From seamy to seemly

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 31/05/2008 (6521 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

AWinnipeg hostel is quadrupling its capacity while at the same time transforming what was once an unsavoury part of the downtown.

A year ago, the Hostelling International (HI) hostel in Winnipeg sat at 210 Maryland St., with 36 beds stuffed into a 1910 Victorian house. Called Ivey House, it had operated since 1980, but growth in the hostelling market and rising costs of maintaining an old building prompted a move.

According to Bob Somers, a landscape architect and HI Manitoba board member, the hostel had been in dire need of repairs. As well, it had been forced to turn away a third of the tourists who showed up looking for a place to sleep because there weren’t enough beds available.

When the Gordon Downtowner Motor Hotel came up for sale early last year, HI Manitoba decided to buy it. The non-profit group took possession of the three-storey motel last June, and had 120 hostel beds ready on the second floor by August, when Ivey House closed its doors. Another 40 beds will be available when renovations are completed on the third floor.

The former motel often hosted people from northern Manitoba who were in the city for hospital visits. Other hotels — such as the nearby Quest Inn — have since taken up that business.

Somers acknowledges the Gordon Downtowner had a bad reputation, but notes that room guests were never a problem. Rather, the problems were created by people coming to the hotel’s beer outlet and bar.

“The first thing we did was close the beer vendor,” says Somers. “They had a huge stock of king cans and two-litre bottles that they went through every week. Once in a while, someone will still come by asking where the vendor is.”

Beyond the vendor, the motel bar used to add to the hotel’s image as a dive.

“At one time, this bar was blacklisted by cab companies,” says Somers as he stands inside the renamed Lo Pub, which now hosts local and touring bands that attract a youthful crowd on a regular basis.

Locals, such as Patrick Munoz, who lives at the Webbsite condominium a block away, have noticed the difference. He says when he first moved to the neighbourhood over two years ago, he often saw drunken loiterers and caught the smell of urine close to home.

“Of course, you can’t eliminate that downtown, but we definitely experience it a lot less since the hostel took over,” says Munoz. “It’s quieter, and I’m quite happy to see the change.”

Munoz, who was unfamiliar with the old bar, and his condo neighbours frequently visit the new pub.

“We try to go every Friday,” he says. “We look at the pub as ours.”

But while the pub attracts positive attention from neighbours, visiting travellers are the main focus of the hostel. In another part of the main floor, Somers shows the soon-to-be-finished common room, where travellers will store food, cook, eat and socialize. Windows on the south side of the new common room look out onto a courtyard that HI Manitoba plans to dress up with a deck, plants and maybe a barbecue. It will be open to hostel guests only.

Upstairs from the pub, restaurant and common room, the hostel has a mix of dorm rooms that travellers can share, and private rooms set up with bunk beds for families or double beds for two pairs of travellers. En suite bathrooms add an amenity that not all hostels offer, although the rooms are somewhat stark: three white walls and one wall painted with an accent colour surround a coated concrete floor in each one.

“Sterile is a word I’ve heard,” says Somers, though he notes that people staying in hostels usually don’t put a high priority on fancy accommodations. “Independent travellers aren’t interested in staying in their rooms any longer than it takes to sleep and get dressed,” he says.

Somers says the hostel is in discussions with various Winnipeg artists about having locally made artwork hang on the walls throughout the halls and in the common spaces.

“Our goal is to have a hostel in Riding Mountain and another in Churchill. But this in the only HI hostel in Manitoba right now; this is our flagship,” he says.

As a non-profit organization, HI Manitoba received renovation funding from the province and the Winnipeg Foundation as well as from the Forks North Portage Partnership (FNPP). Jim August, FNPP’s chief executive officer, describes the HI Downtowner project as part of the steady revitalization of downtown Winnipeg.

“Revitalization doesn’t come with one project. It comes gradually, with small, quality projects that add up to something greater than the sum of their parts.”

ian.tizzard@freepress.mb.ca