Quote:
Originally Posted by esquire
Andy6 is right, and the longer it sits empty the more that people will come around to that view.
It would be one thing if companies with money to spend were stepping up, but in this case every idea seems to be a variation of mainly government-funded projects along the lines of apartments on the upper levels, a museum and youth drop in centre on the lower levels or something like that... at a certain point it starts to feel like Weekend at Bernie's where you're spending money to try and make a corpse look alive.
I'd like to think that there is a reasonable case to be made for an office building conversion along the lines of the Eaton's Mail Order Warehouse, but no one seems interested. If there is no legitimate use for the building left then it's time to move on and get something good built there instead. Four modest sized projects that fulfill real needs is much better than one massive megaproject that, as Andy6 put it, is kind of contrived and is driven mainly by a need to pretend there is still a use for a massive old department store.
Eaton's was even bigger, but it got demolished and replaced by something relevant to 21st century Winnipeg... we all moved on. The same can happen with The Bay.
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I think it's way too early to be considering that position, though. The store literally just closed three months ago. A bit soon to be saying "well, nothing's happening, better throw in the towel and tear her down".
It may take years for a productive reuse of the building to come to fruition, and I don't see a problem with that. Though it would be great if a temporary use to animate the ground floor space could be found in the interim.