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Originally Posted by KellyEdwards
As an Indigenous person born in Winnipeg, I do have to say that I personally don't think this is a great use of space for the building.
If you really want to make an indigenous museum, it needs to be architecturally significant like the Human Rights Museum and probably located at The Forks (the grounds we gathered for thousands of years).
HBC has a very frayed relationship with indigenous peoples in my opinion. They "sold" Rupert's Land to Canada (literally European-to-European-only transactions without indigenous knowledge) and there a bunch of other difficult histories that have never been reconciled.
To me, HBC is an ugly corporation and I'd never want to be associated with them knowing their deeper histories.
When it comes to building a business case for revenue for an indigenous museum, you'd rather prefer to piggyback your marketing onto CMHR and be in its vicinity to encourage a theme of space for The Forks.
That itself would become more of an attraction imho.
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That is just it though, you cannot tell the history of Canada's Indigenous people without also getting into the role Hudson's Bay Company played. In terms of synergy I would make a case that Portage and Memorial has stronger synergy to Indigenous history, culture and education than The Forks.
On the culture side, Winnipeg Art Gallery to the west will soon have the largest public space dedicated to Inuit art.
On the history side, to the south is the Manitoba Archives which is home to the historic records of HBC which are vital to documenting the history of Indigenous people. It is also the public facing location for all historic documents of Manitoba so records of the role the Metis played in the formation of Manitoba would be there too.
On the education side, a little to the west is University of Winnipeg that is working to create best in Canada education programs for areas like Indigenous governance.
In terms of the Canadian Museum for Human Rights, the amount of emphasis they put on Canadian issues is often significantly downplayed v international issues. For instance one of the galleries is dedicated to the Holocaust, not to say the history of Residential Schools. The presentation of issues specific to Canadian Indigenous people there is often more a secondary concern that the broader concepts the museum presents.
Quote:
Originally Posted by KellyEdwards
I think for this downtown building, the better use of it would be mixed-use. I live in California now and there's a place called 8th and Grand in LA that I love. I think that should serve as inspiration for the 1st floor for the old HBC building.
Imagine the front of Portage Avenue serving as open restaurants in the summer and indoor cafe-like seating by winter.
The top 2-3 floors can be lofts/residential (because there's a hipster market for these kinds of conversions). I've seen some in Toronto with similar widths to HBC. They're not the prettiest (like unpainted wood frame stairs) but people were paying $3K/mo for them just because they had a 2nd floor/lofty/trendy space.
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I have heard that two of the biggest challenges with a residential conversion as you purpose is the large floor size of the building and the significantly above market cost to renovate the space. The floor size is a challenge as the amount of space access to natural light within a reasonable distance makes residential conversion challenging. ie would you say want a two bedroom apartment/condo where one bedroom has a window, the second doesn't and the shared living space/kitchen also doesn't have any natural light? It's why the "donut" concept is popular, basically making one or more light wells into the building but that wouldn't be done cheaply. The other challenge is downtown Winnipeg doesn't currently have a high enough demand for residential that charging people a premium for this project could make it work.
Quote:
Originally Posted by KellyEdwards
I think Manitoba needs more of the right tech accelerators, more fostering of non-traditional businesses and create a new space for entrepreneurship. I think the mid floors there should be a 'We Work' like company.
A We Work-like space IS AMAZING IF YOU HAVEN'T ALREADY TRIED IT!
As an entrepreneur myself in the tech industry, it was honestly the best networking and working experience in general I've had being self-employed.
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If Manitoba wants to retain tech talent, they need to foster it. When you really look at the big picture, all these tech opportunities are arising but Manitoba is still stuck on banking/financial and agribusiness as its primary industries.
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I have been an advocate of Manitoba doing more to foster tech startups for a number of years now. The economic return from feeding the tech guppies and helping them whales is going to be far more successful long term then putting that same sort of money to launch a campaign to try and bring home an existing tech whale (Amazon HQ2).
That said I think a better place for the tech accelerator would actually be the Exchange or perhaps the Marketlands development. Many of the existing like minded companies are already located there and setting up something like a WeWork space in the area could further expand what has been happening organically. That said I have to wonder what sort of long term impact the current pandemic will have on places like WeWork. There has definitely been a shift from the need for physical presence to more acceptance of an online one. I think new startups are going to be better positioned to take advantage of that than more established companies with significant investments in office spaces.
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