Quote:
Originally Posted by esquire
ICYMI, Main Street Project is taking over the Mitchell Fabrics building at Main and Logan.
I'm not going to dispute that this is a badly-needed expansion of MSP's services. Although I do have to question what it all means for the revitalization of North Main. A decade or so ago, CentreVenture led the way to a large-scale demolition of property on North Main which led to the development of the WRHA's head office. It was presumably meant to lead the way to some kind of revitalization of that strip of North Main.
Now with a massive homeless shelter slated to go into one of the most prominent properties along that strip, that dream is pretty well dead. The area north of Disraeli/Alexander is destined to remain Winnipeg's Skid Row... which sort of makes you wonder what the point of getting the WRHA head office built there, not to mention the United Way's office, was in the first place? The WRHA is now saddled with this hideous fortress of a building located nowhere near other government offices or health care facilities, and it does jack all to improve Main Street. It seems as though an awful lot of money was spent to very little benefit. |
I remember when the old skid row stretch of Main seemed to be turning a corner. There was Richard Walls buying properties, The Edge Gallery, another art gallery and after-hours party space in the old Monty’s Furniture space, Yuki Sushi, Tallest Poppy, two architecture firms (Bridgman and Bios)… I may have been a little naïve at the time, but it really seemed like with all that going on, plus Point Douglas kind of cleaning up a bit, that it would become like a much grittier but perhaps more hipster version of the Exchange. The Exchange would be Winnipeg’s SoHo, North Main would be its Red Hook or Bushwick.
Then Centre Venture came along in 2008 and all of that small scale change stalled, even as its Chair at the time proclaimed that Main Street would be "more vibrant than it's been in 50 years." Winnipeg’s oldest purpose-built movie theatre and a few viable old commercial buildings were lost in the process.
Mitchell’s Fabrics was like old Main Street’s last stand: the dense busy row of family businesses mixed in with seedy old hotel bars that most of us are probably too young to remember. Obviously the area’s homeless/vagrant population and their agencies wouldn’t have disappeared in any case, but it’s just too bad to see it be so prominent. I guess Main Street really is never coming back. Maybe that was clear decades ago.
Prev
Linear Mode
