Manitoba’s first condo turns 50

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 19/08/2019 (2274 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

When Pat and Bob Migliore moved to Winnipeg from New York City 49 years ago, they were enticed by an advertisement in the Free Press for affordable, brand-new townhouse condominiums on Buchanan Boulevard.

“(For) us, coming from a New York City apartment — and condos were wildly popular already in the ’70s, back there, at triple the price — we were like, ‘Wow, this is a good deal,’” recalled Pat Migliore.

The couple put down a $500 deposit on a three-bedroom, split-level unit in the Lakewood Village development, which they bought for just under $18,000. Forty-nine years later, the Migliores are the longest-standing residents of the first condominium in both Winnipeg and Manitoba.

When the townhouses went on sale in August 1969, they were part of the Lakeview subdivision of St. James-Assiniboia. The area is now the Winnipeg neighbourhood of Crestview, and Lakewood Village is known as Birch Park Condominiums.

Most units weren’t occupied until 1970, said Pat Migliore. That’s the year the Migliores moved in, and they still remember “a lot of young families with kids.” Condos in the 107-unit complex changed hands frequently in the early days, they said.

“Every year, once school got out, you could walk out the front door and trip over the ‘For Sale’ signs,” said Pat Migliore.

“And my kids lost all their friends over the summer, and then they got new ones. Nobody wanted a condominium. It wasn’t part of the Manitoba or Winnipeg lifestyle… Individual homes were still quite reasonably priced, and there was so much land.”

“It was something new,” chimed in Bob Migliore. “It wasn’t a rental apartment, and it wasn’t an individual house or even a duplex.”

A contemporary promotional pamphlet provided by developer Qualico, then known as Quality Construction Co., shows the company took pains to sell Manitobans on the concept of condo ownership.

“Condominium is not a co-operative. Each owner is strictly responsible for only his townhouse, and he may rent or sell it anytime he wishes,” explained the pamphlet, which described the community as offering “more time for leisure in a resort setting at your doorstep, minutes from downtown Winnipeg.”

An August, 1969 article in the “Women’s News” pages of the Free Press explained how condos differed from co-ops and rentals, but focused mostly on the townhouses’ interior design, with options that included “super modern” decor and “traditional old English.” A “Spanish theme” unit featuring deep red carpeting, black-and-white-patterned wallpaper and “heavy, dark Mediterranean style” furniture was featured in Chatelaine and Hostess magazines.

An article published in the June 1969 edition of Western Construction and Building magazine, paraphrases Quality Construction’s then-president David Friesen as “(noting) that condominium housing is still new in the west, but is gaining wider acceptance as people become accustomed to the idea.”

“The lower down payments and lower monthly costs are tailored to meet the needs of young people with growing families and modest incomes,” Quality Construction controller Gurcharan Bhatia said in the same article.

Nearly 50 years later, affordability is still a major draw for the owners of Birch Park Condominiums. Units have recently sold for about $180,000, according to resident Cheryl Pauls, who serves as maintenance director on the condo’s board.

“It’s the most house you can get for the least amount of money,” said Pauls, sitting on the fenced-in patio behind her 1,100 square-foot townhouse, which includes a basement.

“Where are you going to find that? A small house in St. James is 800 square feet, and $250,000.”

Birch Park Condominium board president Tracy Heppner, a 30-year resident, said the board is focusing on refreshing the townhouse exteriors to make them “maintenance-free” over the next few years, without imposing any special levies on unit owners. Maintenance fees are $294 for three-bedroom units, she said.

“(There’s) people here that are just moving in, and have kids and activities, and you’ve got to look at all incomes here, and what they’re bringing home, and make it affordable,” said Heppner.

Long after their own children grew up and moved out, Bob and Pat Migliore still remember the original Lakewood Village as an especially kid-friendly place on the undeveloped fringes of metropolitan Winnipeg.

“We don’t have the woods across the street anymore,” said Pat.

“That was a big play-place for the kids,” added Bob. “We had a lot of kids congregate there, because it was bush, they enjoyed that.”

“I remember my daughter coming home from school and sitting cross-legged on the garbage bin crying her eyes out, because they had dug out Russenholt (Street) and they were building houses, and they took her woods down,” recalled Pat.

Even though the “natural surroundings of lush green parkland” once touted by Quality Construction Co.’s original sales pamphlet are long gone, the Migliores say Manitoba’s first condominium complex is still a great fit for them.

“We thought, over the years about the possibility of maybe buying something bigger,” said Pat.

“But we thought, why? I mean, it so suits our lifestyle.”

solomon.israel@freepress.mb.ca

@sol_israel