Quote:
Originally Posted by biguc
Downtown megaprojects have probably driven more small businesses under than they've helped along. Portage has seen its small businesses most famously decimated, starting with Portage Place, but Main street has probably suffered the worst, with a string of publicly funded disasters from the civic centre, to the Pan Am Games demolitions, to the more recent WRHA building cutting an organic, small business driven revitalization off at the knees. The reason the exchange is probably doing so well at the moment probably has more to do with CentreVenture leaving the area alone for the last ten years than anything.
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This is more feelings than fact. The whole reason Portage Place came to be is because of the waning popularity of downtown.
You can't have one without the other. Some of these projects fail. I think recently we've seen some successes. Im no fan of CentreVenture and would be just as happy to see them gone, but I think some here forget that Winnipeg has never since its post war days really been successful at attracting solely private bussiness to the core, at least not consistently.
I am concerned that our province has become unevenly weighted with big public sector companies... but I'm also happy with what I see and feel downtown these days. People in their 20s and 30s actually want to be downtown. I can count 7 new private establishments within 2 blocks of my old Hargrave apartment that weren't there had I moved in 15 years ago. Maybe I'm not old enough to remember a better time - but there's no mistake that 30 years ago downtown was struggling.