Beginning of the end for Portage & Main barriers

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 10/12/2024 (339 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

It has been 45 years since the concrete barriers preventing pedestrians from crossing the street at Portage and Main were installed, forcing people into the concourse under the storied intersection.

Construction crews began working Tuesday to reopen the crosswalks at “Canada’s windiest corner,” the beginning of the end of the ferocious, decades-long debate that has burned at the centre of the city for nearly a half-century.

“It’s all coming down!” a worker exclaimed over the din as backhoes and skid-steers clawed at the much-maligned barricades along Portage Avenue as afternoon traffic slowly made its way past the blocked eastbound lane between Main and Fort streets.

The closure was part of a deal the city struck with a developer to build the concourse connecting all four corners under the street.

The decision to reopen the intersection — voted down by a margin of nearly two-to-one in a non-binding 2018 civic election referendum — came suddenly last spring when a report revealed it would cost approximately $73 million to repair the leaking membrane protecting the retail concourse under the street.

Citing that cost and the need to make changes because of a planned Winnipeg Transit route overhaul, city council budgeted $13 million last spring to effect changes at street level enabling foot traffic again.

In November that cost ballooned to $21.3 million after the city received only one construction bid on the project, which is expected to be completed by July 1 to align with the transit system changes.

A worker who used a grinder to remove a “Portage and Main” marker fastened to a barricade at one corner sent orange sparks into the snowy air, marking the beginning of a new era for the downtown.

Laz Merasur will be happy to use the crossing instead of the underground concourse, which he said is inaccessible at times. The circus limits its hours from 7 a.m. to 12:30 a.m. daily.

“It’ll just be a lot better for seeing people downtown, and just make it a lot more accessible for everybody,” said Merasur, who frequents the downtown core. “They make us go underground but you can’t even get through it sometimes.”

Design architect and Free Press columnist Brent Bellamy already has his outfit picked out for the intersection’s Canada Day opening ceremony.

The longtime advocate of taking down the barriers will triumphantly navigate the crossing sporting a navy-blue T-shirt emblazoned with a photo of the 2018 plebiscite map showing the urban support and suburban opposition.

“It’s a funny thing, because we’ve kind of been pushed into it with the cost of the roof membrane really being the driver of the decision and not some sort of greater aspirational goals of creating a better city,” Bellamy said Tuesday.

“But you know what? I’ll take a win wherever it comes. I think in a few years, we’re gonna wonder why we worried about it for so long, and why it was such a big deal and it’ll just be a part of our city again.”

Bellamy said while Winnipeg doesn’t have mountains or oceans to enjoy, the gritty city has special places — including Portage and Main — and should work to develop and protect the landmarks it has.

“I know it is an intersection, but it could be much more, and maybe one day it actually will be in a place that tourists come to, and a place that that really interprets our history,” he said.

That sounded good to Merasur.

“We have all these really big intersections everywhere, like New York, but ours is one you have to go underground… which never made sense to me,” he said.

Long-term lane closures at Portage and Main appeared last week, including the closure of the southbound curb lane on Main between Portage and Pioneer avenues and the closure of the eastbound curb lane on Portage Avenue between Fort and Main.

A permanent no right turn restriction from northbound Main onto east Portage has been implemented.

Pre-construction traffic signals and underground work at the intersection concluded last week and sewer repairs and demolition of the existing barricades began earlier this week, the city said.

Winnipeggers are being encouraged to consider alternate routes, as traffic will be restricted at the intersection over the next six months.

Kara Boychuk, who works in the office tower at 201 Portage, wasn’t initially supportive of the idea due to the cost, but has since come around.

“I figured the city spends our tax dollars on worse things,” she said.

nicole.buffie@freepress.mb.ca

Nicole Buffie
Multimedia producer

Nicole Buffie is a reporter for the Free Press city desk. Born and bred in Winnipeg, Nicole graduated from Red River College’s Creative Communications program in 2020 and worked as a reporter throughout Manitoba before joining the Free Press newsroom as a multimedia producer in 2023. Read more about Nicole.

Every piece of reporting Nicole produces is reviewed by an editing team before it is posted online or published in print — part of the Free Press‘s tradition, since 1872, of producing reliable independent journalism. Read more about Free Press’s history and mandate, and learn how our newsroom operates.