Possible saviour for history unearthed: Fort's bastion may kill plan to build highrise
Sat Oct 13 2007
JOE BRYKSA / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS
Archeologist Sid Kroker walks outside the excavated dig site of the foundation of the northwest bastion of the original Upper Fort Garry.
FOR about six months now, the City of Winnipeg has been trying to turn our political and commercial birthplace -- the Upper Fort Garry site -- into what it already very nearly is.
A graveyard marking our apathy about history.
The burial ground was prepared last May when a city council committee approved the sale of adjacent land in a deal that would situate a 15-storey highrise apartment like an unmarked tombstone for the Upper Fort Garry site.
The project, which was proposed by Crystal Developers, was designed to be set tight in the corner of a parking lot at Main Street and Assiniboine Avenue.
And snugly up against the fort's northwestern bastion.
Or at least that's what Hudson's Bay archival records dating back to the fort's 1836 construction suggested was the bastion's probable location.
But that, as you'll see, is where the plot takes an interesting twist.
Anyway, in its short-sighted, money-grubbing haste to approve this monument to myopia, the city has resisted various overtures to stop the highrise project.
And the insanity.
The overtures have varied from a simple call for common sense, to a collective personal appeal from the Friends of Upper Fort Garry, a collection of the city's business and political elite who want to create a heritage park and interpretive site on the downtown property.
Oh yes, there was another overture.
It was, and still is, a win-win plan -- courtesy of Yours Humbly -- that calls for relocating Crystal Developers' highrise development in a swap of surplus city-owned property.
Alas, Mayor Sam Katz informed me last week that plan was a no-go in his opinion.
But this week, something happened that might succeed in halting the project where common sense and personal persuasion seem to have failed.
Operating under the pre-construction specifications dictated by the provincial Heritage Act, archeologist Sid Kroker went searching for the round, 26-metre-in-diameter limestone foundation of the northwest bastion.
The exact location is important because the city and the developer had committed to building the highrise apartment on the edge, but not on top, of the original fort's footprint.
So a backhoe dug deep into several predetermined locations of the parking lot near the corner of Main and Assiniboine. And out popped what could be the Friends of Upper Fort Garry's ace in the archeological hole, as it were. Because much to archeologist Sid Kroker's surprise, the northwest bastion wasn't where he, the city or the developer thought it was.
"It was approximately three metres or 10 feet further west than we anticipated," Kroker said.
"Because it's further west than anticipated," Kroker explained, "it may make the development plan unviable."
Kroker's reports are being shared with both the city and Crystal Developers.
So I asked Kroker if the developer had told him that the project might have to be scrapped.
Kroker didn't say yes or no.
"That's just common sense," he answered instead.
Crystal Developers originally had designed the project assuming a certain size of the lot, Kroker said.
"The lot is now 10 feet shorter." That's not even allowing for any government order that may demand another metre of buffer between the proposed highrise and the fort footprint.
"So who knows if this project stays viable," Kroker said.
Actually, I can only think of one person.
So I called the owner of Crystal Developers, Ruben Spletzer.
His receptionist got back to me.
She said Mr. Spletzer wasn't available.
Then she said: "He has no comment at this time."
We can only hope that the next message we get from those who would seek to desecrate our history comes from a white flag waving in Winnipeg's storied wind.
Long live Upper Fort Garry.
gordon.sinclair@freepress.mb.ca
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