[cllew]

The WCB land goes back to the time that Izzy Asper owned Monarch Life before his board overruled him and in 1983 sold out to North American Life. WCB later bought the building and land for their head office.

In the book Izzy by Peter C Newman, Asper says that he "bought two city blocks from Broadway right back to to the next two streets because I envisioned a monumental head office. That was fifteen years ago and those two blocks in the heart of Winnipeg are parking lots. I was planning the design, a spectacular atrium that would have made the Trump Towers look like slums". (Page 109)

Maybe if he had kept control of Monarch Life, the area around the Convention center would have had a different look.