Quote:
Originally Posted by Winnipegger
And how would we pay for this $500 million luxury? That area generates $10 million/year in property tax. Even if this massively increased the vibrancy and beauty of the area, doubling the assessment base over night, it would take a minimum of 50 years for that project to pay for itself.
This is why we can't have nice things. Infrastructure costs are too high and taxes are too low relatively speaking.
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Classic Winnipegger.
Other cities take out loans to build
luxuries basic infrastructure, counting on tax receipts from new development or economic activity to manage the debt. You know this.
Infrastructure doesn't have to pay for itself in the same way your home or car don't have to pay for themselves. Having a way to get to work and not being an unemployable homeless person will increase your income, allowing you to make payments on your car or home. In the meantime, you get the benefit of having the car or home. Yes, in many years you will pay off your car or home, as we will eventually pay off the infrastructure loan, but the point is, you don't need to for taking out that loan to have been worth it. And infrastructure is actually kind of better because it's not like the repo man can tow it away or change the locks on it if we don't make payments.
Anyway, to definitely be pedantic, I don't know that this tunnel would cost $500m. Winnipeg managed to build phase one of the SW transitway for $128m and that included digging a 180 m tunnel under the rail line. Pitch it right, as a way to improve cycling and transit infrastructure, which it would do, and the federal government would pay for half. The provincial government isn't conservative anymore, so they'd be good for a piece too.
Likewise, I'd be surprised if the development spurred by fixing confusion corner would only double the taxes generated by a dollar store, a Burger King, that curve of McMillan between Osborne and Pembina, a Masonic Temple, and a big-ass parking lot. There's room for about a thousand housing units in that space, building to five floors.
It's funny, I joined this board about 20 years ago, when Winnipeg was in its real doldrums. I'd dream of the city growing like it is now, thinking of all the cool things we could do. And then the city did start growing. It's almost 50 % larger than it was back then! And it's growing at something like 4% a year! If there was ever a diem to carpe, this is it. The austerity, the slow-growth mentality--that can go to bed.