Councillors square off over old Exchange buildings
Last Updated: Thursday, November 23, 2006 | 5:05 PM CT
CBC News
History and progress clashed at Winnipeg City Hall this week, with councillors sparring over a bid to tear down a century-old building and addition in Winnipeg's Exchange District and turn the space into a parking lot.
Progress won the battle Tuesday when the Lord Selkirk-West Kildonan community committee voted 2-1 to deny a house built in 1878 and an attached storefront from the mid-1920s status as historical.
But the war isn't over: The decision has to be ratified at the city's property, planning and development committee early next year and both sides are already marshalling their arguments.
A parking lot company owns the property on Albert Street near Notre Dame Avenue and wants to take down the buildings to make way for a surface lot.
Winnipeg was 'little more than a pioneer village'
However, the city's historical buildings committee recommended to the community committee that the buildings be designated as historical.
"If you put a different surface on this building, you'd be standing in the oldest building in the downtown," Fort Rouge Coun. Jenny Gerbasi, who chairs the committee, said Thursday.
Gerbasi said the house was built when Winnipeg was "little more than a pioneer village."
"Pave paradise and put up a parking lot, is what they want to do," said Old Kildonan Coun. Mike O'Shaughnessy, who voted Tuesday in a community committee meeting to give the sites historical status.
Time to take a stand, councillor says
O'Shaughnessy, who in 1979 helped draft Winnipeg's historical building bylaw, said it's now time to take a stand for the Exchange District.
"The integrity of the Exchange District is a fragile thing. And which will be the straw that breaks the camel's back, I don't know," he said Thursday.
"If it isn't this one, then the next one becomes the one.… No one knows exactly where that line will be, so let's draw the line here."
But Mynarski Coun. Harry Lazarenko, who voted against the status, said the owners of a hotel near the site need the parking space.
"The owner of St. Charles Hotel, who wants to expand his hotel and also put in a patio, has made it very clear that 'If I can't expand my hotel, I am going to give up that building,'" Lazarenko said.
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and i don't make mistakes on purpose... you have no idea how much this drives me nutz and i literally don't see my mistakes inless they are pointed out to me threw the spell checker or some one says something... i just want to go on contributing to the community doing my thing... 
That last post 1ajs is about the best so far (with the exception of "witch"...but I guess spellcheck won't catch that 
)
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