And the barriers were stolen the first winter. I'm sure there was also a 5 hour long council community committee meeting and immense pressure from the Peter Warren Action Line that led to that "solution". Winnipeg in the 80s, man.

I always wondered about that arcade at the front of the building... no one ever uses it except smokers and maybe pedestrians caught in sudden downpours. What a waste of space... good on Harvard for finally fixing this error.

Hopefully. With Richardson fixing up their concourse, 200 Portage renos, and this, the argument for status quo is going to keep drying up. From what I've heard, it does sound like the city will be going ahead with removing the barriers and replacing them with planters, which could eventually be taken away in theory.

For fun walked through the P&M BMO entrance to cross yesterday (I usually just jaywalk across Portage E) – it's such a shame that for so long almost no one has ever gone through there. Next to the ledge, it's probably the most beautiful building in Winnipeg, and 90%+ of people have never been in there.

FYI the bunker access to Richardson is closed now as they're redoing those stairs. Sucks that they're having to put money into these entrances now when it's pretty widely agreed upon by city and owners that they need a full new solution.

^ The piss bunker across the street is also closed this week, not sure for what but hopefully a good spraying is part of whatever the plan is.

Yeah except the Bowman cucked and bowed to the political pressure. Now he's made a set up where he will be eviscerated if he attempts to open it up.

What has been mentioned, and seems to make the most sense, is simply to tear down the barriers and make it possible to easily open the corner without allowing pedestrian access immediately. That way we lose the lousy barriers and eventually get to cross the street. They could do it as an excuse to conduct renos on the concourse. "Pedestrian access will be granted on a temporary basis to P&M during rehabilitation of the existing lower level concourse and circus", then just "forget" to remove access at the end of the project.

Yes, as I stated above the plan is to replace the bunkers with movable planters.

Wow, I had no idea funneling pedestrians into this arcade was part of the original agreement with the City. It's like the City was *trying* to make Portage and Main the most unsafe pedestrian environment downtown.

There are renders in the Richardson Building lobby of their outdoor space that's being renovated (sorry did not take photos), but by in large, it's underwhelming.

Basically looks the same, but newer. No renders of the stairwell bunker down to the circus though so not sure if any changes happening with that.

All that said, it will look fresher and newer and that's a good thing.

I had no idea that there was so much going on in Winnipeg right now. I am incredibly impressed. Honestly, I wouldn't be surprised if Winnipeg started to look like Edmonton or Calgary in 15 years at this rate.

Some of those paving blocks were getting a bit unstable in the plaza there. A refresh needed to be done before someone got hurt.

those paving stones are also overtop of a crawl space

I think we're very close to hitting the critical mass where downtown Winnipeg starts feeling truly populated and vibrant outside of the work day. Between new construction and conversions there are 6 different residential highrise projects underway downtown right now.

Thank you for your gracious comments! There's certainly more construction than there has been in a long time, and from what some of our forum "insiders" hint, more to be announced. I don't know if we'll see quite the downtown density of Edmonton or Calgary, bit if this building trend continues I can certainly see Winnipeg mentioned in the same breath as those two cities.

I don't know about Calgary, but it's not hard to imagine downtown Winnipeg catching or even passing Edmonton in terms of an active, "dense" downtown. Especially as Railside fills out, and if the concept of refocusing Broadway on residential happens.

I think the most quintessentially Winnipeg thing is that someone stole the metal barriers within the first year.

My recollection is the barriers were sitting at a Main Street pawnshop for years until the owner finally took them to the scrapyard on Sutherland...

Anytime! As an outsider from Ontario, I don't know a whole lot about Winnipeg, but I can see that it has a lot in common with Edmonton. I would not be surprised at all to see Winnipeg go through the same kind of tall building boom in 15 years that Edmonton is getting now, provided that it maintains its high growth rate. It probably won't get as tall as Edmonton, but you never know until it happens.

Somebody stole the barriers from P&M. Hallelujah!

Insert k d lang gif.

Well, Calgary has a lot of proposed highrises downtown. Not offices obviously, but apartments (currently underbuilt) and condos (still decent market interest). Depending on oil's recovery, this could increase.

Regardless, Winnipeg is doing well.

Edmonton has a ton of big residential projects on the go now as well so I wouldn't put any eggs in that basket either.

New signs being installed

https://i.imgur.com/CM5egbV.jpg