City puts venerable Pantages up for sale

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This article was published 08/06/2018 (2719 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

The City of Winnipeg is looking for a new owner for the Pantages Playhouse Theatre, revealing that intention on Friday by filing a request for proposal.

The Pantages, which opened on Market Avenue in 1914, is designated as a heritage site at the municipal, provincial and national levels, and has been under the city’s purview since it was acquired in a 1993 tax sale.

Due to the heritage designation, demolition is not permitted. The city reserves the right to reject any proposal, the request for proposal stipulates.

The request also states price alone won’t be the sole determining factor in the selection of a buyer. Anticipated municipal tax revenue, development layout, building design and quality, and proposed land use all will be critical factors. Proposals may be subject to city council approval.

It’s not the first time the city has made an effort to find a private investor to purchase the two-storey, former vaudeville venue, which always has been used as a performance house. Within two years of acquiring the building, municipal politicians had begun to propose shopping it.

“We should be looking at unloading it to the private sector,” then-city councillor Amaro Silva said in 1995. “It’s not a business the city should be in.”

“The city has been trying to divest the Pantages for nearly three decades,” Cindy Tugwell, executive director of Heritage Winnipeg, said Friday. “This theatre is just not working well for the city owning it.”

Other venerable theatres, including the Metropolitan and the Burton Cummings, have achieved new life through private purchase in recent years, Tugwell said.

In 2006, CentreVenture Development Corp., Winnipeg’s downtown development agency, purchased the Met for $100,000; and in 2016, after two years operating the Burt, True North Sports & Entertainment exercised its option and purchased the iconic theatre.

In 2013, prior to taking over the Burt’s operations, True North executive Kevin Donnelly was exploring opportunities for partnership with the Pantages.

However, the company’s primary focus “was and is the Burt,” Donnelly told the Free Press at the time.

Tugwell echoed sentiments from 1995, saying the city should indeed look for a new owner for the Pantages, or rather, continue a search that’s been ongoing for some time.

Currently, the city is liable for maintenance and repairs.

“From a financial standpoint, the city just can’t carry it,” she said.

The city will hold open houses for the building June 26 and July 9, from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m., and proposals are due to be delivered to the materials management office by 4 p.m. on Aug. 31.

The Free Press reached out to the theatre administration, as well as the city’s planning, property and development department, but did not receive comment in time for publication.

bwaldman@freepress.mb.caTwitter: @benjwaldman