Reimagining downtown — for people

By Brent Bellamy, Associate + Creative Director 
Originally published in the Winnipeg Free Press

Have you ever wondered what used to be on all those giant parking lots in downtown Winnipeg?

The answer is most often, homes. For the first half of the last century, downtown was a beautiful residential neighbourhood, with narrow streets lined with elm trees and grassy boulevards. Elegant houses, red-brick apartment blocks and terraced row housing created a dense and vibrant urban community that supported busy local shops and restaurants on every corner.

During the second half of the century, when cars began to assert themselves as the dominant force shaping modern cities, the trees were cut down to widen streets, and the wood frame residential buildings became easy targets for demolition, making way for large commercial buildings and oceans of asphalt for office workers to park their cars on.

An important new strategic plan for downtown Winnipeg hopes to find inspiration in the past and make what was old, new again. The City of Winnipeg is currently looking for public feedback on CentrePlan 2050, a document that will guide downtown development for the next 30 years.

In a post-pandemic world that has redefined the nature of office work, cities across North America are looking for ways to diversify their city centres, moving away from relying on transient office workers and towards communities of permanent residents. CentrePlan 2050 is no different, with an overarching goal of reestablishing downtown as the collection of diverse, urban residential neighbourhoods that it once was.

The plan is broken into five distinct themes that work together to realize this common goal:

• Greening Downtown focuses on reintroducing street trees, expanding access to the riverbanks, improving existing park amenities, and establishing new greenspaces to support a growing population.
• Living & Visiting Downtown concentrates on creating the conditions that make urban living attractive, including walkable access to lifestyle amenities such as shops and groceries, employment, education, arts, and entertainment.
• Building Downtown will establish a set of design guidelines, to ensure new downtown buildings are of high quality with strong connectivity to sidewalks and public spaces.
• Getting Around Downtown will set requirements for street design, including placement of sidewalks, bike lanes, trees, public art, and street furniture. CentrePlan 2050 will also dovetail with the Winnipeg Transit Master Plan to ensure proposed investment in rapid transit is leveraged to become a development catalyst and transformational force in the future of downtown. The plan envisions major rapid transit stations at Union Station and Portage and Main, which will create significant new centres of gravity in downtown and redefine Portage Avenue and Main Street as busy rapid transit corridors.
• Re-imagining Graham Avenue is a kilometre-long chance to dream. After rapid transit is built, Graham will no longer be a bus corridor, creating an opportunity to establish a new pedestrian-focused spine across downtown, anchored by major developments at each end — the 300 Main tower and Hudson’s Bay redevelopment. Whether it’s a linear park, a pedestrian promenade, or a shared street, a redefined Graham Avenue could create a renewed sense of place in downtown and be a significant development catalyst and neighbourhood builder.

CentrePlan 2050 is a long-term vision that demands short-term realization. Downtown has been devastated by the impacts of the pandemic, and as the economic and cultural engine of the province, vital to attracting business, immigration, investment, and tourism, the faster we can set it on a path to reinvention and renewal, the sooner our city will begin to realize new prosperity.

To achieve this transformation into a vibrant mixed-use urban neighbourhood, we can draw from successful experience. In 2004, Waterfront Drive was created from an abandoned rail line in an area defined by gravel parking lots and empty warehouses. An initial $9-million public investment leveraged $300-million in private development, creating more than 1,100 new homes in 17 developments along the street. Its design implemented many of the principles found in CentrePlan 2050 with the subsequent renaissance of the Exchange District as a neighbourhood and place for downtown living, proving their effectiveness.

The key to this success was the city identifying the priority of creating an urban neighbourhood, and working with other levels of government to implement a catalyst element that would inspire the private sector to embrace the visionary goal. This can be the path forward for CentrePlan 2050. The proven ability for rapid transit to attract new development makes it the lynchpin of the entire plan.

If City Council prioritized rapid transit, as it has some of its road expansion plans, construction could be expedited, possibly finding synergies with imminent rehabilitation work planned for Portage and Main, and capitalizing on a federal government that is currently an eager transit partner, already committed to funding major light rail transit projects in eight other Canadian cities.

The faster this work is done, the sooner the transformation of Graham Avenue can be realized.

These elements will then inspire other pieces to fall into place, like homes reappearing on those giant parking lots, including the nine downtown lots currently owned by the provincial government.

Prosperous cities make investments in their future, and there is no higher return on investment than creating a healthy and vibrant downtown. CentrePlan 2050, partnered with the Downtown Recovery Strategy provides us with a strong path forward.

In such challenging times for downtown, it’s important that City Council embrace and expedite the vision by bringing together the private sector and other levels of government to identify priorities and create policies that accelerate implementation, so we can begin to realize its benefits as soon as possible.