Point Douglas park too good to be true?

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 22/08/2011 (5325 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

We haven’t heard much in the last two years about a unique plan to establish a provincial park in Point Douglas, one of Winnipeg’s oldest and most neglected core area neighbourhoods.

Then, in July, there was a flurry of activity. Well, not really activity. But both the city and province were talking about the Point Douglas park, if only to tell us nothing was happening.

The province claimed it could not move forward with a park plan until the city finished its long-term development plan for Point Douglas.

A few days later, the city responded by claiming it couldn’t really finalize a long-term plan for Point Douglas until the province provides a firm proposal for the provincial park. “We need them to tell us how big they want the park to be and what kind of restrictions there are going to be development,” a senior city hall source said. “Until we know that, everything else is pretty meaningless.”

Why the bureaucratic stalemate? This is an issue that has flummoxed both city hall and the province ever since it arose, rather suddenly, two years ago. But to understand this story, you have to go back one more year.

In 2008, businessman David Asper floated the idea of building a new stadium for the Winnipeg Blue Bombers in Point Douglas. The suggestion of shoe-horning a football stadium into the Point sparked a stressful, even painful debate.

Football fans howled about having to go downtown for a Bomber fix; Point Douglas residents, many of whom had grown fond of the abandoned warehouses and overgrown brown fields that separate them from the rest of the city, howled about being overrun by football fans and young professionals who would occupy luxury condominiums accompanying the stadium.

Ultimately, and appropriately, Point Douglas was abandoned in favour of a plan to build the stadium at the University of Manitoba. In the wake of that debate, however, it became clear Point Douglas had been ignored for too long, and no one really had a salient idea what to do about it.

This now brings us to former premier Gary Doer. In July 2009, Doer let slip in an interview with the Free Press he wanted to establish a provincial park in Point Douglas. It was an unusual proposal but one that carried with it the promise of more immediate help for Point Douglas.

The football stadium proposal had revealed the fact the city was utterly unprepared to do anything positive in Point Douglas.

Residents were terrified about gentrification. A provincial park would halt much of the development that would come if the lands were turned over to the private sector. And it would create a valuable green space that would augment the green belt extending from the Manitoba Legislature, through The Forks and north past the baseball stadium and Waterfront Drive.

It was, however, an ambitious plan that needed some real leadership to see it through. Unfortunately, the man who first proposed the park plan would leave politics just over a month later. In August 2009, Doer gathered reporters at the Manitoba legislature to announce he was retiring from politics. A week later, he accepted an appointment as Canada’s ambassador to the United States.

Doer’s departure leads us directly to the situation we’re in now. Doer did not alert the city prior to his park announcement, a fact that instantly made Mayor Sam Katz cool to the idea.

However, Doer hadn’t talked much to his own people either. That is why the whole idea of a park in Point Douglas has not moved forward, now two years after it was first floated.

City and provincial sources confirmed not only has there been no work done on a specific park plan and design, there is no evidence it’s a pressing concern for current Premier Greg Selinger. “The province has indicated that it’s not a top priority for them right now,” said one source.

Behind all of this dithering, there is some progress. The Forks North Portage Partnership has been asked by the province to come up with a range of proposals for developing lands in north and south Point Douglas. That report is expected this fall and will likely lead to some movement.

However, it’s not clear Doer’s vision for a provincial park will in fact be part of that plan. The city would like to see a plan that features, at its core, mixed-use development. This would ensure taxable commercial and residential development in Point Douglas to support the cost of setting aside green space. That vision raises the question of whether there will be enough land left to make a provincial park a viable option.

When it was first unveiled, Doer’s park dream seemed almost too good to be true. Two years on, it is looking more and more like it was.

dan.lett@freepress.mb.ca