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.

Banks Show Some Love to Winnipeg

TD, Canwest and now RBC Building

RBC has really decided to make sure they have good name recognition in the province. In one short month, they have announced that they are putting their logo on two prominent Winnipeg buildings, the Winnipeg Convention Centre and 201 Portage Avenue, formerly the TD building, formerly Canwest Global, formerly Canwest building.The Royal Bank lion will now grace to major buildings in own for years to come.

RBC leased the top floors of 201 Portage for their securities division which was the impetus for the name going up . In recent months, the bank has also donated money for research on Lake Manitoba.

RBC has also been positioning more senior people here to capture some of the corporate business springing up. It is no accident that they want more recognition in the province for their work. People have not forgotten the steady stream of execs from all the banks that streamed west. Nor have they forgotten the steady refusal of investment money after that from those western purse-string holders.

The 1990s were rough years for Winnipeg and the province. The banks gave up, closed down and didn't believe the economy was worth it. The credit unions stepped up.

Not to be outdown by RBC, BMO has positioned a senior vice president here as well.

CIBC runs the only capital markets office in Winnipeg.

Winnipeg's Wellington West is now part of National Bank and Manulife.

Scotiabank has sponsored the stage at Festival Park in the The Forks for years.

The true test of the bank though is not just logos and sponsorships although these do help. It will be increasing the presence of senior bank staff and access to capital.

There is a reason why the credit unions boomed the last several years. It was the neglect of the banks. It is unlikely the banks will cause the credit unions to retreat. However, when it comes to getting corporate deals, securities trading and boutique financial services, the banks have more expertise.

There is one thing to note here. TD bank used to have a logo up on 201 Portage Avenue. They still occupy the building but RBC now has the higher floors, the logo on the building and more presence.

If there is a bank that needs to step up their game in the city, it might be TD.

Come on banks. Show some more love.

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.

The Cityplace Casino

CityPlace with MTS Centre at Right.

CityPlace with Walkway to MTS Centre. Photo by Bryan Scott.

CityPlace

CityPlace was Winnipeg's first downtown mall built in 1979. It emerged from the ashes of the closure of Eaton's catalogue division in 1977 and initially was called Eaton Place.

It would be wrong to say it was not a success at the start. It was. The mall and office portion of the building were a going concern and Eaton's beside it did well.

The opening of several more malls all in a matter of years including Portage Place had an impact on shopping everywhere. However, the writing was on the wall and with the movement of multiplex movie theatres to the suburbs, the younger crowd that inhabited the mall left as well.

In 2001, Eaton's closed for good and it is a wonder we didn't see Eaton Place go as well. However, the newly re-branded Cityplace had the income from its offices to sustain it as well as generous revenue from the parkade and parking lots. The building has increased in value in every decade since it has been open unlike Portage Place.

The mall is a shadow of itself now. The connection to the MTS Centre built in 2004 did not help the mall in a meaningful way other than ensure that the restaurants still had people to come to them. The extended walkway in 2010 also helped in that regard as people from the Winnipeg Convention Centre came over to use restaurants.

The mall continued to serve a very niche local business area but it was not a destination mall nor did it have a huge retail anchor. The prospects for Cityplace all changed when the Winnipeg Jets returned last year.

While the Manitoba Moose were appreciated, they drew a smaller crowd, more of a family crowd and one with a more limited budget.

The arrival of the Jets and some rushed renovations to upgrade from True North drew a commitment from the province of Manitoba for further investment in the MTS Centre in the form of video lottery terminals. At present, those VLTs are in the Tavern United across the street with revenue going to pay off the arena.

Public support from the city and the province will rise to $11 million a year with all the revenue from tax discounts and VLTs added in. I don't know the economics of this. I have to suspect that the province makes a lot of money back on sales tax for liquor and merchandise sales, food and for parking. The city has fewer revenue streams but if the property values around the MTS Centre have risen, it may be worth the investment.

The fact that Longboat and Artis are building a large complex across from the MTS Centre indicates that the investment in MTS Centre is paying off. By my reckoning, the increased tax from off site might well make up for the discount the arena gets. However, I am not a accountant so I can only guess. It would be nice if someone actually did an economic impact study of the subsidy and how it affects government and business for Winnipeg and the province.

Back to the casino though...

I have long advocated a return of a casino to the downtown. I had said it would be a great way to get the Winnipeg Convention Centre the expansion they wanted. In the end though, the three levels of government stepped up and work is being down now.

All that was left was to fulfill the promise the NDP government made to True North about more VLTS to pay for improvements to the arena. The rumour had been that a sports bar was coming and the talk was the Shark Club, a sports chain in every western province except Winnipeg. But wait, we have a Shark Club. Doh, wrong club!

Like the problems we faced with Calgary's Cowboys coming to town, someone has registered and is using the Shark Club name on Lombard. If the Shark Club wanted to come here and use their name, they would likely have to make a deal with the Winnipeg club using the name these last years. Ask the The Brick how they feel that worked out for them when they sued Brick's Fine Furniture.

We finally know some of the details about what the province is planning. We are not just going to see the Tavern United's VLTs combined with new VLTs in a new restaurant. We are going to see a full restaurant and casino with 140 slot machines, 2 poker tables and 4 blackjack tables.

Holy big difference from VLTs, batman!

Some local bloggers have indicated there are a strong gains that can be made to the facility that holds a casino. We can expect this is going to trigger a property value increase as well as help elevate the value of all surrounding property in 2013 and beyond.

Some of the negative comments from bloggers and people posting to Free Press and CBC pages is in regards to gambling.

No argument there. Still, prohibition comes with ill effects too.

Would eliminating gambling and drinking cause more crime than regulating and taxing said vices? I think there is strong evidence to support that it does.

The provinces online gambling site is now love today. I think that might have a bigger impact than the casino.

As more details come available, we will see what the name will be, what the look will be and how the casino will be in relationship to the MTS Centre.

My view is that there is more good in this decision than bad. It will be interesting if in later years what the Jet Effect will actually be.

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.

Downtown Winnipeg - MPIC Surface Lot

One of the proposals by developer Fresh for the the surface lot near MPIC


We still haven't heard any details about the MPIC proposal for their surface lots yet. However, one company released their drawings into the wild.

It is a conglomeration of buildings but appear to be a mix of retail, hotel, condos and offices. The store looks like a Sobey Express which would be a good addition to the downtown. A boutique hotel also appears in the pictures.

With all the the talk about surface lots, the activity surrounding the Winnipeg Convention Centre and Autopac's surface lots, this could be first time in decades that that the awful gap toothed holes could be filled.

Fingers crossed that the design and function fire the imagination.

On the whole, the plans needs to be to connect the pieces, add housing to each piece, get parking underground, increase density and to ensure that such a project contributes to a neighbourhood.

A New Casino for Winnipeg

From Satellite, McPhillips Street Station (top) and Club Regent Casino (below)

This is a topic I have covered before but like issues such as Sunday shopping, it needs to be looked at again.

Sometimes, the size of a place can only be measured when seeing from above. McPhillips Street Station Casino (178.000 square feet) and its bigger sister Club Regent Casino (182,000 square feet) have been fixtures in the casino market of Winnipeg since the Crystal Casino (1989 to 1997) in Hotel Fort Garry shut down in downtown Winnipeg.

The Crystal Casino was the first permanent government run casino in the western hemisphere and garnered quite a bit of attention at the time including a Time magazine mention. While many will have a hard time recalling, the Crystal Casino was set up after the continuous non-permanent casino run at the Winnipeg Convention Centre came under scrutiny for being a draw for less desirable aspects of gambling. Children waiting for parents outside the glass walls come to mind.

The style of Crystal was to be Monaco influenced. In practical terms this meant a dress code of no jeans. There is little doubt that there was fear that the Hotel Fort Garry was going to be overrun by rubes. In the late 1980s and 1990s, the hotel was hanging on by a thread. Previous owners had been struck down by financial difficulties. The casino was a last ditch effort to save the building.

And it worked. Eventually, financial stability was restored, the right ownership was found and the casino was no longer the right fit. In other words, the seventh floor ballroom was needed for the wedding and conference business that owners knew there was demand for.

In 1993, the demand for bingo was being satisfied by people travelling out of the province or by small part time community halls.  The province, facing massive cutbacks in transfer payments, latched onto one of the only growth industry for government revenue: full time bingo halls and VLTs. Lottery and casino money was increasingly becoming an important revenue driver for the province and both Progressive Conservative and NDP governments contributed to massive expansions in gambling province-wide.

Ostensibly, the increase in VLTs was to help rural hotels from folding or to keep charity and non-government organizations funded. Then it became a way to help fund general revenue for the government of the day.

It is difficult to say what factors made the McPhillips Street Station and the Club Regent locations the top choices. Top of my head would be that the province didn't want to use land they owned behind Broadway lest it take surface parking away from provincial employees. That, and maybe there was apprehensiveness about who would be going to such bingos. A satellite view of the two locations would appear to indicate that parking was a main driver of things. However, I might also suggest that the government believed that locating a casino south of the Assiniboine River was not in the cards.

In mid 2012, the casinos are well entrenched, one with a large hotel attached, the other with one being built. Both are part of continent wide circuit of musical artists who travel coast to coast appearing at casino venues.

And yet for how large these casinos are, you could drop both inside the new Ikea building. Despite several expansions, there seems to be no let up in the demand. Even the South Beach Casino hasn't cooled things off. And if Internet gambling is any indication, there appears to be a desire for ever more choices in how and where people gamble.

The downside of gambling is as well known as the downside of alcohol and cigarettes are. What should be kept in mind is the downside of prohibition is also understood. If you don't want to see organized crime sell these things, you regulate and tax them and try to help people who might have a problem with addictions.

The two casinos north of the Assiniboine River are probably at their maximum size based on their locations. The city could probably use a third casino in the south but the same fear of protests are as likely now as they were in the past.

The province is probably only too aware that if Kapyong Barracks on Kenaston is eventually sold to First Nations that is highly probable that a large casino might be what goes up.

I don't say this to be alarmist. If I were a First Nations leader, I would be looking at how I could maximize return on that land. A Superstore and a Safeway would seem to be a lesser rent than VLTS and tables.

The province should be considering about what leaving an opening for another city casino means. Even now, the issue of a casino in the western part of the province is causing ferocious debate.

It is my opinion that the province ought to plan for a third casino and if they want to have maximum control over the location, now is the time to do it. To that end, I think a casino should return to the downtown.

There are so many items that can be checked off by bringing a large casino downtown. The issues of surface parkings lots can be addressed by building on province owned land. The ability to have people use transit for the casino will be better addressed than anywhere else in the city. And for those who do use their cars, build underground parkades.

At the very least, one or two hotels could be built to service the casino. A smart developer could probably also get an office tower and apartments going in as well like when the Winnipeg Convention Center went up.

As for the casino itself, it could bring in even more entertainers if it has a suitable hall for them. Proximity to the arena could be ideal for a sports bar and other restaurants.

More links to the skywalk system could be put in place.

In short, a casino could leverage a lot more activity if planned well and if hotel, office and residential components are added in surrounding blocks.

Now...will provincial leaders talk about it or will they play coward as they did last election and not talk about Sunday shopping and then bring it up later and say their hands were forced?

Plan a little, please.

The Next Tall Building in Winnipeg

Skye Halifax is 150 meters tall in the planning process

Who will have the taller buildings in five years: Winnipeg or Halifax? Well, if the newly bold Halifax continues with development plans, it will be Halifax.

And so might follow Saskatoon and Regina after that.

And Winnipeg? Well, who knows?

Now, no city should measure its success or virility based on skyscrapers. The completion of the Burj Khalifa is evidence that building a tall tower for the sake of building it could be quite costly. The tower has plenty of empty space and rents are 40% down.

Still, taller buildings supporting mixed uses can be highly effective in creating a vital community without the sprawl that taxes our infrastructure budgets and time management in terms of transportation.

So let's look at big Halifax project: It is called Skye Halifax and will have two towers called the Twisted Sisters standing at 48 floors each! The plan calls for a mix of condos and offices. The tallest building in the Maritimes now is the former Dalhousie residence building called Fenwick Towers at 33 floors. In actual height it is shade under 55 Nassau.

The height of Skye is 150 metres and the cost will be $350 million. There are still hurdles to pass as height restrictions have been in place in Halifax for some time so that buildings will not overshadow the Citadel. However, the grandiose design and the money involve have people re-thinking things. Perhaps it is because the old experience of Halifax and a tall tower is Fenwick. Unloved and unheralded in design, it likely made people cautious.

We'll see shortly if this Halifax project gets off the ground.

So what do we have in Winnipeg?



One of the buildings to go up with some height in the last year was the 13 floor Pembina Hall residence building in the fall of 2011. The cost for even this modest development was $42 million and the technical snags were many including students being caught in a failed elevator

Prior to that was the Manitoba Hydro building at 22 floors in the downtown in 2005.

The tallest buildings presently under construction are the Human Rights Museum and the Winnipeg Stadium.

Most other highrises are still in the planning stages or have been chased away altogether. The Canad Inns hotel at the Health Sciences Centre is under way now. The tower across from the MTS Centre is also under construction.

However, now we have to ask what next and where? And is it possible to build something greater 20 floors?

The conclusion would have to be yes if opposition doesn't scuttle the idea.

The quickest solution to getting some density and taller buildings might be to sell Portage Place parking to the developer who comes up with something for the two pads on the east and west ends of the mall. CentreVenture squatting on the mall parking does nothing to develop the site. Seems they could net some cash and kickstart either hotels or condos atop Portage Place.

It seems a missed opportunity with Winnipeg Square where the sale of the parkade could have kickstarted a hotel or condos on Trizec 2's pad.

The new construction of the Convention Centre might also be ideal for a few towers if multiple parties are brought together to see how to feed off the synergy of the main building.

Aside from a few obvious places downtown where an office/condo tower might work, there are some potential places in and around the vacated golf course for some residential development although the cries against traffic will be be loud.

A plan B for the Fort Rouge yards should be in place because it hard to see if they residences there will be built or not. There are some potential sites along Henderson, Portage and Pembina.

What will drive any tower in Winnipeg though will be residences. Condos will be needed for seniors, young professionals and for families who can't afford housing. Rental places are in desperate need.

It is unlikely we are to see an office tower of any height go up without the money that comes in from condos.

So will Winnipeg get on top of that?

Well, time will tell but it seems just as likely we might complain about any tower even if it was going up on a gravel parking lot in the downtown of the city.

Parking Lots

Winnipeg parking lot of the future?

Mary Agnes Welch in the Free Press is doing a four part series on parking in Winnipeg. There have been some good blog reports on this subject over the last several months but kudos to the big paper for a detailed look that includes locations and values on the land.

One thing from the article that Welch wrote:

Other lots are unofficially earmarked as sites for future development. The large Impark lot on Main Street north of the Manitoba Museum is seen as a location for the museum's expansion one day.

I've said it once before and I'll say it again: I believe the land by the museum should be reserved for Manitoba's first dedicated Science Museum.

I am seriously considering mounting some sort of campaign for the idea. What do others think?

In the mean time, I do think I see a few positive nibblings at some of the surface lots. However, we keep seeing things like the Shanghai restaurant crop up.

Good blogger articles on the parking issue here from West End Dumplings. And here from Rise and Sprawl.

As I've said, a few bloggers have covered this. I was rather surprised in the election that there was a lot of talk about surface lots and few answers.

I honestly think that the city has to make sure that they continue to resist demolitions of buildings for future plans that are non-existent.

At the same time, I think that on land set aside for things like the Manitoba Museum and the Convention Center that serious consideration be made to fulfill their expansions.

Manitoba and the Winnipeg will soon be 150 years old. To this day, the Museum remains one of the top Michelin attractions for the province. It is time to invigorate and expand that legacy.

As far as the Winnipeg Convention Centre goes, it is time to think big in the same way as the original building was thinking big. I know some focus on whether the facility earns back the money it cost to build and operate it but I'd argue that the numerous conventions hosted there have economic impacts far beyond the subsidy of $2 million it receives from the city.



Sam Katz and other rejected the expansion the Winnipeg Convention Centre announced in 2008.

I certainly don't think the project should go forward with only public financial backing. I personally think it is time to invite a private casino operators to make a bid for Winnipeg's first Las Vegas-style hotel, casino and sportsbook attached to an expanded Convention Center. A royalties agreement should be put in place to support the expansion and operating costs of the Convention Center within a timeframe that made its goal one of self-sufficiency.

It is time for innovative thinking that involves more private funding being brought to the table.

Update: I spoke to two clients yesterday about the Manitoba Moose game on New Year's Eve. Both expressed interest in attending this fun evening that is really geared to families but worried about parking. They said that they might not go because they weren't sure where to park or felt it was hard to find parking.

I realize this is exasperating for those who say there are 20,000 parking spaces in the downtown but it doesn't mean that people don't feel that way anyway.

Some people who do know about parking downtown resent paying for it and circle endlessly looking for free street parking.

In any event, I was able to convince both people I talked to that the Manitoba Moose game was too good to miss and that Portage Place (among other parking lots) was priced at $5 for the evening and that this was a great price for a family of four of five to manage on a night out.

I explained that the skywalk was was warm and safe for a family to navigate for the game and that Portage Place was a good place to store the car to melt some of that winter snow that accumulates at the wheel well. No sweeping or warming up the car after. The only thing I said was to be patient while exiting but that I had never had to wait more than 15 minutes or so while leaving the parking lot.

I think I convinced for certain one of the families I talked to. The other was giving it serious consideration.

These can't be the only families weighing out their evening out based on parking. Overall, I believe that many families when they hear what $5 pays for when going to a Moose game in terms of parking, they find it is a reasonable cost.