Hudsons Bay Building (Winnipeg) Redevelopment

[GreyGarden]

I'd be pretty sad to completely lose the Bay - so at this point I'd probably take anything. I'd be totally fine with preserving the facades and part of the building along Memorial and Portage and then opening up the building along Vaughn Street with a more modern facade and likely additional floors above.

[esquire]

Originally Posted by buzzg

Parkade is owned by a random cranky old man who lives in Toronto and sounds like has no interest in selling unless someone were to drastically overpay.

I always found it weird how HBC disassociated itself completely from that parkade. It would be like if Safeway sold its parking lot to someone who ended up charging four bucks an hour to park there... what kind of effect would that have on Safeway's business? I'm no MBA business expert but I'm guessing it wouldn't be awesome.

I know that the opening of the Polo Park Bay location meant the downtown's store's fate was sealed, but in a city like Winnipeg, getting rid of the parking lot and the customer-friendly things that went along with it like validated parking was probably the beginning of the end for that store.

[drew]

Originally Posted by davequanbury

When you say atrium, do you mean a shaft cutting through in the centre of the structure like a giant light well, or opening up the south wall also to create U shape?

Yes.

[drew]

Originally Posted by esquire

OK, hear me out - what if it's just a really big atrium with enough room for a new building in the middle? #armchairengineering

Anything is possible - however I would argue the building is well built and big enough as is that we should be concentrating on proposals that use what is there.

Save the "building in the middle" $$ for the Curry Building.

[Biff]

So the images I posted on the first page were way over the top for what needs to be done here but I thought they were fun.

I agree with Drew about the atrium. There are images on this forum somewhere that shows some loose concepts of The Bay with an atrium cut out. I think Viking posted them. I have this one, but there were others.

[buzzg]

Judging by this picture, they either thought Buhler was going to be waaaay taller or they knew about Downtown Commons 5+ years before anyone else. lol

[joshlemer]

Could it be that this whole idea that the building is commercially non-viable because of its large floor area / wide proportions is a baseless, incorrect trope that just gets repeated every time this comes up? There are multiple examples of buildings as wide or wider in downtown Winnipeg alone, as well as elsewhere in the city and in other cities.

Examples:

the base of Fort Gary Place: https://www.google.com/maps/@49.8865...7i13312!8i6656

The convention centre: https://www.google.com/maps/@49.8900...7i13312!8i6656

City Place: https://www.google.com/maps/@49.8921...7i13312!8i6656

Air Canada Centre https://www.google.com/maps/@49.8940...7i13312!8i6656

Public Safety Building: https://www.google.com/maps/@49.8908...7i13312!8i6656

Outside of downtown, there's also CRA which is actually 14 meters wider than the bay, in transcona: https://www.google.com/maps/@49.9009...7i13312!8i6656

[Biff]

It's not necessarily how wide it is that is the problem. It is the potential uses for the building that don't coincide with how wide the building is.

Residential - it is way too wide, no one will want to live in an apartment in the middle of the building with no access to natural light - hence the atrium.

Retail - there in no retail in the current environment that would take all 600k sq ft

Office - highly unlikely in the current environment, and if there were they would still likely want some natural light in the centre due to the floor plate size.

[DancingDuck]

I'm not sure that any of those are really comparable to the Bay building though.
-The convention centre isn't a commercial building, same thing with the police headquarters...they were both purpose built (or renovated) with a specific use in mind, and the city doesn't need a second convention centre or police headquarters.

-Air Canada Centre and the upper floors of City Place both look smaller in terms of square feet per floor, and are office space instead of former commercial space. If there was a company looking for office space, they're renting space that's already on the market and available immediately, and won't need major renovations like the Bay building would. Same with the CRA.

-And sure the main floors of City Place and Fort Garry Place are large, but they're subdivided into numerous smaller spaces, and even there they're still only partially full. I don't see any interest in trying to subdive the Bay into another downtown quasi-mall when the existing ones are already struggling.

So yes, there are big buildings in the city floor plate wise comparable to the Bay building, but I think the issue is that most things that would require such enormous floor plates are a one off need (police headquarters or convention centre) or are available elsewhere and at a cheaper price (office, multiple retail units).

[joshlemer]

What about the Winnipeg Archives? They've been homeless, in a temporary industrial warehouse for years now since they had to leave their location on William. Wouldn't take the whole building of course, but maybe a floor. Even fits nicely with the Manitoba Archives across the street.

[BuildUpWpg]

I've mentioned it before...redevelopmemt of the downtown Bay and parkade in Victoria. Notice in the master plan diagram the Bay is hollowed out in the middle for residential. and the old parkade is replaced with a tower. Why couldn't this all work in Winnipeg? Oh right, no one here with deep pockets, and our downtown isn't attractive enough.

https://dailyhive.com/vancouver/huds...n-bay-district

http://merrickarch.com/work/bay-site-redevelopment/

https://www.timescolonist.com/real-e...ria-1.24159688

[BuildUpWpg]

Duplicate

[CoryB]

Originally Posted by BuildUpWpg

I've mentioned it before...redevelopmemt of the downtown Bay and parkade in Victoria. Notice in the master plan diagram the Bay is hollowed out in the middle for residential. and the old parkade is replaced with a tower. Why couldn't this all work in Winnipeg? Oh right, no one here with deep pockets, and our downtown isn't attractive enough.

1. The Winnipeg Bay parkade is a separate title/owner so its not included.

2. Heard the atrium model + renovations comes in close to double the cost per sq ft of space on completion as just about any other project locally.

So on a high level you can do a top to bottom reno of Medical Arts into apartments or you can do that same with the Bay building. End of the day the units will rent for/sell for basically the same dollar per sq ft. If you are an investor where do you put your money?

Unless the Government is putting grant money on the table for the Bay project or someone wants a space that large and can't easily secure it elsewhere downtown nothing is going to happen.

[optimusREIM]

Originally Posted by CoryB

1. The Winnipeg Bay parkade is a separate title/owner so its not included.

2. Heard the atrium model + renovations comes in close to double the cost per sq ft of space on completion as just about any other project locally.

So on a high level you can do a top to bottom reno of Medical Arts into apartments or you can do that same with the Bay building. End of the day the units will rent for/sell for basically the same dollar per sq ft. If you are an investor where do you put your money?

Unless the Government is putting grant money on the table for the Bay project or someone wants a space that large and can't easily secure it elsewhere downtown nothing is going to happen.

This alone will make it almost impossible to do an effective redevelopment that allows most of the original structure to be saved. Any developer wanting to actually have a successful project here would definitely want to include some form of parking structure into their plans and I have a hard time believing that anyone would willingly take on the gargantuan task of creating parking in existing structure. That said, if there were some way to get the attached parkade as part of the deal, the whole thing looks rather more attractive. Simply needs to go to make the whole thing workable. Not to mention it might be the ugliest structure in DT

[YWG-RO]

Maybe a national museum focusing on indigenous history and culture.

[Spocket]

Well, if it can be saved (and let's face it, unlike Eaton's I think this building is going to be an easy sell for heritage designation) it will be facade alone more or less. It will be hollowed out and a tower will rise above it. That's about the only way it will be viable.

[biguc]

Biff, Drew, Optimus, everyone else who has mentioned the atrium are right. That's what should happen. The high ceilings offer an amazing opportunity for creative residential spaces. Maisonette apartments. Look at the windows; you could inset an entire balcony behind just one of them. The building is massive, and its potential is immense

Some may table some perverted, Winnipeg economics where the cost of demolishing the building and building new is less than the value of the building that already exists, therefore...

That might be enough to convince someone that you all, as citizens of Winnipeg, ought to end up worse off than you are. But you shouldn't accept it. Whether you do is up to you.


In the Canada section, I've put forward what I call the Polish standard: if Poland, a relatively poor and dumpy country with a similar population to Canada can pull something off, why can't Canada? I'm too drunk right now to look up the numbers, but Winnipeg's per-capita GDP is multiple times Poland's. It's at least double. Maybe close to three times as large.

There's a city dead in the centre of Poland called Lodz. Its central location makes it a "transportation hub". It is, nonetheless, a dump. They experienced catastrophic economic and population decline in the '90s and 2000s. They pull off infrastructure and adaptive reuse projects that embarrass Winnipeg. I invite you all to investigate and visit. It's not a beautiful place, but it is a place that will make you wonder why Winnipeg can't do better.



As a final point, before I run away from the trolls, I hope you all consider something beyond what's strictly commercially viable. There is another way.




Some of you may know this building in Berlin. It's the old GDR Ministry of Statistics. In the '90s, right after reunification, it was slated to become a commercial development. A crafty artist stuck up some official looking signs that said it would become space for artists and affordable housing. That left the city in a bind; nobody was impressed with what the city actually planned for the building given that it could be something better. It sat vacant for 30 years. Now, it's becoming what the people wanted, and the city is set to rent space from the building as they renovate it. joshleimer is right; the city archives could rent space in the building, and the community could use the rest of the space for studios and events.

Winnipeg used to do this kind of thing in the '90s all the time. It's why the Exchange District still exists. When did everything become about demolition or deep-pocket development?

[trueviking]

I can post some block plans to show how the width work and why a hole makes some sense. Here’s the concept render.

[trueviking]

Here was a hotel suite layout with a hole. Gives you an idea of scale. The hole looks huge in the rendering but not in plan.

[ue]

Winners/HomeSense and a Safeway/Save-On/Sobeys sharing the first 2-3 levels. Similar to Edmonton's Brewery District or the Plaza at Polo Park across from the theatre, but more cleverly keeping the ornate architecture of the Bay a la Simons on 8th in Calgary. The above floors can be turned into affordable housing. Maybe a restaurant on the main floor, too.