An empty feeling

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This article was published 06/02/2022 (956 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Realtor Nick Khinda was heading east down Portage Avenue Wednesday afternoon to take a water reading at a building he was selling when he saw the smoke. Then, he saw the fire trucks, the hoses and the police cars blocking off traffic in either direction from the block where he was headed. It was not what he expected to see, and he had to find out what was going on.

So Khinda rerouted, and came toward Portage down Langside Street, parking his SUV in a lot near the point from which the smoke was billowing. He got out of his car to ascertain whether it was his listing on fire, or if the blaze was emanating from elsewhere, which turned out to be the case.

“I was thinking, (it’s) not our building,” he said as he — like many others in downtown Winnipeg — watched the multi-use Kirkwood Block, at the corner of Portage and Langside, burn. So he called his client, sending him video footage of the fire as it happened essentially next door to their property. “He was as surprised as I was.”

Even though the building on fire was not the one Khinda had come to check, he was concerned and upset by what he was watching. “When you see a disaster like this, you have to feel sorry for whoever is involved,” he said.

He was worried whether anybody was injured, and was relieved to find out nobody was. He thought about how sorry he felt for those who had lost their offices, shops or other possessions in the blaze. He felt sympathetic, and a tad nostalgic, watching the 110-year-old building burn. He remembered fondly Club Morocco, which had been in business when he first moved to Winnipeg about 40 years ago — the kind of place where people stayed well past midnight.

“That is history,” he said, gesturing with his hand.

“The last thing we want to see is potentially another fenced-off area for another empty lot, not on Portage,” University of Winnipeg geography professor Jino Distasio told the Free Press the day of the fire, lamenting the loss of an architecturally significant building, as well as the businesses and stories it held inside. After its inevitable demolition, that’s what the corner will be, at least until another project gets off the ground.

Part of living in a city is watching it change, but seeing a building erased like the Kirkwood Block — with a ball of fire and a days-long plume of smoke — is not the type of change anybody should ever applaud.

The same goes for the multi-storey condominium complex that burned to the ground in East Kildonan on Jan. 31. That project, with over 100 units planned, was still being constructed, and was declared a total loss before anyone had ever had the opportunity to live there.

“Buildings under construction are almost like lumber yards. They go up very, very quickly. There are no extinguishment options. They’re open-air,” said Scott Wilkinson, the assistant chief of the Winnipeg Fire Paramedic Services, on the day of that fire.

Khinda happened to witness to that fire too, though from far further away. “I was just passing by in that area and I saw the smoke coming up,” he said. “It’s all gone, and you have to feel sorry for the people.”

He said that in real estate, as in life, surprises happen, and they are not always pleasant ones. That’s something he’s learned in his 30 years in the business, in a career that he now shares with his son, Rajan.

After checking on the building for his client, Khinda had a full day of business to conduct: a showing for a commercial building in St. Boniface, plus a few residences elsewhere in the city.

He said it would take time before he could assess the building a few doors down from the fire, as he had to work on a timeline determined by the fire department. As of Friday morning, he still hadn’t had the chance to do so.

ben.waldman@winnipegfreepress.com