I know this thread is about future highrise projects in Winnipeg, but I thought that in order to better understand the future it might be helpful to look at the past. Specifically, I wanted to see how Winnipeg's population growth correlated with highrise development (for the purposes of this post, that's buildings 10 storeys and over).
While what I learned is probably known to most around here, I found it very interesting. It seems like the bulk of Winnipeg's highrise boom occured between 1965 and 1989, or when Winnipeg's population was between 500,000 and 600,000. It's a similar story for office building construction. Following that, construction seemed to level off quite a bit, likely due to the 1990's being a less economically-prosperous time and population growth slowing to a crawl.
Most people here will argue (I think?) that highrise construction is going to be primarily driven by market factors, such as price to construct, return on investment, opportunity cost of building elsewhere, and the general state of the economy. However, this misses one important piece, which is the demand for space, which is mainly a factor of population growth. Winnipeg's population absolutely boomed following WWII, growing by almost 180,000 people between 1945 and 1965. I think it took a while for highrise construction to materialize in response to the population boom, and I think you'll see this lag is evident in the graphs below. Even as population increased but at a slowing rate in the mid 1970's, highrise construction was still going steady which may be a result of the preceding population boom, both in office and residential.
So what does this all have to do with the future? I think that highrise construction in Winnipeg, both in residential and office sectors, has a lagged effect. It might take 10 to 15 years for the market (on aggregate) to respond to changes in population. We all know Winnipeg was rather stagnant in the 1990's. But right now, Winnipeg is absolutely booming (in comparison to the past). Why?
- From 1990 to 1999, Winnipeg's population grew by slightly less than 10,000 people
- From 2000 to 2009, Winnipeg's population grew by slightly less than 30,000 people
- At the current rate of growth, from 2010 to 2019 Winnipeg's population is on track to grow by more than 100,000 people
We are growing about 10 times faster now than we were in the 1990's. Now, more people move to Winnipeg in a year than during the entire decade of the 1990's. That's a massive change.
So when we're talking about highrise construction, I don't have a crystal ball or anything but I think we're going to see a significant change within the next 10 to 20 years in the Winnipeg. While I wouldn't promise any "new tallest" or Vancouver-style glass pillars, currently Winnipeg is growing at one of the fastest rates in it's history, and it will probably take time for the market to respond to this if the past is any indicator.
Take a look at the graphs below for the lag in population and highrise construction I'm talking about. Note that I measure highrise construction in terms of cumulative floors built in buildings 10 storeys or taller because that's the info that's available on the skyscraperpage database and that's the unit of measurement that best represents how the state of the market is changing in relation to population. I know it's not a perfect measurement (especially since it doesn't take in to account building size, just how many storeys it is) but it's as good as it's going to get with the current data available. This also doesn't look at the midrise sector since that data isn't availble, and perhaps preferences have changed so that people desire smaller buildings in Winnipeg. But I still think this is an interesting exercise!