Winnipeg | Osborne Village & Fort Rouge | Developments & Discussions

[buzzg]

Originally Posted by GreyGarden

I've always kind of assumed that the rents that urban buildings can fetch in Winnipeg is just too low to make quality design and materials financially viable. Plus high construction costs. And so we end up with ugly buildings with small windows. Obviously there are exceptions and we've gotten some really nice buildings with good materials. I was walking past the new building at Westminster and Maryland last night, other than the fact that it comes up to the sidewalk, its dreadful - cheap materials, horrible execution and poor window coverage.

There are developers doing interesting things that look good in the area.

I'm loving the look of the new building going up beside Parkette Grocery on River. It's pretty imposing (in a good way) it's using a really nice looking blue siding and black trim that fits in with the houses in the area, but doesn't try and make the building look like a house. I'm really looking forward to seeing how it finishes.

Sorry no pics, can't get there with daylight during the week but will go on the weekend unless someone else can before then haha.

[Kris22]

Brutal. This is that little street front lot right by the main garage? What a total waste. And now it will be owned by them forever. Even tho it is next to the co-op/mc Donalds pedestrian dead zone, that whole area isn't totally. Dead. There are street front apartments all around and a dominos, that ice cream place, etc. Anything like that is better than A Transit Customer Services & Administrative Building and/or a Transit garage and/or a Transit parking lot.

[plrh]

That's some high value land for bus storage. Couldn't they expand out in St B industrial park? I understand the value of continuing to operate on that piece of land for the potential of a future light rail yard, but there is not need to pay to expand it when there is large amounts cheap land available within the urban area. In terms of a customer service centre I'm quite sure they could find a couple thousand square feet of retail space for rent somewhere in the neighbourhood. Is the fleet expanding or something?

[buzzg]

Or.... talk to Bell at relocating to their mostly empty towers and buy that building from them.

[rivercity]

Originally Posted by Kris22

Brutal. This is that little street front lot right by the main garage? What a total waste. And now it will be owned by them forever. Even tho it is next to the co-op/mc Donalds pedestrian dead zone, that whole area isn't totally. Dead. There are street front apartments all around and a dominos, that ice cream place, etc. Anything like that is better than A Transit Customer Services & Administrative Building and/or a Transit garage and/or a Transit parking lot.

Yeah, it's the lot south of the transit garage, opposite Glasgow.

Currently that area isn't an ideal strip but with the Chaeban small CRU and the CRU going in the new 6 storey apartment next to Chaeban it could be a step in the right direction. Given the scale of the transit garage and the MURB parking lots it will never be a solid streetscape.

In reality, I guess even a landscaped parking lot is better than the abandoned look it has currently. If Transit were to take it, ideally I would like to see them construct a new transit customer service center to the sidewalk on that lot and get rid of the one opposite Osborne for another mixed use development.

[buzzg]

PLEASE everyone email your/the councillor about this.

[The Unknown Poster]

Originally Posted by buzzg

Or.... talk to Bell at relocating to their mostly empty towers and buy that building from them.

I thought that building was already on the market. Been rumours for a long time of Bell getting out of that call center. They have space in their other buildings including downtown and corydon.

[Kris22]

Originally Posted by buzzg

Or.... talk to Bell at relocating to their mostly empty towers and buy that building from them.

That would be ideal. The type of use WT is proposing is suited for a back lot next to train tracks. Like perfect actually. Not a street front lot on Osborne.

[buzzg]

How about Bell close the Osborne office, and tear down/open up the office portions of Corydon and relocate those downtown. Relocating the Corydon building should be a priority for the city, monumental potential for Corydon there.

[Jeff]

^^^ yeah like they haven't even replaced that house that burned years ago next door, and the weird underutilized commercial building beside that.. super odd for such a busy street.

[LilZebra]

I'd love to see WT admin move back to the Electric Railway Chambers Building at P&M.

Even back in the day, they didn't take up the whole building, just the basement, main and second floors.

[cllew]

Originally Posted by buzzg

Or.... talk to Bell at relocating to their mostly empty towers and buy that building from them.

BellMTS I believe leases that building from Landstar Development who would probably want a good payment to sell a purpose built call center building.

[cllew]

Don't forget that the land in question is on the MB Contaminated land list being a former Esso Station and that Imperial Oil has not yet done any remediation on that site other than letting the hydrocarbon's evaporate out naturally.

Developers have not been running to buy that land due to its condition, so maybe the city taking it will at least fill in the gap in the area. Developing it as office space or parking is a lot less costly in terms of remediaton than developing it as residential space

It's not the first time that transit has looked at that land. A few years ago I recall seeing as part of a report on the new garage at the transit complex that they had considered leasing that land from Imperial Oil for bus operator parking, but instead were going to use land the city owned at 409 Mulvey and provide some sort of shuttle service.

[buzzg]

Originally Posted by cllew

It's not the first time that transit has looked at that land. A few years ago I recall seeing as part of a report on the new garage at the transit complex that they had considered leasing that land from Imperial Oil for bus operator parking, but instead were going to use land the city owned at 409 Mulvey and provide some sort of shuttle service.

They just built hundreds of spots along the RT line, and they all ride for free. That's a perfect parking lot for them, no need to build more.

[Wpg_Guy]

Originally Posted by buzzg

They just built hundreds of spots along the RT line, and they all ride for free. That's a perfect parking lot for them, no need to build more.

That’s a very good point.

[cllew]

Originally Posted by buzzg

They just built hundreds of spots along the RT line, and they all ride for free. That's a perfect parking lot for them, no need to build more.

When it was first looked at it was suppose to be a temporary parking lot until the ones you referenced were completed. They wanted to reduce the number of cars parking on the surrounding streets.

[borkborkbork]

Here's a plan that would be (1) shittier than anyone would hope, but (2) less — than the current actual plan:

WT buys the contaminated land. They build a parkade on it. The main floor of the parkade (or perhaps first two floors) are their customer service and everything else they currently have across the street. They get all the parking they seemingly "need" but don't completely sewer the streetscape because at ground level there's an actual commercial use.

Then, their land across the street gets sold, they tear down the — little one story building and parking lot, and a developer drops in a 6-10 story residential building.

The first step for this would be for the city to insist that they can't use this land for just parking, or for a garage.

[rivercity]

^on board.

[cllew]

Originally Posted by borkborkbork

Here's a plan that would be (1) shittier than anyone would hope, but (2) less — than the current actual plan:



Then, their land across the street gets sold, they tear down the — little one story building and parking lot, and a developer drops in a 6-10 story residential building.

.

I did a little searching and I saw that the Winnipeg transit customer service offices at 414 Osborne are a leased office building (owned by a numbered Ontario company on the document I saw) and the lease expires sometime in the spring of 2023.

Now I can sort of see why they want the old gas station land to move on to.

[buzzg]

I would be fine with that^ solution if the main floor is commercial/office space. It just cannot be straight parking at ground level.