Winnipeg Construction X

[post_man]

Originally Posted by one_brick_at_a_time

Where is the closest grocery store?

Family Foods on Donald is the nearest one, the soon-to-be-completed FreshCo at Sargent & Maryland is the nearest standalone supermarket

[OTA in Winnipeg]

Giant Tiger, Ellice and Donald

[CoryB]

Originally Posted by pspeid

Now I have NO idea if there is a realistic plan on the table, but I am HOPING our civic leaders have been doing something behind the scenes to get ready for this da. They have certainly had the time to prepare for it.

Considering the space has been pitched as government offices, U of W classroom space, the Indigenous art gallery space, the location for Hydro Place, the downtown HQ for MLLC, and likely many more all with the space basically being given to the potential developer for free and all of those projects had reason to go elsewhere is just screaming about what is happening behind the scenes. I do not know the costing of any of those projects but I have heard the existing building and the cost to basically prepare it for the build out of any of those new uses makes the overall cost near double doing a similar project just about anywhere else downtown.

I recall similar discussions on the former Eaton's building and it ultimately took a major cash handout from the government to get the project off the ground, one taxpayers will still be paying for over decades to come.

Originally Posted by one_brick_at_a_time

Where is the closest grocery store? Could that and a gym work in that space? Residential above with open concept office? Sounds like more residential in that area might help spur other tenants possibly.

The challenge with residential is Winnipeg, and especially downtown, is quickly hitting a saturation point on shared building residential including apartments and condos. The extremely large floor plates of the Bay building mean the window square footage v overall square footage is a very low percentage. The popular "hole down the middle" does somewhat address that but it is also a very expensive change.

Also the concept of brick and mortar grocery stores is a complete non-starter. Winnipeg already has multiple click-and-deliver grocery services and that trend is only accelerating from here. Yes, two net-new grocery stores are under construction but how many have permanently closed over the last 5-10 years? It's hard to ignore when a major local grocery retailer takes a large section of their customer focused retail space and converts it to an online fulfilment centre on the fly. It is a trend we are going to see more and more of locally, especially when Amazon opens their grocery fulfilment centre at the airport and starts going aggressively after that market based on price, quality and same day delivery to your door. It's a reality that has been coming for close to a decade and the pandemic slammed hard on that accelerator.

[peg]

Osborne Safeway is pretty walkable from this area too.

[OTA in Winnipeg]

Originally Posted by CoryB

Also the concept of brick and mortar grocery stores is a complete non-starter. Winnipeg already has multiple click-and-deliver grocery services and that trend is only accelerating from here. Yes, two net-new grocery stores are under construction but how many have permanently closed over the last 5-10 years? It's hard to ignore when a major local grocery retailer takes a large section of their customer focused retail space and converts it to an online fulfilment centre on the fly. It is a trend we are going to see more and more of locally, especially when Amazon opens their grocery fulfilment centre at the airport and starts going aggressively after that market based on price, quality and same day delivery to your door. It's a reality that has been coming for close to a decade and the pandemic slammed hard on that accelerator.

^Couldn't have said that better. Times are changing and they are changing fast.

[esquire]

To Cory's point, I wonder if this move is a way on turning up the heat on the city/province to come up with a deal that involves getting the property off HBC's hands? If the store is still chugging along even in its near zombie-like state, there is really no great urgency to come up with something. But once it's boarded up and a massive blight on Portage Avenue, then all of a sudden you need to figure something out quickly.

That's how Bell MTS Place came to be located on Portage instead of its originally proposed site south of the Convention Centre. According to Glen Murray, the City wanted to broker a deal that involved getting the new arena built on the site of Eaton's in an attempt to fill the giant hole that they know would otherwise last for years and years. If Bell MTS Place hadn't gone on that site, it would probably still be empty... when Edmonton's HBC store moved from its original Jasper Avenue location to the former Eaton's store, it remained vacant for something like a decade until the University of Alberta took it over. And that involved a much smaller HBC store and the economic conditions of 2000s Alberta, which was a relatively booming place compared to Manitoba circa 2020.

In some respects, HBC's timing was off... they probably should have tried closing the store back when there was a NDP government with a fair bit of money to spend. It's easy to imagine Doer or Selinger signing off on a grandiose plan that involves a hefty provincial contribution. Kind of like IG Field... something that actually happened which would be pretty well be inconceivable now. These days the province would be hard pressed to pay for the plywood to board it up.

[cllew]

Originally Posted by pspeid

IMO residential is not only the best way to go for The Bay building, but probably the only way to go right now. Personally I would like to see:

-repair/replace parkade with new parkade

Now where did I put that half a billion dollars??

If you want so see changes to the parkade you have to deal with the private parking company that now owns it. It was sold by the HBC in 1987 to a private parking company (Impark?) according to the Winnipeg Architecture foundation web site.

Another website says all the HBC parking lots in Canada were sold off in 1987 to allow HBC to concentrate on their core retail business.

[CoryB]

Originally Posted by esquire

To Cory's point, I wonder if this move is a way on turning up the heat on the city/province to come up with a deal that involves getting the property off HBC's hands? [...]

In some respects, HBC's timing was off... they probably should have tried closing the store back when there was a NDP government with a fair bit of money to spend.

Sorry, I thought that was somewhat clear. For example Hydro Place, the significant U of W expansion, the Indigenous gallery expansion at the WAG and the cancelled LLCC downtown HQ all had significant government funding behind them. While HBC didn't pre-announce a store closure to force the issue it was somewhat implied that if any of those projects was moving ahead the needs of the store would be somewhat secondary to the new project.

[esquire]

Originally Posted by CoryB

Sorry, I thought that was somewhat clear. For example Hydro Place, the significant U of W expansion, the Indigenous gallery expansion at the WAG and the cancelled LLCC downtown HQ all had significant government funding behind them. While HBC didn't pre-announce a store closure to force the issue it was somewhat implied that if any of those projects was moving ahead the needs of the store would be somewhat secondary to the new project.

What you should probably consider is that there is a difference between the implied threat of a store possibly closing one day (a potential future problem) vs. the announced planned closure of the store (an actual here-and-now problem that lands in someone's lap and requires action).

There is a reason that the MTS Centre wasn't pitched for the Eaton's site when Eaton's was still running a store there... things suddenly changed once that happened.

[pspeid]

Originally Posted by cllew

If you want so see changes to the parkade you have to deal with the private parking company that now owns it. It was sold by the HBC in 1987 to a private parking company (Impark?) according to the Winnipeg Architecture foundation web site.

Another website says all the HBC parking lots in Canada were sold off in 1987 to allow HBC to concentrate on their core retail business.

I didn't know that-thanks for the info!

[buzzg]

The parkade is owned by some random old man that lives in Toronto and doesn't give a crap about it or anything to do with it. Impark just manages the parking.

[BAKGUY]

Originally Posted by one_brick_at_a_time

Where is the closest grocery store? Could that and a gym work in that space? Residential above with open concept office? Sounds like more residential in that area might help spur other tenants possibly.

Giant Tiger on Donald st, Family Foods on Donald, No Frills on Cumberland, Fresh-co former Safeway on Sargent, Safeway Osborne Village

[Jeff]

building at 250 Portage (SE corner at Garry) has all the for sale/lease signs removed.. wonder if something is up for that former fine jewelery emporium?!

[dam_well]

Not the best picture but FortWhyte seems to be moving quickly, at least on the outside.

[ue]

Originally Posted by esquire

To Cory's point, I wonder if this move is a way on turning up the heat on the city/province to come up with a deal that involves getting the property off HBC's hands? If the store is still chugging along even in its near zombie-like state, there is really no great urgency to come up with something. But once it's boarded up and a massive blight on Portage Avenue, then all of a sudden you need to figure something out quickly.

That's how Bell MTS Place came to be located on Portage instead of its originally proposed site south of the Convention Centre. According to Glen Murray, the City wanted to broker a deal that involved getting the new arena built on the site of Eaton's in an attempt to fill the giant hole that they know would otherwise last for years and years. If Bell MTS Place hadn't gone on that site, it would probably still be empty... when Edmonton's HBC store moved from its original Jasper Avenue location to the former Eaton's store, it remained vacant for something like a decade until the University of Alberta took it over. And that involved a much smaller HBC store and the economic conditions of 2000s Alberta, which was a relatively booming place compared to Manitoba circa 2020.

In some respects, HBC's timing was off... they probably should have tried closing the store back when there was a NDP government with a fair bit of money to spend. It's easy to imagine Doer or Selinger signing off on a grandiose plan that involves a hefty provincial contribution. Kind of like IG Field... something that actually happened which would be pretty well be inconceivable now. These days the province would be hard pressed to pay for the plywood to board it up.

To be fair, Edmonton wasn't doing all that great economically until the mid-'00s. Calgary was doing better after the provincial budget cuts of the '90s. And even where there was growth, Downtown Edmonton was hardly vibrant -- between Kingsway, WEM, the cut-and-cover building of the underground LRT killing streetlife in the '80s, and general trends towards suburbanization, it wasn't doing well. The UofA taking over the old Bay actually coincided with when growth began taking off in earnest in Downtown Edmonton, in the late '00s.

Downtown Winnipeg is sort of in a similar situation that Downtown Edmonton was when the UofA began renovating the old Bay store into Enterprise Square in the late 2000s. Not quite taking off, but some serious momentum. The recent retail blows certainly aren't great, but it's never a straight line upwards in progress. And Downtown Winnipeg has far better bones than Downtown Edmonton, too.

[robertocarlos]

I used to shop at The Bay, now I shop at Giant Tiger. How did that happen?

[Luisito]

Does anyone know whats going on at Princess and Logan? I drove by and noticed some movement at that lot.

[buzzg]

New apartments

https://skyscraperpage.com/forum/sho...&postcount=113

[buzzg]

The new windows on 201 Portage at P&M are huge and look amazing, although it's a bit disappointing they copied Scotiabank and made the whole corner private offices. There is a direct entrance at the S corner of the building, and what looks like it'll be lobby access at the E corner.

One really odd thing though (and dear god hopefully temporary) is the new long wraparound BMO sign, which is just painted plywood. I assume this is just temporary and maybe they wanted something in time for the opening, but it seems like a waste of time and money to install the actual signs on top of this, only to have to remove and reinstall when the actual background comes...?

[joshlemer]

Was was the reasoning behind BMO's move across the street? Is there really that much more foot traffic across the kitty corner from their historic location to outweigh the benefit of the beautiful building and larger space?