Setting the stage

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This article was published 21/10/2024 (369 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

The Gas Station Arts Centre is once again ready for full service.

After taking the summer off for renovations, Osborne Village’s flagship performing arts venue has been showing off its fresh interior to audiences for the past month — but is still fundraising for other upgrades, including to its entrance and courtyard.

Gas Station’s executive director Nick Kowalchuk calls the latest improvements “beautiful and modern,” and describes them as the first part of Phase 1 of the theatre’s redevelopment plan.

The new renos are more than a fresh coat of paint (though there’s that too). Upgraded house lights illuminate a theatre with new carpeting and seating for a more comfortable and accessible audience experience.

What’s next for the venue’s revamp?

The River Avenue theatre plans to demolish its courtyard next summer, replacing it with a fenced courtyard and moving the Gas Station’s entrance to a secure vestibule.

The plans reflect public safety concerns, with violence and crime on the rise in the River-Osborne neighbourhood according to a Winnipeg Police Service statistical report.

Kowalchuk has long campaigned for upgrades to the Gas Station Arts Centre, a cornerstone of a neighbourhood voted Canada’s greatest in 2012.

“For years, we’ve been working hard to improve our space and the surrounding area, but we’re at a point where transformative changes require more than just our operational budget,” he says.

“We need partners — sponsors and community members — to help us access matching funds from government programs and take the next big step.”

The Gas Station’s redevelopment proposals over the last decade — which at one point included remaking the centre into a mixed-use housing co-op — have never been short on vision. The corner of River and Osborne has a notable history of ambitious development.

When the Imperial Oil Service station was transformed into the Gas Station Theatre in 1983, it was part of a $100-million urban revitalization initiative run by the three levels of government.

The Core Area Initiative, as it was called, chose Osborne Village as one of its target neighbourhoods and provided the Riverborne Development Association with $445,000 to buy the empty building.

The project dovetailed with a shift underway in the neighbourhood’s demographics as well-to-do homeowners made room for renters in their large homes, three-storey apartments sprang up, and artists, punks and students flooded in for the cheap rent and proximity to downtown.

Today, while its record shops, arty movie outlets and grittier venues have mostly shuttered or reinvented themselves elsewhere, the neighbourhood still boasts a lively commercial and night life, along with 830 new homes in various stages of completion.

The mural beside the Gas Station Arts Centre’s current entrance — with its colourful portraits of local theatre legends such as the late Steve McIntyre, improv troupe Crumbs and comedian Lara Rae — reminds visitors of the venue’s starring role in the Village’s artistic scene.

While Kowalchuk says Osborne Village still holds incredible potential, the Gas Station is striking a pragmatic tone regarding its redevelopments.

“My focus is getting Phase 1 done (and) being kind of realistic for really what is needed for the corner, for the theatre, for the users,” he says.

conrad.sweatman@freepress.mb.ca

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