‘Excited’ Birchwood Terrace tenant prepares to return

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This article was published 31/12/2024 (326 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

A resident at Birchwood Terrace is set to move back Thursday — more than seven months after the emergency evacuation was ordered in the apartments.

“As long as I’m going back that’s the main thing, I don’t care if it’s dusty,” said the resident, who didn’t want to give her name.

The St. James apartment building remained wrapped in fencing Tuesday as construction workers and cleaners continued to come and go. Power tools could be heard rattling intermittently from the open windows.

The woman, who’s lived at Birchwood Terrace for four years, was visiting Tuesday to check up on the state of her apartment.

“Everything stayed in there, I just got my clothes I needed — that’s it,” she said.

She is one of the roughly 250 residents that were forced out of the building in May after it was deemed unsafe due to deteriorating support columns in the underground parkade.

“We didn’t know how long before we would be back there,” she said, noting residents “didn’t know anything” about the building’s structural issues.

“We did what everyone did — got my stuff and left” she said. “We just followed the rules.”

When she got the news to vacate the building, her grandsons rushed over to help her get the food out the fridge, as she packed essential clothes and rounded up her seven-year-old Shih Tzu.

She stayed with her granddaughter at Grand Rapids, a more than four-hour drive from Winnipeg, for nearly eight months. She said she was one of the fortunate ones who did not have to stay in a hotel.

The City of Winnipeg issued an occupancy permit on Dec. 17, allowing residents to move back in.

“I was excited,” the tenant said, noting she’s looking forward to having more space.

Sunny Warring, who works for Seven Oaks Janitorial, said units are undergoing cleaning and repairing. He was in the building to bring coffee for his co-workers.

He said floors were being washed; repairs to the drywall and some units are being re-painted — “making it brand new,” the 45-year-old said.

fpcity@freepress.mb.ca