Winnipeg | Osborne Village & Fort Rouge

[Ando]

Which tells you that it's the landlords that are killing Osborne, because the demand is there for shops and services.

[wardlow]

Originally Posted by Ando

Which tells you that it's the landlords that are killing Osborne, because the demand is there for shops and services.

Yes. But I would think it also is because redevelopment on a lot of Osborne Street properties probably wouldn't be approved. The City still plans to widen Osborne, and would therefore take off the front 10' or so of any property that creates a new use or builds new. That disappointing commercial building with TD, Little Pizza Heaven etc, for example... they didn't set the building back because they wanted to. That's where Winnipeg's public works told them to set it back to. Eventually they want all the buildings on the east side (the Toad, Die Maschine/American Apparel, Second Cup) to come down so that another lane of traffic can go in.

This may, in no small part, explain why Osborne Street looks depressingly frozen in time while the rest of the neighbourhood experiences significant infill.

That and I would think market demand favours residential units on quieter, tree-lined streets instead of busy traffic arteries. But of course that assumption is proven wrong by new residential development on Portage, Provencher, and South Main.

[buzzg]

Tunnel on Donald under Confusion Corner. Remove a lane from Osborne to give bikes space.

[headhorse]

ridiculous, just make the street one lane each way, add separated bike lakes, and widen the sidewalk. people will figure it out... we always plan for vehicular flow, not building strong neighbourhoods. you can even have turning lanes for Stradbrook and River.

I mean we already rammed the Donald St bridge through two neighbourhoods to alleviate traffic, how many more neighbourhoods do we need to do that to before we figure out that it actually doesn't do anything for traffic flow...

[Urban recluse]

Bingo.

[buzzg]

Originally Posted by headhorse

ridiculous, just make the street one lane each way, add separated bike lakes, and widen the sidewalk. people will figure it out... we always plan for vehicular flow, not building strong neighbourhoods. you can even have turning lanes for Stradbrook and River.

I mean we already rammed the Donald St bridge through two neighbourhoods to alleviate traffic, how many more neighbourhoods do we need to do that to before we figure out that it actually doesn't do anything for traffic flow...

Exactly. Main is the downtown exit for ppl going SE, Donald for S-SW. Once warranted/needed, Confusion Corner gets redesign for better traffic flow and connect the two villages together. Either a giant roundaabout circus or the great idea someone had on here a while back of connecting Donald-Pembina via tunnel and rebuilding the old street grid that would connect Corydon & Osborne above it.

[borkborkbork]

Originally Posted by wardlow

The City still plans to widen Osborne, and would therefore take off the front 10' or so of any property that creates a new use or builds new. That disappointing commercial building with TD, Little Pizza Heaven etc, for example... they didn't set the building back because they wanted to. That's where Winnipeg's public works told them to set it back to. Eventually they want all the buildings on the east side (the Toad, Die Maschine/American Apparel, Second Cup) to come down so that another lane of traffic can go in.

What?! Is there any link to this plan?

I don't understand how it's even possible. Isn't the Osborne Block (at River) a designated historical building? This plan sounds obscene!

[esquire]

^ The City is doing it passively and it's probably not going to happen in our lifetimes. But really, the City should just scrap the plan and allow buildings to be built right up to the sidewalk again.

[CoryB]

The fire that burned down the one building on Osborne leading to the depressing strip mall set back off the street front is one of the worst things to happen in Winnipeg, right up there with the fire that destroyed the Albert St business block.

[esquire]

^ To be fair, that building would have sucked even if it wasn't set back. It was built in the late 90s right when care and concern for proper urban design in this city was pretty much at its low point, hence the single storey stucco strip mall design. It's a minor miracle that the city didn't let someone build a drive-thru McDonald's or some such there.

[wardlow]

Originally Posted by borkborkbork

What?! Is there any link to this plan?

Not really. Though you could probably go through old transportation plans from past decades and assume that any widening plans are still on the books. There is similar long-term plans to eventually widen a lot of streets in Winnipeg. Roblin, Stafford, and St. Mary's Road are a few examples I know of. And I'm sure there is still a plan to eventually extend Grant Avenue across the Red River to Archibald, for example. But as Esquire notes, these are very low priority.

And they aren't capital projects, but instead are transportation plans. So buildings 'standing in the way' of a wider roadway can continue to exist. Similar to how buildings or land uses have non-conforming zoning rights under plans that come later. For example: in 1910 a house is built in what becomes an industrial area of St. Boniface. A plan from 1975 calls for the area to eventually be nothing but industrial uses, so the by-law changes to only allow industrial. But the existing house can remain as a non-conforming use for as long as the owner wants. But once they try to build a new house, or change it to a different use, they lose their non-conforming rights.

In the same way, the City has plans to eventually widen streets, but there aren't pressing demands for wider streets yet, so the City just plays the inexpensive waiting game instead of the very expensive expropriate and build game. Then when someone tries to redevelop a property, the City will require they give the front 10' or so of their property. Needless to say, the effect is that it stalls redevelopment on these streets. And what projects do go ahead have buildings set back from the street.

[borkborkbork]

It's disgusting to sacrifice the quality of the neighbourhood (set back strip mall type developments) for a widening that, even if it were not purely hypothetical at this point, would be impossible by virtue of a heritage building in the way.

I had no idea about why the TD strip of Osborne was so awful.

Now that I know:

[esquire]

Originally Posted by wardlow

In the same way, the City has plans to eventually widen streets, but there aren't pressing demands for wider streets yet, so the City just plays the inexpensive waiting game instead of the very expensive expropriate and build game. Then when someone tries to redevelop a property, the City will require they give the front 10' or so of their property. Needless to say, the effect is that it stalls redevelopment on these streets. And what projects do go ahead have buildings set back from the street.

Good point. I suppose in that light it's a bit easier to understand why a landlord of a property on Osborne is in no great rush to build something new and in the process, losing a good chunk of their land.

[buzzg]

Originally Posted by esquire

Good point. I suppose in that light it's a bit easier to understand why a landlord of a property on Osborne is in no great rush to build something new and in the process, losing a good chunk of their land.

But at some point even if the setbacks stay in place, the value of maintaining a parking lot or an A&W is/should be much lower than building something bigger and higher revenue-generating

[trueviking]

I've seen that setback documented somewhere...cant remember where...I believe you can see its effect in south Osborne between the village and the older area.

I didn't realize that why the pizza strip mall was set back....that is mind blowing. I wish I did have documentation of that....It must be in the zoning book, no?

I recently came across the same issue on Redwood....the site was reduced by a lane and nobody had any idea until it went to the city.

[trueviking]

That new apartment building for provencher had to get a variance because the back lane has a future widening plan. They fought against it. Would take every building on provencher to be replaced to widen it. Stupid.

[OTA in Winnipeg]

Originally Posted by trueviking

I didn't realize that why the pizza strip mall was set back....that is mind blowing. I wish I did have documentation of that....It must be in the zoning book, no?

Wow. I'm not in the business certainly but I remember hearing about this. Also, like you, thought it was stupid. Yeah, let's do this all the way down Osborne. What is the exact plan? Who the hell is running this show? Is this simply city employees working on a decades old plan?

All questions for the people alive now for sure.

[wardlow]

The City’s Transportation Master Plan has St. Mary’s Road (between Marion and St. Anne’s) as a road that will be widened in the medium-term, but nothing about Osborne, Stafford or others. I don’t think the zoning by-law would have anything about this… For all we know, these widenings were first dreamed up in metropolitan plans from the 1950s, when they thought Winnipeg would have a million people by 1991 and the city would look like an at-grade version of The Jetsons. The Transportation Master Plan says in very vague terms that the City will start moving away from road widenings, yet these plans seem to still live on. Or maybe they don’t. No one knows what the plans for our streets are until someone applies to rezone a property.

Amazing to think there’s plans for this and this to eventually disappear. These are some of the best urban places in the south end, and they already suffer from too much overwhelming traffic.

[WolselyMan]

Winnipeg must be professionally protected from stupidity such as this. A city where the urban core has to double as a central crossing point for all the major cross town traffic arteries is FUNDAMENTALLY incompatible with the vision of Winnipeg one of the great population centers of Canada. With this we are left with two potentials for the mindset of our city planners. 1. They're too incompetent to have realized this by now. Or 2. They're not aiming for Winnipeg to be the most optimum successful version of itself, but is content with viewing Winnipeg as nothing more than another small sleepy mid-western city that should function as nothing more than a place for bored educated young people to grow up until they can move away and start a career in one of the "real" Canadian cities like Vancouver, Toronto, Montreal, Calgary, & Edmonton. (Or god forbid Regina or Saskatoon!)

In which case, they're still incompetent.

[lilwayne]

widening osborne village area would be nonsensical if they should do anything its ban parking on the streets. and create a few large parkades in the area. widening the streets on osborne village would ruin its urban feel it would start feeling more like a suburban street or one of our major roads like pembina and lagimodier.. widening st marys, kenaston etc makes far more sense..

and the view from central park of the hydro bldg and true north square on a bright sunny day looks amazing.. almost like your in a different city

its obvious that skycity is a no go so i hope someone else comes around and purchases that surface lot from fortress because with all thier pending lawsuits thier going to need to start liquidating thier assets.. thats prime spot for development.. i think someone should take over this project because clearly theres enough demand for a large condo like this to proceed.