Bagelsmith Montreal Style Bagels Coming to Carlton

It is a very tiny space on Carlton next to very long standing denizens of the street such as Ichi-Ban and Thomas Hinds but it might be the right fit and right place for Bagelsmith to set up shop. A pop-up shop is coming first in March to give people a taste of the wares but then after that, the permanent home opens at 185 Carlton next to the RBC Winnipeg Convention Centre. Paper covers the window now so the countdown is on.

This is no mere franchise. It is a bold attempt to create the sweet tastes of Montreal bagels in Winnipeg by someone who took the time to find the right recipe.

As True North towers start to fill up, the Monday to Friday crowd that is moving in is beginning to seek out new coffee places, restaurants and foodie places to fuel them through their day. Lakeview Square is already a well established business hub and the Convention Centre next door has steady traffic but it is True North that represents real density growth as it builds on parking lots and former hotel space.

Sometimes a business needs a tiny space for a big idea. Bagelsmith will have that on Carlton and we might see even more street level activity as people explore their new business hub. Having sweet Montreal bagels will go a long way to making people feel good about the move into the area.

Winnipeg's Tallest Tower

The new downtown tower

It it all hype?

A Winnipeg Free Press story mentioned how many building projects are going up...only two actually under construction.

On average since 1970, Winnipeg usually sees a few taller buildings go up every ten years. There is one big gap of nearly 15 years over the entire 1990s and into the mid 2000s where nothing was built if any real height over the entire city. As most will remember, Winnipeg and much of the country was dragging through a recession, very low dollar and major cutbacks at every level of government. The one major initiative was the construction of Shaw Park for baseball as part of a plan for Winnipeg hosting the Pan American Games and permanent home for the Winnipeg Goldeyes.

Winnipeg in the 1990s saw property values drop horribly and the struggle every day was palpable. The departure of the Winnipeg Jets in 1996 seemed to leave the message: Will the the last one to leave turn out the lights? It was an awful time that saw the city tear itself apart with murder, arson and car theft. People fled the province.

The closure of Eaton's downtown store in 1999 and the huge hole it created downtown kind of shook up the business and government community. The empty Eaton's building was the biggest symbol of how Portage Avenue was on life support.

Despite efforts to preserve the Eaton's building, no one from the private sector came forward with a viable plan year after year until the arena proposal led by the Chipman family came to the fore.

It would be wrong to say that this deal turned this around for the downtown of Winnipeg. It did however lead to a partnership between the Chipman family and David Thomson, who owned the Eaton's property, to create the circumstances for the return of the Winnipeg Jets.

Serendipity. The combination of the two families led to the building of the MTS Centre which led to the Jets which has resulted in the construction of the biggest project on North Portage since the 1980s. The Centrepoint development is well underway and will have offices, a hotel, a parkade, condos and restaurants. The tallest building since the Investor's Group office is climbing into the air.

The very slow recovery of the economy that includes Winnipeg and the excitement of the Jets return has inspired some investors to invest in property in the downtown area. We have seen some private developers buy hotels, apartments and offices for some pretty big money.

There are a few proposals for residential towers downtown, only two have shovels in the ground, one other look ready to go. A few have seemed to falter on the lack of parking and their unwillingness to invest in a parkade. The Waterfront Drive phase one of condos depended largely on the developers putting their own parkades in. The price point as a result is higher.

Notwithstanding the issue of parking and how government can help, many developers are proceeding with their own plans. No one builds on speculation anymore so pre-sales are the rule of the day. Even when everything is almost pre-sold, it is still a slow process as one Assiniboine Avenue developer has shown.

The biggest hype probably surrounds the Fortress Real Developments and MADY Developments with their tallest building in the city proposal for 245 Graham Avenue across from the old post office/new police headquarters. The tower continues to get pushed up in proposed height. The latest word is that it will be 46 and possibly as high as 55 storeys in height.

The proposal also includes a grocery store, some offices, parking.

The creed of the new development is Live, Work, Play.

Can it work? Well, it has been done before. Winnipeg developer Lakeview has done it twice with Lakeview Square and Delta hotel complex from the 1970s and 1980s and the Courts of St. James in the 1970s. Each project required tens of millions of dollars and had retail, offices and residential components that ensured their success.

The $200 million to complete Winnipeg's tallest building could be there to spend. The impression from the developers is that they do set out to do the work they promise. They have an established record.

However, we have had many promises from even well know Winnipeg firms that were withdrawn because market conditions were not right.

It remains to be seen if this project can go forward. But in the end, Winnipeg has waited a very long time for a major building like this and the timing for it might be perfect.

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.

New Hotels On West Portage Avenue

In the last year, as noted in these pages, there has been a flurry of private businesses upgrading or building hotels from the ground up. West Portage Avenue is the latest to see some big changes.

Unlike the U.S, where national hotel brand names proliferate in select areas, Winnipeg has been known for regional city hotels. While these hotels might be affiliated with major reservations systems, they have retained their unique name and design status. The examples in Winnipeg abound: Norwood Hotel, Assiniboine Gordon Hotel and the Viscount Gort.

The Downs Motor Inn was one such regional hotel. In the last years, it has taken on the name-brand of Howard Johnson Express hotel. The 43 room hotel now has some new owners who seek to expand the hotel and take advantage of the attractions in the west of the city.

For years the main attraction was Assiniboia Downs Racetrack and the John Blumberg Golf Course. Hence, the old name Downs Motor Inn. The list of attractions has increased quite a bit. The Red River Ex, Adrenaline Adventures and the new MTS Iceplex are all drawing increasing numbers of people.

The sense that the area is a destination point has been recognized by others. Two other hotel projects are presently underway. A 70 room Motel 6 is nearing completion in Headingley close to the very busy Flying J gas station. The Motel 6 looks a little lonely where it presently sits but the whole stretch of the Trans-Canada Highway is being transformed by a divided road that will help commercial development. Also, being built is a 110 room Best Western hotel in that section of road.

Alongside the Howard Johnson Express inside the Perimeter Highway is a Canada 1 Hotel. If the name seems confusing, it is because it was a Super 8 Hotel until recently. I can't even find a listing of the hotel online but there it is: rebranded.

Just off the top of my head, I'd say the greatest influence on hotels in the area has to be the MTS Iceplex. It will be hosting large tournaments for years to come and teams will need places to stay. I expect we may not have seen the last of hotels being built in the area.

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.