Quote:
Originally Posted by esquire
The funny thing is that people in Brandon seem to cheer on downtown's demise. No one loves downtown Brandon. I get the impression that the best news possible for Brandon would be to announce the "Brantford treatment" consisting of demolishing everything on Princess and Rosser with replacement by a typical Sobey's-Home Depot-Winners power centre. They'd be cheering in the streets.
Winnipeg has done a pretty shoddy job with its downtown but at least we're trying. Brandon, on the other hand, hates its downtown like no other place I've ever seen in Canada. Which is sad, because as you point out the bones of downtown Brandon are good and with a modicum of effort it could easily have been the best downtown (for its size) anywhere on the prairies.
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When a certain big box store takes a large portion of every dollar spent the result for the downtowns in small to medium sized cities is very negative. This is seen throughout North America. In the past quarter century Canadian-owned retail has been decimated.
Winnipeg made a very poor planning decision in the 20 years following WWII to develop the once primarily residential areas south of Graham Ave. into the CBD as office and parking space, thus essentially doubling the size of downtown. The result is an absolutely massive downtown area for a city of its size. That combined with building and expanding a shopping mall and retail district within a ten minute drive of Portage & Main. Forty years ago Polo Park was a one level mall with not very much else around it save for the stadium and arena as well as industrial areas. Now it is a huge retail area and correspondingly downtown retail has really suffered. Portage Place did little to stop the bleeding, in fact downtown malls in most cities have been abject failures. Notwithstanding, increased residential construction, the addition of the Forks and improvements to the Exchange District and the Waterfront have resulted in downtown Winnipeg being considerably improved in comparison to what it was in the 90s. We will have to see how long the economy takes to recover from what has happened over the last year. I'm hoping the recovery will be quick but at Christmas '29 no one thought they were entering a decade long depression.
It's not unheard of for downtown areas to shift over time. Vancouver's downtown used to be centred to the east around Victory Square towards Main and Hastings. Over time it moved west to the area between Granville and Burrard.