringes of the city should be something thought of as unusual in the future.

There are good places downtown. However, they need people. Those people primarily come from those who live in the area. However, central location for sport, entertainment and office workers helps elevate a downtown to one that is busy with activity all day and all night.

More people equals more safety in that it generally translates into an abundance of eyes and ears to report break ins, aggressive behaviour and the like. Think of how most people feel when they are in The Forks: generally secure and happy to be there.

In 2013, it might be a surprise some of the things that are happening downtown. I can't think of anything so strong since the 1980s and the Core Area Initiative and its beginnings. Sadly, what eventually happened as that the focus became just on Portage Place and The Forks and too much in between fell by the wayside.

Central Canada Comic Con and the Conventions

Me as Rorschach and my friend Wonder Woman

Halloween weekend and Central Canada Comic Con all on the same weekend. It certainly makes for a costume friendly weekend.

Sad to see the downtown explode in shootings and stabbings once again because there was quite a lot going that was peaceful and fun. It is quite ridiculous when you think about how someone's checklist for Halloween goes like this: Booze, drugs, gun, knife. Check! ready for my night out!

If this is left unchecked, it won't long before some people make a decision about going to a Winnipeg Jets game, convention center show, Concert Hall outing or The Forks based on fearing that they will be killed in their cars.

It will be useless telling people that perception is not the reality.

The reality is that we will surpass our murder rate this year. The reality is that shots are being fired and stabbings are occurring. Everything and I do mean everything should be done to prevent protect the population from this unsettling trend.

Anyway, I won't try to spin this story about how good things are. Suffice to say, I want to go downtown to Jets games, conventions and plays. I am demanding that things be better. And yes I am looking at you Mr. Mayor and you Mr. Premier.

Anyways, back to the convention that I attended...

For those interested in knowing, there were many people from very young to very old at the Winnipeg Convention Centre enjoying Central Canada Comic Con. Since 2006, it has taken off and thousands are in attendance. I suspect it will only get bigger.

There were some stars from TV and film present for autographs and question and answer not the least of which was William Shatner.

Met Kevin Sorbo who seems to be a genuinely good guy.

There were so many excellent costumes and activities that it was enough to keep most people engaged for hours. Wonderful show and you know it will only get better.

****

It is the type of show the Convention Centre has been doing so well over the years. Home show, car show, boat show. Literally thousands of people who generally don't go downtown for a host of reasons go to the Winnipeg Convention Centre.

I am not an expert on the economic activity generated by a Convention Centre. It is probably lots and although the costs are high to build them, I think they are worth it so long as they have the tools to generate some cash for their operations. Parkades can make money after the initial huge start up costs.

It is curious to note that developers are keen on buying parkades. There is high interest in Portage Place's parkade to spur a tower. This isn't a bad idea but CentreVenture should hold off till they get a commitment for both towers to be built on west and east side before selling. They should not think of this as losing a revenue generator in the parkade but getting seed money for further projects.

This weekend's convention had two decks of parking lot filled. It had every food service counter filled to capacity and probably more could have done business.

I think more revenue has to come from services provided from the Convention Center. It should have more restaurants, concessions and the like.

The plan for expansion that I have talked about here includes a hotel. This is a good thing and should be thought about in terms of how it can create further revenue and support for the convention center.

The Convention Center has been isolated too long from the rest of the downtown or Broadway by a selfish province that thought nothing about having huge surface parking lots spread out all around and no plan for doing better. Those parking lots were owned by the province and any thought of developing them till this year was rejected.

Here's hoping that enough vision is in place to try and make what works in the city work better and stop working at cross purposes.

Winnipeg Convention Centre

With very little fanfare, debate or explanation, the Winnipeg Convention Centre is planning to move to the next level in its quest to expand the size of the 132,000 square foot facility. At a proposed $180 million the project is massive and the changes to the downtown and the city could be profound.

Since 1974, the Winnipeg Convention Centre has been responsible for some of the largest and most important gatherings of Canadians in history. It was there in 1983 that Joe Clark decided that he had not received enough of a mandate to continue as leader without a new leadership convention. This proved to be his undoing.

The annual conventions that take place at the facility each year have been a boon to business and tourism alike. Several hotels and restaurants make their year based on what happens at the Convention Centre.

In 1974, the building of such a large facility was a leap of faith. There was no other buildings of its size in Canada at the time and no one aside from the city seemed willing to finance the construction. It probably chafed some butt at City Hall to watch other cities receive oodles of provincial and federal cash to steal Winnipeg's lunch money.

There have been some naysayers at the Canadian Taxpayer's Federation at projects like the Convention Centre. They have proposed a scaled back expansion to save $54 million. Other critics have been less charitable and have wanted to scrap the expansion or to somehow get out of the money-losing convention business.

The justification for a convention center usually comes from its economic impact. Public ownership of the facility only make sense if the events generate revenue and profits for the private businesses that utilize the building. The people who advocate for private ownership of a convention center need to take into account that if the venue is a profit-based business, it will be intent on convention center profits.

This is not an unimportant point. The Winnipeg Convention Centre's strongest position doesn't come from how profitable the facility is but how much business it generates as a whole. In turn, this draws more taxes for government and more profits for business.

As difficult as it is to come up with good numbers of the Winnipeg Convention Centre's economic impact, there is no doubt that it does try to get maximal benefits to its users. It is for this reason that all three levels of governments have ponied up.

Still, the concerns of the Canadian Taxpayer's Federation should not be dismissed. While maximal profit-making should be left to the hotels and their meeting and banquets business, the Winnipeg Convention Centre should try to mitigate the operating losses.

In the past they did this with a mix of retailing, movie theatre and hosting a temporary casino.

Retailing will continue to help pay the freight but the big ticket item is likely to be a hotel connected to or on top of the Convention Centre paying rent. This is in the plans for the present expansion although the details are fairly sketchy.

In terms of what the Winnipeg Convention Centre does for the downtown, it cannot be denied that until the MTS Centre was built, there was not one city property aside from the Millenium Library that drew such consistent numbers of people to the area. However, unlike the library, many of the people who come to the Convention Centre often stay in hotels and use the restaurants in the area as well.

It is without doubt that of the two, the Convention Centre has a bigger wallop.

The unfortunate thing about city facilities such as City Hall, library and Convention Centre is that while they are all downtown, they lack synergy because they are all spread out over a great distance. It has taken till 2010 to even connect up the walkway system so that library and Convention Center are attached.

There is nothing to be done about about how spread out things are except try to coordinate efforts. It is surprising even know how things run at cross purposes or from one crisis to another sometimes. The SHED (Sports, hospitality and entertainment district) program appears to be one way to link things up. Still, at 11 blocks and incorporating theatres north of Portage Avenue and all the way down to the Convention Centre, it is lot of real estate to connect the dots.

And whenever possible, it is important to remember that the downtown is also a good area for office buildings. It is still remarkable to me that Western Financial was lost to the Polo Park area and that no one talked to them from the downtown agencies. Missed opportunity when you consider that Stantec was negotiating around the same time to build across from the MTS Centre.

It will be interesting to see how the Convention Centre looks when all the tenders are in and the actual building design comes in.

It would be good to see some projects fulfill the potential many believed they had from the beginning.

Eaton Place, cityplace

There was a time when Eaton Place in downtown Winnipeg had 100 stores and actually advertised on TV. Today, as a cityplace, it has about a quarter of that.

Manitoba Pubic Insurance Corporation (Autopac) bought the mall and the offices above in 2009 for $80 million. This reflected confidence in the building but not necessarily the mall. The mall itself has shrunk to serve the local office population for the most part.

The construction of the walkway from the Convention Centre and Delta Hotel will certainly give some help to the remaining businesses in terms of walk-through traffic but the days of being a destination in itself are long gone. Even before Eaton's closed, the mall was having greater difficulty in attracting people. At one time a Cineplex theatre was in the mall and although the postage-sized stamp screens were small, it attracted people interested in smaller niche films. Likewise, several movie theatres in the surrounding area including the North Star, Capitol, Odeon, Garrick and Metropolitan meant that many people were downtown and around the shop or eat before or after attending a movie. Mr. Greenjeans was popular among the school-age set for many years.

The success of Silver City first at St. Vital Mall and and then Polo Park accelerated the closures of the downtown theatres until only Portage Place and the Towne remained.

With the closure of Eaton's, the future looked pretty dim for Eaton Place. After its renaming, the only strong point it had was that it was a well leased building for offices and had lots of parking.

The building of the MTS Centre has not been a huge boon for the mall save for Boston Pizza which has benefited from the amount of events been hosted and people seeking out eating establishments.

The fate of Eaton Place in Winnipeg in its smaller cityplace form is in contrast to Eaton Centre in Toronto. Eaton Centre was built in 1977, two years before Eaton Place. Whereas Eaton Place in Winnipeg was renamed cityplace and fell from its peak, Eaton's Centre kept its name and its place as a top level retailing location. In 2010, Eaton Centre will be renovated. It has been expanded and upgraded twice before in 1990 and 1999.

Winnipeg is not Toronto but one wonders what might have happened if Eaton Place in Winnipeg had been expanded and Portage Place never built. Eaton Centre only has 235 stores now. The combined Portage Place and Eaton Place stores would have been comparable to Eaton Centre Toronto.

All along the initial push for north Portage was for an arena. It is hard not to think how it might have been different. Nothing would have stopped Eaton's department store from failing but the push for a second mall with 100 stores to compete with Eaton Place (cityplace) was probably misguided.

Things will probably go better for cityplace with a walkway but a future of further success might be better directed at complementing the MTS Centre. And by that I mean that given the location of the mall, it might be well suited for additional restaurants and entertainment geared to events next door.

By the way, I am trying to remember all the shops that were in Eaton Place. Any help in that regard would be great.