Quote:
Originally Posted by esquire
Take your pick of just about any redeveloped downtown department store across the country. The one in Vancouver is a great example of a repurposed department store, much the same way that their old downtown post office was wonderfully repurposed.
But while they get showpiece developments, we got an awful new police station that the former mayor and his cronies made a pile of money on, and now we are about to get what amounts to a community centre. I'm not saying that the need isn't there for what will ultimately go into HBC, but it is a sad statement that this is the best we could hope for, for that building and that location.
|
I'm kind of struggling with the disappointment. It feels like the disappointment is less with the proposal and more with the state of downtown Winnipeg. Yes, if this equivalent building was in an equivalent area in some big eastern city, then maybe we could've built 53W53 on top of it. But we're struggling to lease the downtown residential we're building. Just a few weeks ago the 300 Main thread was dominated by us wondering who was going to live in the building and whether there was enough demand for a building like that. If people we're climbing over each other to buy $1,000,000 condos in downtown Winnipeg, then yeah, we could've built some glassy palace extension on the Bay building. But that's just not reality here. The fact they were able to find anyone to take on this project is kind of a miracle in my eyes. Imagine if we were getting a call center instead...