Winnipeg | Downtown | True North Square | U/C

[Simplicity]

Thing is, I don't really care how downtown does. I don't have a horse in that race and neither do most people. The only thing that bothers me about our downtown 'revitalization' is that it's not growth driven - it's just engineered demand. And since you need aggregate growth in demand to create a sustainable growth pattern, it becomes concerning when the government - at whichever level - starts decided what's worthy of subsidy and what isn't. As an example, there's no discernible growth in the demand for room nights in this city as evidenced but what the market values a downtown hotel at. So naturally, the new-to-market product immediately gets the advantage. If that advantage comes at the expense of the existing marketplace, you're effectively allowing government to select winners and losers and that's an insidious encroachment of what we've declared to be a free market. Ultimately, that's what creates the holes that Biguc and Esquire are referring to. It's worth paying attention to as a long-run trend. Invariably, the disequilibrium in the market becomes detrimental to the 'losers'.