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Old Posted Aug 7, 2019, 6:56 PM
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wardlow wardlow is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by pspeid View Post
I agree that this is more of a positive opportunity for both the building and the corner than it is a "doom and gloom" scenario. Yes the "Millennium Centre" is under-utilized, and only a short distance from P & M, but I honestly think the location and the Building's prominent alignment (facing P & M) will create a greater sense of urgency and importance to re-purpose the building (and hopefully the entire intersection) than the Millennium Centre did.

No, there has been no tenant secured, but the announcement was just made a few days ago! There have already been, IMO, a couple of really solid suggestions for this building posted here already, and personally I'd love to see more from this mainly "pro-development" group on the topic than just more of the old tiresome "here we go again/why are we so hopeless?" theatrics.
The change in tenant (and possibly the use?) will be an interesting test of how the crumbling barricade-concourse system operates. It's easy to support the status quo when the four corners are anchored by tenants who've been there forever. But it will be interesting to see what new tenants are going to be interested in a property that is simultaneously perhaps Western Canada's most grand commercial buildings *and* accessed by either literally crumbling stairs or a darkened, smelly rape corridor.

More generally, I don't get why BMO would in 2019 (not, say, 1959) move out of such a signature building that has been their emblem to Winnipeggers for 107 years. But then again I don't work in finance. All that said, I also don't get the whole grim end-of-an-era thing about it. The closing of the Winnipeg Commodity Exchange last year was an actual sad end of something: the end of 131 years of trading Western Canadian agricultural commodities in the city. But of course the WCE wasn't in a heritage building by that time, so no one really cared.
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