Making the most of mixed-use development

ST. VITAL

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This article was published 10/01/2023 (617 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

A new mixed-use development has risen on St Anne’s Road, holding promise for the future and quality of the urban pedestrian streetscape.

Alia Custom Homes, a Winnipeg-based developer, received approval in 2019 to proceed at 175 St Anne’s Rd. at the long vacant site of a former gas station. This means that not only has a new building risen in the community to serve residential and commercial markets, but an environmentally contaminated site has been cleaned up.

The building features 30 residential apartments and five street-facing commercial storefronts, and renting has already begun. according to a company representative.

A “mixed-use building” is usually a blend of residential and commercial usage. Once common in Winnipeg and other North American cities, such buildings became less common in North America throughout the 20th century.

Today, mixed-use developments, especially on arterial roadways such as St Anne’s Road, are making a comeback. These projects allow more housing options to come on the market, which is seeing large rent increases and housing costs owing in part to a shortage of housing, while keeping sidewalks “alive” with people coming and going.

Four new commercial storefronts on the street will be =book-ends of sorts on a segment of the street that represents the “end” of the traditional, pedestrian-oriented storefront corridor that runs all the way north to Carriere Street in the zone maintained and beautified by the Old St. Vital BIZ. The Real Canadian Superstore at the southeast corner of Fermor Avenue and St. Anne’s pulls back from the sidewalk and then you are south of Fermor, where the street front character changes significantly.

This is the second such mixed-use building to come to this section of St Anne’s Rd in recent years, with another project at the corner of Humboldt Avenue and St Anne’s bringing a new hairstylist and gardening storefront to that block.

There remain more vacant lots along both St Anne’s and St Mary’s roads which make prime candidates for this type of project.

Should this type of development continue, Old St. Vital will increasingly be able to boast of a long and diverse urban-character streetscape running the length of the neighbourhood through the junction of St. Anne’s and St. Mary’s.

The 175 St Anne’s Rd. project has been named Alia Place and its residential units are open to applicants right now. Commercial spaces are already advertising for leases.

Finally, Alia Custom Homes has said it hopes that one commercial unit at Alia Place will become a coffee shop/bakery but it is in negotiations with City of Winnipeg planners, who so far insist that tenants should be commercial office-spaces only. Those discussions are ongoing.