RRC’s old gem a beauty

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 27/04/2012 (4936 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Perched above Old Market Square, the nicest new patio in downtown Winnipeg offers a panoramic view of the west side of the Exchange District.

Just don’t expect to enjoy a beer above a revitalized Union Bank Tower any time soon. For starters, Red River College’s $35-million makeover of Winnipeg’s first skyscraper won’t be complete until 2013.

And the fourth-storey patio will be one of the student-only amenities in downtown Winnipeg’s most ambitious revitalization project — the construction and refurbishment of seven floors of residential apartments, three floors of instructional space, penthouse-level office space and at least two street-level restaurants within three separate but connected structures, built over the course of 108 years.

Originally slated to open this spring, what the college calls the Paterson GlobalFoods Institute is hoped to be ready for the January semester, Red River communications manager Colin Fast said during a tour of the structure Thursday.

The multi-year project, which involves the refurbishment of an 11-storey bank tower built in 1904, the adaptive reuse of a three-storey annex added in 1921 and the construction of a brand-new wing above the former Leland Hotel site, has been delayed by a handful of setbacks.

“Any time you work on a heritage building, you have surprises,” Fast said.

For starters, construction crews discovered the annex had no foundation. Then a waterline break in March delayed work almost two months as workers brought in a dessicator to dry out sections of walls and ceilings that might otherwise have needed to be ripped out and redone, Fast said.

There were also more pleasant surprises, such as the discovery of original marble floors in sufficiently good condition to line the hallways of the residential floors of the Union Bank Tower. There’s room for 102 residents in 40 single and 32 double apartments on the fourth through 10th floors of the tower, which have been empty for two decades.

The structure’s top floor will likely be used as an administrative space, Fast said. The bottom three floors will house modern, more spacious classrooms and teaching kitchens for Red River’s culinary and hospitality programs.

“When you’re working with knives, that’s a good thing,” Fast quipped.

The main floor will also house a self-serve restaurant facing King Street and a more upscale eatery called Jane’s inside the grand banking hall, facing Main Street. Named after the mother of $2-million donor Andrew Paterson, Jane’s will replace the student-staffed Prairie Lights restaurant at the college’s Notre Dame campus, Fast said.

“It will be one of the most physically impressive restaurants in Winnipeg,” he said, referring to the heritage elements retained within the banking hall.

The project has attracted $17 million in government investment and another $5 million from the private sector, thanks to the combined heritage restoration, educational expansion and the expected relief of Winnipeg’s rental-housing crisis. Fast said he expects visiting international and aboriginal students will snap up the apartments. Rental rates have yet to be set.

Despite the construction delays, Fast said he’s been impressed with the conversion of the tower and the annex.

“There were parts of this building I was afraid to stick my head into,” he said. “It had been vacant for so long, there were pigeons living here and people broke in to use it a party space.”

More may yet break in to get at that fourth-storey patio and its view of Old Market Square, once the project is complete.

bartley.kives@freepress.mb.ca