Quote:
Originally Posted by drew
The thing that really grates me about downtown Winnipeg is the focus on office-only type developments, or re-developments for older, vacant buildings.
As an example, the redevelopment of The Avenue Building was given for office use. Here is a older character building just ripe for residential use in the heart of downtown. Unfortunately there is about 0 demand for new office space in downtown Winnipeg.
This means that the Avenue building will sit dark, empty and deteriorating for another couple years waiting for some existing city firm to play musical chairs with their office space downtown.
Another example is the Union Bank Tower. This building has existing floor plates unsuitable for modern office use. But each floor has 4 walls of windows and perfect space for residential units. This tower should have been converted in condos YEARS ago. To me it seems like a complete no-brainer. Yet someone in their infinite wisdom has held out waiting for, again, office re-development that will never happen in the foreseeable future. This building has sat empty for years now waiting for some idiot to break in and start a fire.
It's good news that the RRC will hopefully move into the Union Tower, but it should NEVER have taken this long.
The city should really relax it's zoning in the downtown to allow development to happen where the current demand lies. When there is no demand for office buildings, the city should be trying as hard as possible to push residential developments for existing buildings and vacant lots.
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I agree that we need to make the focus residential. Personally I think it is much easier to find 50 people interested in living in the Avenue Building than a company looking for 50,000 square feet of office space. Unfortunately when CentreVenture issued the RFP last year there weren't any residential proposals. Could still happen - the sale fell through.
The Royal Bank tower is a funny one. The floorplates are surprisingly small - 5000 square feet or so. You're only going to get maybe 5-6 units tops on each floor - that would be what, 35 units or so? I don't recall how many stories but subtract the banking hall and mezzanine. Also the stair/elevator is in the corner which apparently makes it a little more challenging. I think in the case of this building you'd get so few units out of it, it would never pay to do residential. However, it would seem you can cram a bunch of students in there and make some dough.
There was a little bit of momentum building there housing-wise. We need to keep it up.