Winnipeg Deconstruction
 

Who says the 60s are over?

What the hell... I thought the whole district was protected from this kind of crap..

What does the block look like presently?

^ yes - let's see some pics... 1ajs?

isn't this the building housing Kenny Hong's etc.?

such bullshit.

Don't let 'em do it.

Yaa it's Ken Hongs, and the old Tatoo Exchange.

The buildings sit between the St.Charles and the Royal Albert.

Here is the old house from the vast expanse of surfacing parking directly beind it. Really, there nothing special about it, other than that it is a final vestige of Winnipeg's early history: before the real estate boom of 1881-2, before the Canadian Pacific, before electric streetcars (or horsecars, for that matter), before "Chicago of the North", before terra cotta, etc. When Winnipeg was a muddy village that hugged Main from about Notre Dame East, up to Brown's Creek.

Aside from the house, the properties in question are just a single-storey row of tiny shopfronts between the Royal Albert and the St. Charles. If Winnipeg's boom lasted another year longer than it did, these buildings would certainly have been gone; replaced by something more tall and grand. Today, if a developer wanted to replace it with something taller and grander, that would be fine, but it's instead threatened by plans for more parking and--to add salt to the wound--a curb cut.

So while these buildings add very little to the architectural grandiosity of the Exchange District, it adds something just as important: places to house commercial enterprises for cheap prices. Two of the three storefronts have been consistantly occupied (since I started coming around almost ten years ago anyway) by two enterprises--a renowned Chinese restaurant, and a tailor--who would most likely not operate in the Exchange District were it not for small, affordable premises like this. When the Exchange becomes a true neighborhood, as it is slowly beginning to, it will need little storefronts like these, not for their form, but for their fuction.

http://static.flickr.com/89/205274715_9ff4c6ab00.jpg

Looking south on Main from William Ave, 1877
http://static.flickr.com/67/199973771_033369b60b_o.jpg

I wrote the mayor and my city councilor Jeff Browaty.

I also wrote Justin Swandel, Russ Wyatt, Dan Vandal and Scott Fielding.

It's times like these that I think there is real merit in formally organizing an SSP Winnipeg party to actively advocate and inform Winnipeggers on the issues that effect urban Winnipeg.

at least meet for beers or something..

hell, I'd come.

Agreed, but alas..

I receieved an acknowledgement from Justin Swandel.

Holy crap (falling out of my chair as I read this)

You acutally recieved a reply from you councillor? How in the hell did you manage that?

It must be my rugged good looks.

i think i am going to register to speak...i hate public speaking, but this is pretty important.

I'm going to show up on Jan. 9th.

It'd be great if someone had some of those old aerial picts of how pockmarked our downtown is because of surface parking.

I saw a proposal about 7 months ago to redevelop the St.Charles into an Inn at the Forks style hotel. I'm sure this has something to do with it, especially the latter part about a patio addition.

The renderings looked really good. Basically they were going to do to the Charles what they did with the downtown RRC campus; keep the facade and completely overhaul the existing building.

It's too bad they are hell-bent on destroying the neighbouring buildings too.

Is there anyone out there who might be interested in making a more formal / organized appeal on Jan 9th?

(I.E a letter writting campaign from SSP Winnipeg members to the Sun / Free Press. )

I still very much like the idea of organizing a grassroots , web savy urbanist league. We could reach out to other groups who have similiar interests like newwinnipeg and the transit riders union, etc.

rather interesting... i should one of these days get around to checking out that chinies restraunt i keep forgetting its there.

i though we had all agreed to one why does nothing ever happen?

I'd be interested, but as it appears, and not that I'm one to stand back, but it seems as though others actively have the leadership role well in hand. On this front, I'm more than happy to follow. :notacrook:

I will if you do.

Also, I sent this letter to Cindy Tugwell, executive director of Heritage Winnipeg:

forgive me for my ignorance, but can somebody explain in two sentances or less the importance of that little shack and what is to be replacing it? Must be pretty important to you folks, but I fail to see the value in it right now.

It will be replaced by a curb cut and a surface parking lot.

when we're on the subject of buildings at risk

one place i would be worried about in the longterm is the telegram building

it lost most of its tenants this year and is starting to look neglected

pictures i took of it on wednesday
http://canada.archiseek.com/manitoba..._building.html

If they demolished of the Dingwall block next door, maybe someone could redevelop it.

This is a really good idea for a story for the Free Press.

I could easily see them doing a front page story with a large aerial photo highlighting the abundance of surface parking lots around downtown - and close to the St.Charles hotel - with a headline something like "why do we need more parking lots downtown?". It would be really effective.

Anyone know Bartley Kives or any other reporters at the FP well?

excellent letter rob.

it is a viable storefront in a national historic site...successful cities are a diverse tapestry of building types....these two little buildings contribute very much to the urban fabric...if we want to attract people to live downtown, storefronts that house tailors and little hole in the wall restaurants are precisely the things that attract them...not 10 more parking spots in an already large surface lot.

i am going to go find out how many parking spots the hampton inn on main has....google earth shows about the same amount that the st. charles currently has.....the marriaggi, a block away has been a successful boutique hotel for 104 years!! with no parking at all....its booked solid, a year in advance.

i dont understand how they can claim to have a viable business plan for a project with 50 parking spots, but they will walk away completely if they only have 40.....and who the hell puts an outdoor patio on the north side of a 3 storey building?

is somebody paying off heritage winnipeg?.....what an absolute embarasment....

i just e-mailed to request that i be registered to speak.

People who throw the patio in their plans simply to placate critics, I guess.

This is the new way to wreck buildings and put up parking lots: be the owner of a building nearby, and come up with a nice little plan for the site, which happens to include a parking lot. Don't start doing anything until you get your parking lot (and after that, who knows)... that way, you can hold buildings as ransom, and bargain with Heritage Winnipeg.

This kind of scheme has recently threatened the Ryan Block, the Bell Hotel, and the Grain Exchange annex.

I've been checking in from time to time to see what's going on, and I was lucky enough to do so in time to catch wind of this particular issue. Let me just say this: getting rid of buildings that fit into their surroundings as well as these ones do is one thing. Replacing it with a parking lot is quite another.

The more that our downtown gets sacrificed to the great god parking, the more unwelcoming and unpleasant a place to be it becomes. If the City simply said yes to every half-baked demolition proposal that came its way over the past few years, we'd now have parking lots in the place of several buildings including the Cadomin Building, the Crocus Building on Main, and several others as rgalston pointed out.

If the proponents of this development wanted to actually improve the neighbourhood by putting up a building on Albert to replace the ones in question, I could support it. However, punching a hole in the streetscape by replacing buildings with a parking lot is totally inappropriate and ridiculously short-sighted.

Any building is better than a parking lot

Sat Nov 25 2006

DALLAS HANSEN

ONCE again, the Exchange District is facing the usual threat -- a developer who wants to flatten buildings into a surface parking lot.
An e-mail, originating from city councillor Jenny Gerbasi (and forwarded to me by several people) tells a new variation on a familiar tale: A businessman wants to demolish a set of storefronts from 38 to 44 Albert St. Wait, isn't this a National Historic District? Shouldn't a set of 1920s storefronts built around a house put up in 1877 (the second-oldest structure downtown, the oldest being the Fort Garry Gate) fall under some sort of protection from arbitrary destruction?

"The Lord-Selkirk-West Kildonan Community Committee voted AGAINST the historic designation," necessary for the buildings' legal protection, writes Gerbasi (emphasis in original).

If it's rational for a developer to ditch buildings and make more money letting out a few parking spaces instead, then the end result is irrational. The greatest menace to our way of life in Winnipeg is not youth crime, potholes, or even malathion. It's discontinuity -- the lack of continuously built-up streets. You may eschew the walking and simply use Google Earth's satellite bird's-eye view to see that in most sections of downtown land area devoted to parking exceeds that claimed by buildings. When there are that many buildings missing, it creates an overall vacuum that can only suck.

Indeed, the situation downtown is so severe it would be sensible to recognize that no other buildings -- no matter how "insignificant" -- should be felled for parking. Behind 38-44 Albert there is already surface parking, which leads across the alley into a giant 30m x 50m surface lot facing Arthur Street. Across Albert is a multi-storey parking garage, and in adjacent blocks can be found a glut of surface parking. Rare in fact are the blocks within downtown Winnipeg that remain completely built-up.

For decades, however, almost every block in downtown Winnipeg was built-up completely. Angle parking on Portage, Main and other streets maximized on-street parking, and a streetcar right-of-way down the centre of our main streets kept (privately-held) public transportation popular. Strangely enough, downtown business did much better before the commercial parking lot.

History shows that Winnipeg's downtown can be bustling and prosperous. The experience of other cities shows downtown bustle and prosperity is impossible when so much land is given to surface parking.

If five-to-10-storey buildings makes for a nice average height downtown, every surface lot is a five-to-10-storey-deep hole. We have enough holes. It's time to fill. The Exchange District would be much more effective as a tourist and film industry destination were it to be completely continuous throughout and reconnected to the surrounding neighbouhoods. This would require that surface parking lots be built upon -- to a scale and an architectural style consistent with the original Exchange buildings. The end result would be a downtown that is immeasurably safer, better populated, and much more attractive -- a situation whose economic benefits would spill throughout our poverty-plagued inner city.

Such a vision is possible, with the right policies and a political will. Rather than look toward the long term, too many in this city's business community look to the quick-and-easy buck that comes with owning a parking lot. A land tax, based on the size of the property's land footprint rather than its sale value, might be the only way to make building up surface lots economically attractive.

Even a vacant building -- such as the crumbling Ryan Block at King Street and Bannatyne Avenue -- is preferable to a parking lot. An architectural classic such as the Ryan Block has potential to be developed into a residential, commercial, industrial, or mixed use, and even empty it anchors the intersection with its attractive facade. Flattened, or replaced by a parkade, it can only store yet more cars.

dallashansen.com

Well said!

Your keen observations are sorrily missed on these forums.

By the way, here is an article on the subject from July 21, 2006:

Heritage or Parking Lot?

Downtown Winnipeg's oldest building will be torn down to pave the way for a parking lot if a property firm gets its way.

Globe General Agencies and Imperial Parking Ltd. are behind a proposal to take a wrecking ball to two adjoining structures that include storefronts at 38, 42 and 44 Albert St. -- a building holding Ken Hong Restaurant and Garnet Tailoring, in addition to a vacant unit which was once home to a Hells Angels-run clothing and souvenir shop.

In their path are heritage advocates seeking a municipal historic designation for the property to keep it standing.

"It's never a good idea to replace a building with a parking lot. It leaves a gap in the streetscape," Lisa Holowchuk, executive director of the Exchange District Business Improvement Zone, told the Sun yesterday.

"We desire an environment in our downtown, particularly in the Exchange District which is pedestrian-friendly. We're much better off with contiguous storefronts if we want lively streets."

The BIZ hasn't yet taken an official stand on the subject. However, city hall's historical buildings committee is trying to shoot down the proposal, which would see the owners of the complex's three addresses -- Globe Enterprises Ltd., 388 Donald St. Ltd. and Klapman Meyer -- lease newly created ground-level parking space to the nearby St. Charles Hotel as the inn plans a redevelopment.

A report written by Coun. Jenny Gerbasi (Fort Rouge-East Fort Garry), head of the historic committee, states the complex includes sections of a residential building dating to 1878. And only the Fort Garry Gate is older than the edifice among downtown properties.

"This complex is part of a significant streetscape that provides continuity and character to the Exchange District," Gerbasi writes in the report.

Gerbasi did not return repeated calls for comment, nor did vice-president Ron Penner at Globe -- one of Winnipeg's prominent housing rental firms.

St. Charles Hotel's management could not be reached.

The proposed demolition is bad news to Garnet Tailoring, which has done business in one of the complex's units since the early 1990s.

'NOT A GOOD IDEA'

"This is not a good idea," said owner Garnet Francois. "I've been here about 13 years. I'd hate to think about what would happen."

The Hong Chinese eatery has leased its space for more than 20 years, Francois said.

"It has the best wonton soup in the Exchange," Holowchuk said. "It's a great little spot."

Here's a copy of the letter I've been sending out.

==================================

Good day xxxx
I will keep this brief, as I'm sure you are a busy person.

No matter the current state of the buildings proposed to be torn down beside the St. Charles Hotel, the city takes a very large step backwards if it allows this to happen.

The re-development of the St. Charles is highly desirable and a commendable project, but we mustn't continue to take one step forward and two steps back. Urban streetscapes are already in short supply in this city, and the Exchange is the one neighbourhood where they are starting to thrive. In fact, they are the key to our city becoming vibrant again and the key to Winnipeg being able to attract tourists from beyond our borders.

To remove an important chunk of Albert Street in order to park cars is incredibly counter-productive. The hotel will be much better served by IMPROVING the buildings and encouraging more "high end" tenants so that its customers can better enjoy the area.

The solution?
There is already plenty of parking behind the St. Charles, and if they don't want to use the other lots on Arthur, have the hotel build a 2 storey parkade on the Notre Dame lot. The cost of the parkade will not be much more than the cost of tearing down and paving the Albert St. lot.

I urge you, please take the necessary steps to keep Winnipeg's downtown from becoming more suburbanized.

Thank you,
Mike Petkau

Keep up the good work you guys! I wish I could help out, but I can't really since I'm still in Montreal. I'm letting my family know how important this is. No more goddamn parking lots - the buck stops here!

I just wish City Hall took a broader view of what constitutes "heritage" and is worth protecting. In this case, I'm unaware of any historic moments that occurred at 38/44 Albert St., but surely the "heritage" of urbanity that is the Exchange District is worth protecting in and of itself. Preventing buildings like these from being levelled and turned into still more parking lots that only repel people from the area is consistent with that.

And thanks for the bons mots, rgalston.

this was posted on newwinnipeg

Small storefronts serve big purpose in Exchange District
By Robert W. Galston


The problem with being a developer in Winnipeg’s Exchange District is that so many buildings get in your way.

This is the dilemma facing the new owners of the now vacant St. Charles Hotel at the corner of Notre Dame and Albert Street, who want to convert it to a boutique hotel. In spite of a large parking lot already adjacent to the St. Charles, the owners say they will need even more parking facing Albert Street, and the old house and storefronts next door, along with their tenants, would have to go. With so much parking, perhaps it would be more appropriately called a boutique motel...


That's all for now.

^ excellent article rgalston... has this been published?

Keep writing stuff as good as that and you'll end up on city council.

Thanks, guys.

maybe if you told them you were a native winnipegger, they'd take it the wrong way and publish it

Don't be put off Galston. I have submitted letters to the editor and sometimes they run them much later in the week. Especially if lots of other letters on the same topic come in or a guest columnist decides to write an editorial on the subject.

Maybe Steve Cohlmeyer is coming to your rescue.

http://img145.imageshack.us/img145/4293/kenwc8.jpg
http://img148.imageshack.us/img148/1615/ken2me9.jpg

from today..

anyhow was up on the 7th floor of the erc today and looked down at the house thats slated for demo its a brick house not timber.....
see if i can grab a shot of it from the 7th floor tomarow.

http://img490.imageshack.us/img490/8...charlesov7.jpg
http://img490.imageshack.us/img490/8962/housecw2.jpg

St. Charles hotel plans renovations
Critics say historic hotel shouldn’t destroy an exchange building for parking lot

By Elisha Cumbers
Nov. 30, 2006

Critics say the planned renovation of a historic downtown hotel isn’t in the core area’s best interest.
Ken Zaifman, lawyer and part owner of the St. Charles Hotel on Notre Dame Avenue, says he wants the vacant building on Albert Street adjacent to him demolished to make way for hotel expansions and a parking lot.
However, Councillor Jenny Gerbasi, chair of the city’s historical buildings committee, wants to see the building, the second-oldest in Winnipeg, designated a heritage building.
Gerbasi said that the house has significant residential and commercial history and that she couldn’t believe anyone would want to dismantle a building with this much history in the Exchange District.
At the Nov. 21 meeting of the Lord-Selkirk West Kildonan Community Committee meeting, Zaifman said he and his two business partners want to tear down the unused building to make way for additional parking, a restaurant patio and a new entrance on Albert Street as part of extensive renovation plans for the St. Charles Hotel.
“There’s currently no access to the hotel off Albert,” said Zaifman.
Zaifman said he and his partners plan to turn the St. Charles into a boutique hotel that will cater to the kind of cutting-edge, hipper crowd usually found in the city’s Exchange District.
A representative of Globe Agency Ltd., who owns the historic property beside the St. Charles hotel on Albert Street, said at the meeting they currently have no plans to renovate the building and will let it sit indefinitely if the building is designated historic. Zaifman and his partners currently have a long-term lease agreement with Globe Agency Ltd.
Councillors Harry Lazarenko (Mynarski) and Mike Pagtakhan (Point Douglas) voted against the historical designation, while Mike O’Shaughnessy (Old Kildonan) voted for it.
Pagtakhan said the decision made at the meeting was not to demolish the building, but to not give it historical status.
“A demolition order will come down in time but right now, this is what was decided.
“Perhaps it is the oldest rented residence in Winnipeg...but I’ve been all around this building, it’s in extreme need of a lot of repair.”
Lazarenko said he usually votes to keep historic buildings, however this one he feels is beyond saving.
“It comes to a point where you have to say, ‘Where is the funding going to come from?’ There aren’t going to be any renovations to the building, it’s just going to sit there, and eventually someone, some firebug, will torch it, people will break in. It becomes a danger.”
Lazarenko said he would rather see the land bring new life to the St. Charles Hotel if the only other option is to let the building sit empty.
Zaifman says if a heritage group wants to save the building, they’re welcome to it.
However, Cindy Tugwell of Heritage Winnipeg says her group has no plans to do so, telling media that it’s more important to see the St. Charles re-developed rather than saving two buildings in need of extensive repairs.
Normally Heritage Winnipeg would be in favour of the historical designation, but Tugwell said in this case the pros outweighed the cons.
According to a civic historical report, the building began as a house on Albert Street in 1877 and commercial additions were built on in the 1920s.
Since then it has been home to several businesses until recent years, when the businesses moved out.

Cindy Tugwell should be fired.

Dig back to May 1999 Free Press and sure enough there is a large cover aerial (colour) photo of downtown Winnipeg, surface parking and all.

I know because I used that photo in my presentation to Council when CentreVenture was first created.

Sometimes, when i'm feeling really bent out of shape, i think about taking a suitcase full of diesel fuel and fertilizer, and leaving it in the glass addition built on to the front of the Royal Albert.

it adds to the character of alexander... should be left alone...

but we don't need 2 of them along that street...

o on a side note i had lunch today at the chinies rest raunt there.. had the boul of wonton soup :) that place is like steping back in time lol the old woden fridge the 60's decor lol and then cbc fm playing in the background :) thats a restruant with character how long has it been there anyhow?