A drawing was released this month of the Winnipeg Regional Health Authority's future offices at Logan Avenue and Main Street, which is part of Centre Venture Development Corporation's "cluster developments" for downtown. A 200-car parkade will adjoin the building, and up the street close to Higgins Avenue, a new surface lot will join the cluster of parking spots.
Reviews of the design for the WRHA building from local architecture critics have so far ranged from bad ("pretty poor -- standard office park architecture"), to very bad ("an affront to Inkster Industrial Park, never mind the most historic street in Western Canada").
The Starland Theatre was one of Canada’s first movie theatres — once one of five theatres at Logan and Main.
But the tragedy is not only what the fabled Main Street strip -- which even in 1892 was called "Winnipeg's Bowery"-- will be stuck with, but what it will lose.
The Starland Theatre, a former vaudeville house built in 1909, and the Epic Theatre, a Grade 2 heritage structure which was one of Canada's first movie theatres -- once two of five theatres at Logan and Main. Then there is the Jack's Place building at 652 Main (1912), and the Weir Hardware building up the street at 666 Main (1899). To allow for demolition, the Starland and Jack's were removed from the Historical Buildings Inventory by the city's heritage buildings committee on March 20. The fate of the Epic and Weir's, meanwhile, will be decided at a later date.
For such a feat of perfidy and hypocrisy, the heritage buildings committee should congratulate themselves: Three historical buildings being approved for demolition in a single day probably hasn't happened since the 1970s.
It doesn't have much, but North Main does have historic vestiges of a distinctive streetscape of modest, narrow buildings. Only one block south, between Logan and Alexander Avenue, small-scale, private-led redevelopments are occurring in several of these buildings. At the Occidental Hotel, for example, the beer vendor and VLTs are out, and a multi-use venue and a newly opened restaurant is in.
The two theatres are indeed in a state of great disrepair, but the old Jack's Place and Weir buildings appear to be in good shape, and could be home to the next art gallery, cafe or design firm to move to the strip. Offices or apartments could go upstairs. Instead, it looks like a giant parkade will replace Jack's, and a surface parking lot will replace the Weir building.
Such an indiscriminate clear-cutting approach to development is nothing new in Winnipeg's troubled downtown, where most large developments are publicly led, and the choice of scale and location are highly politicized matters. Usually, projects have been dropped down in locations where they can snuff out as much perceived blight as possible.
In the late 1950s, a new city hall was set to be built opposite the Legislative Building on Broadway. Premier Duff Roblin wanted it built instead on the industrial waterfront of South Point Douglas, but it was Mayor Stephen Juba who got his way. Juba's plan was to rebuild on the site of the city's famous "Gingerbread City Hall" as part of a giant civic centre. By the end of the decade, the civic centre would wipe away six of the most interesting and urban square blocks downtown.
As if there was nothing to learn from this and other failed attempts at wrecking ball renewal, the same sort of destruction looms over Main Street today. Perhaps to prove it is still able to deliver big projects like Red River College on Princess Avenue, or the condos on Waterfront Drive, CentreVenture seems to be stretching this development as far as possible. So far, however, there is none of the redeeming qualities those early CentreVenture projects had, and by its destructive nature will be unable to act as a catalyst for economic growth on North Main.
While an architectural design better suited to North Main -- even saving the Starland's facade -- has been discussed positively by Centre Venture, it seems unlikely that they will risk slowing down or adding cost to the North Main development by putting pressure on the WRHA or the builders to come up with something better.
In publicly led real estate development (dubious enough to begin with), agencies like CentreVenture must serve the public good with the projects they facilitate. The thought that "any development is good development," especially when it is out of scale, destroys several heritage buildings, and could ultimately thwart the northward thrust of private-led development downtown, is blind, self-serving, and not worth the loss of so much of North Main's remaining historic streetscape.
Robert Galston is a Winnipeg writer who blogs at riseandsprawl.blogspot.com
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