Winnipeg Construction

[trueviking]

as much as i believe in jane jacobs organic growth, fine grain development as the key to any success of a downtown, i think you have to look at the economy of a city a bit more three dimensionally than that.

nobody would argue that splitting up the big parking lots and selling them to developers who would fill our downtown with wonderful three storey walk ups is a lovely notion....who wouldn't want that?...i want to live in a snow globe too.

where are all the people living in the this urban utopia going to work?.....are they all going to be cobblers, tobacconists, or run haberdasheries on the ground floor of their buildings?

In the real world, cities have to have economic drivers....yes its easy to post links to editorial pieces about the death of conventions, but the reality is they are significant economic engines in a city....cities need large scale development....even the most urban cities in the world have convention centres.

its true that they are horrible for the pedestrian environment and are pretty terrible urban buildings, but in this case, i didnt see that parking lot getting filled anytime soon...and if the greenwich village dream is a reality, we have a whack more empty lots to do it on....

my hope is that this drives enough economic spin off that we start to see surrounding lots be filled with services to respond to this development....it could result in more hotels, restaurants etc. filling in the gaps around the convention centre....in the more fine grained development that we all hope for....that doesnt happen in isolation....new york is filled with massive buildings....the fine grain grows around it....the big buildings is where people work.

There are at least two hotels already proposed in response to the expansion....i can guarantee the impetus for developing the MPI lot was based in large part on that as well....whatever is proposed there will absolutely be trying to capitalize on the convention centre...thats why it was such a desirable site.

residential and organic growth is of course the backbone of the future of our downtown, but you cant just ignore the other things that bring people there to work, to visit and to spend money.

even in its current configuration, the convention centre fills 100 000 hotel rooms a year, attracts 150 000 people to winnipeg per year.


@headhorse
the government is not donating $200m to the convention centre....it generates revenue....it would not be the same to simply give it away to developers to build housing with.

people have to work somewhere too.