Gillingham making downtown development a priority

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This article was published 19/10/2022 (700 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Scott Gillingham is making downtown improvements a major focus in the final days of his campaign to become Winnipeg’s mayor.

The two-term St. James city councillor said Thursday he would jump-start existing plans to get Winnipeg Transit buses off Graham Avenue to spark new development. The change is included as a goal in the city’s Transit Master Plan for the next quarter-century that was announced last year, but Gillingham wants to begin work immediately to revitalize a part of the downtown that was hit hard by the pandemic.

“I will work with area stakeholders like the Downtown BIZ to launch a consultation process next year to seek ideas to re-envision Graham Avenue,” he announced at the intersection of Graham and Kennedy Street in a morning campaign announcement.

“We’re already seeing some exciting new developments on this street… now’s the time to recapture the momentum in our downtown, to rebuild it as a place that is centred on people.”

True North Square, bordered by Graham and St. Mary Avenue and Hargrave and Carlton streets, is a massive, near-complete office, residential, retail and hotel development featuring public space that grew from one of the many surface parking lots that dot the downtown map.

Gillingham said moving the buses to Portage Avenue from the nine-block transit corridor completed in 1995 will allow for the creation of a “two-way street that has a mix of towers and smaller-scale local services.”

He also repeated a promise to work with the other two levels of government to revitalize Portage Place. Creating an incentive package that would encourage buyers to develop affordable housing in Portage Avenue shopping mall, he said, is a priority.

“We’ll put it out to tender to any offer so that we can have more bidders with their ideas and proposals to transform Portage Place to something that really will be a key vibrant cornerstone in our downtown and provide more housing, specifically more affordable housing.”

Gillingham said he would consider pushing for subsidized housing with rents geared to income.

The 439,600-square-foot shopping centre, hailed by proponents as the answer for downtown’s problems when it opened in 1987, briefly appeared to have found new life in an ambitious redevelopment plan, but Toronto-based Starlight Investments pulled out of a nearly $70-million sale in 2019.

Gillingham said the deal fell apart because the three levels of government were not on the same page on timing with their funding contributions to the project, something he vowed to resolve.

“We were the first to put our incentive on the table, and then the province also matched (its) incentive. The federal funding, I don’t believe ever came through,” he said. “So there was two parties, the city and the provincial government that were there.”

He also promised to include permanent funding for the Downtown Community Safety Partnership as part of the next four-year budget and restore the Winnipeg Art Council’s pre-pandemic funding levels.

malak.abas@freepress.mb.ca

Malak Abas
Reporter

Malak Abas is a reporter for the Winnipeg Free Press.

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