Winnipeg Construction X

[harls]

Originally Posted by Biff

Positive news for a project starting up downtown shortly....cryptic I know - for now.

not small


...not The Bay or PP

Buff is coming back?

[steveosnyder]

Just catching up on some comments here -- thought I would chime in.

Originally Posted by BAKGUY

I don't believe anything major multi tenant has been built for residential since the 1950's.
With the transit garage to close eventually, This area could in fact, become gentrified like Pembina near Jubilee. There are many nothing special buildings from Inkster to near Leila. Also, the area is set with infrastructure in place, already well served by grocers like IGA, No Frills, Giant Tiger nearby plus with a car or bus ride, Sobeys up Main, Safeway on McGregor, Freshco, Savon on McPhillips.

I completely disagree. Most of the buildings along North Main facilitate local businesses instead of large foot-print CRUs that would be taken up by chains. North Main is one of the best things in the city, the only thing holding it back is the width of the street and a lack of corridor zoning that facilitates medium sized mixed-use.

Originally Posted by thebasketballgeek

Don’t worry though, one of my jobs this summer is too identify potential bike corridors in the Northwest part of the city as the city has a surplus of $15 million from the new frontage levy imposed by Gilingham which will directly go into active transportation infrastructure.

For example, we have identified a key need to extend the Inkster bike lane all the way from Keewatin too Main Street, and once past Fife Ave would go through the tree median as it has enough space for a 5m bike lane. Main St itself has more then enough space to have 2-way protected bike lanes on BOTH sides of the road.

West K could be a cyclist paradise with a few implementations.

On another note, if anyone else in the North End (or really anywhere in the city) has suggestions for streets that would be good to have a bike lane, hit me up.

I think Scott should have had someone look further into the frontage levy promise, I don't think new infrastructure can be funded using frontage levy money. He said that after 2027 all the money would go into a fund for CPT extension. https://web2.gov.mb.ca/bills/37-3/b039e.php#432(4)

"(a) upgrading, repair, replacement and maintenance of water and sewer mains and streets and sidewalks; and (b) installation, upgrading, repair, replacement and maintenance of lighting in streets and back lanes."

The likely outcome is that the frontage levy will go into the local/regional street renewal fund and an equal amount will be taken out of that fund from other sources (the 2% tax increases) to fund new infra.

Re: North End AT paths -- if the city wanted to take the bike network seriously they would put AT paths on places with destinations along it. That's what a network is, origin(s) and destination(s) and connections between the two. You mentioned Inkster and it's almost all housing, which does good for connecting origins to the network, but we need pieces of the network to connect to the destinations.

[Biff]

Supposed to start in July.

[esquire]

^ Considering the sheer density that block and surrounding blocks will soon have, I really hope the streets become a bit livelier than they are now. There are hundreds of people living around there but somehow the sidewalks feel empty most of the time.

[drew]

What a change on that block from 20ish years ago. Crazy.

[1ajs]

as i said a few months back the grain bins of churchill

[post_man]

https://uwcrc.ca/308-colony

[Labroco]

Originally Posted by post_man

https://uwcrc.ca/308-colony

Absolutely love University of Winnipeg Community Renewal Corporation. They have quietly and professionally fulfilled their mandate making a monumental impact on downtown and enriching student opportunity and experience.

Job very well done!

[CoryB]

UWCRC is doing the sort of work CentreVenture long should have been.

[pegster]

Originally Posted by esquire

^ Considering the sheer density that block and surrounding blocks will soon have, I really hope the streets become a bit livelier than they are now. There are hundreds of people living around there but somehow the sidewalks feel empty most of the time.

I notice this as an issue all around town (especially after being Toronto recently and seeing the difference). Lots of areas dense with residents, but people aren't out and about at street level. Osborne, St. B, parts of downtown, etc. I wish we had more of that active street life.

[trueviking]

Originally Posted by CoryB

UWCRC is doing the sort of work CentreVenture long should have been.

CentreVenture has neither the mandate nor the resources to be a building developer.
The City does not want to own apartment buildings. I don't think taxpayers want the City to be building and operating apartment buildings either.
CentreVenture's mandate is to work with developers like UWCRC to get their projects done. This is exactly what is happening at Market Lands, where CentreVenture began the process and has transitioned to UWCRC as the developer and owner.

[wags_in_the_peg]

any know if this will be new construction at Notre Dame campus or a re-use of existing building?

RRC Polytech receives $10M donation

Gerry Price and the Price Family Foundation has gifted $10 million to RRC Polytech — the largest donation in the college's history — to establish the Price Institute of Advanced Manufacturing and Mechatronics.

The founder and CEO of Price Industries — the largest non-residential HVAC company in North America — also re-committed to a scholarship fund for students at RRC Polytech for another five years, a gift that will total more than $11 million.

The new institute will focus on training and research revolving around the integration of digital technologies with the mechanical side of manufacturing — sometimes referred to as mechatronics — which underpins advanced manufacturing.

The province contributed close to $5 million and the federal government, through PrairiesCan, contributed $3 million to bring the total to $17.8 million for the initiative that is expected to increase the number of engineering technology graduates at RRC by 150 per cent.

EDIT ignore above, not new construction, it's a new "program" found the details
The new initiative, scheduled to launch in the fall of 2023, will create two new post-graduate diploma programs, fund a growing inventory of micro-credential programs that will have the resources and instructors to up-skill and re-skill up to 1,000 employees each year and fund Manitoba’s first Applied Research Chair in Advanced Manufacturing.

The new funding will also go towards developing a space for small- and medium-sized manufacturers to be able to engage RRC students who will do their own research to help solve specific technology challenges for those companies.

[esquire]

Given the continued population growth of the city and the resulting demand for new housing, what are the odds that we see some new highrises out of the situation?

The post-covid downtown is not really the most desirable or marketable place, so it's quite understandable that we may not see any more 300 Main-type towers for quite some time until the situation stabilizes. But what about in other areas of the city? Even parts of town that are downtown-adjacent but not exactly downtown. How likely are we to see some towers go up with some skyline impact? Let's say, 20 storeys or higher. There is a lot of development around town but most of it is lower-slung suburban construction. Osborne Village would seem like a natural location for new towers but they just don't get built there anymore for whatever reason.

[GreyGarden]

I think the market for dense inner city living is pretty soft in Winnipeg, especially considering how affordable the SFH market is. Further, given the cost of construction and trades, it seems like building is really hard in the City. I doubt we see any tower construction before those underlying issues change somewhat.

That being said, I’d love to see some development in the 4-12 storeys range in the West Broadway area. Sherbrook is turning into a nice street and the neighbourhood has some nice amenities. Further, the close proximity to Wolseley is really attractive.

I’d love to see those surface lots at Sherbrook and Broadway get developed.

[optimusREIM]

Yeah midrises popping up everywhere would be awesome. Would love to see a bunch more meat on the bone and intensification along Osborne, corydon, Sherbrooke/Maryland, Provencher, Marion/Goulet, Desmeurons, North St Mary’s, Point Douglas, etc.

These are all core areas that reasonably should expect a bunch more good development, sorta missing middle stuff: row houses, 3-4 storey walk ups, 10-15 storey mid and high rises, even a few 25+ in there.

I think bro/ass, parts of North St B, west broadway, the village, and more and more the west end could definitely handle a bunch more high rise development. Eventually traffic will get a lot worse, people will want to live near big employment centres. I don’t think that downtown will be some major cbd but still the biggest fish in the pond. We gotta work on transit tho, that’s a major problem…

[esquire]

^ Good point, there is some intensification of major arteries, but it's mostly small potatoes stuff, e.g. 3 storey builds on St. Mary's Rd., 6 storey builds on Portage, that kind of thing. Most of the development seems to be happening in the outer suburbs.

It would be interesting to see some residential construction data plotted in a graph to show the changing trends over time... it feels like what little happened in the 90s was almost exclusively suburban, then in the 00s there was more of a focus on the inner city areas, a bit of a downtown resurgence in the 10s, and now we're trending back to mostly suburban development again.

[Winnipegger]

In my view, it's only a matter of time before we see some more modest announcements for downtown materialize. I wouldn't expect another 300 Main, but perhaps one or two more 300 Assiniboine-type developments. Over the last 9 months since July 1 last year, Manitoba's population grew by almost 35,000 people - that is likely the biggest growth in population on record over a 9 month period. The City itself tends to absorb 60% of provincial population growth, so Winnipeg's grown probably around 20,000 people over the last 9 months - also likely one of the biggest gains in population in Winnipeg's history. We won't have the data to confirm this until winter next year, but it really indicates a silent underlying factor that is causing this city to change quite a bit over a short period of time.

Some of this is pressure from the slow down that occurred during the pandemic, but Winnipeg continues to see strong population growth from international migration that comes along with the lofty federal targets.

People need places to live. Locally, housing prices dipped from September to December last year because of interest rate hikes, but they have come up substantially since then and are only down ~8% from the pandemic-induced peak we saw in spring 2022. So when you combine that with the much higher mortgage rates, housing affordability has deteriorated significantly in Winnipeg over the last year. But this is being sustained by substantial population growth. Rents are also reaching all-time highs across the city and vacancy rates are approaching historical lows.

Yes, financing and construction costs are higher and labour may be more scarce. But its only a matter of time before more projects come up for the downtown area. Winnipeg does have ample supply of greenfield which means that it unfortunately absorbs a lot of the housing growth. But the up side is that over the last few years, half of new dwelling units have been built in existing neighborhoods as opposed to greenfield, so there is some good news there with respect to densifying the city.

[dmacc]

Originally Posted by esquire

^ Good point, there is some intensification of major arteries, but it's mostly small potatoes stuff, e.g. 3 storey builds on St. Mary's Rd., 6 storey builds on Portage, that kind of thing. Most of the development seems to be happening in the outer suburbs.

It would be interesting to see some residential construction data plotted in a graph to show the changing trends over time... it feels like what little happened in the 90s was almost exclusively suburban, then in the 00s there was more of a focus on the inner city areas, a bit of a downtown resurgence in the 10s, and now we're trending back to mostly suburban development again.

We just saw TNS Residential go up, 300 main is coming online, The insolvent one on Donald was in the works, Biff was talking about something that might be coming, there's the weird thing at the St. Regis site, all that's happened and planned on Colony (basically downtown), phase 2 of the Portage Place development. I think things are moving relatively well still.

[esquire]

Originally Posted by Winnipegger

Yes, financing and construction costs are higher and labour may be more scarce. But its only a matter of time before more projects come up for the downtown area. Winnipeg does have ample supply of greenfield which means that it unfortunately absorbs a lot of the housing growth. But the up side is that over the last few years, half of new dwelling units have been built in existing neighborhoods as opposed to greenfield, so there is some good news there with respect to densifying the city.

One thing I recall from the early 2000s when population started growing after a long stagnant spell through the 90s was that there was a bit of a gentrification effect taking place in certain inner city areas like the West End. That does not seem to be happening much anymore... people have written off areas like that, the North End, Elmwood, etc. and only end up there when they have no other choice. I get the impression that we are getting more suburban development as a result of that. The densification you are talking about seems to be concentrated in the more well-off areas... there are large swaths of the city with hardly any residential development taking place.

[Winnipegger]

Originally Posted by esquire

One thing I recall from the early 2000s when population started growing after a long stagnant spell through the 90s was that there was a bit of a gentrification effect taking place in certain inner city areas like the West End. That does not seem to be happening much anymore... people have written off areas like that, the North End, Elmwood, etc. and only end up there when they have no other choice. I get the impression that we are getting more suburban development as a result of that. The densification you are talking about seems to be concentrated in the more well-off areas... there are large swaths of the city with hardly any residential development taking place.

You're not wrong. A lot of neighborhood densification has occurred along major corridors like Pembina, Keneston/Wilkes area and the Transcona/Peguis area. So not a lot of attention being paid to inner-city neighborhoods. At the end of the day, development will come down to cost versus revenue for the developer, and revenue (i.e., rent) will be strongly influenced by desirability. The sad truth is that a 2 bedroom apartment built in Bridgwater/Sage Creek can ask a higher rent than the equivalent apartment built in downtown or Elmwood, which means that unless construction costs are somehow lower downtown, the building will get built in Bridgwater/Sage Creek, not downtown.

Of course there is room for government intervention that can swing things in favor of downtown that make it more desirable, namely making it safer and cleaner. But those are monumental, expensive, decade-long initiatives so in the meantime, the private sector is going to gravitate towards where the market is, and that tends to be in safe, car-centric neighborhoods with lots of greenspace and higher incomes. But make no mistake, if we assume greenfield development must take place (likely a good assumption), then it is much better from a financial sustainability standpoint that it takes the current density and form of Bridgwater and Sage Creek as opposed to 90s/00s ultra-low density suburban developments like River Park South, Island Lakes, Royalwood, or Linden Woods.

However, I am optimistic that the recent Housing Accelerator Fund from the CMHC will swing some of the math in favor of inner-city developments over the coming years. Again, I'm not expecting another 300 Main anytime soon, but low to mid-range housing should still be viable downtown.