Preparing for takeoff In Portage Place, signs emerge of ambitious $650-M transformation By: Malak Abas Posted: 3:00 PM CDT Friday, May. 30, 2025

A group of people gather near a hair salon and a cellphone kiosk in Portage Place, nearly six months to the day that True North formally acquired the downtown mall that’s been struggling for years.

They are at the centre of the ambitious development plan. They don’t work downtown or drive here occasionally, they call it home.

They’ve shown up at the first of many public open houses hosted by True North Real Estate Development; this one is focused on the 200-plus residential units planned for the six-acre space on the north side of Portage Avenue.

There are impressive renderings that show the finished product of the overhaul of the 1.2 million-square-foot mall. There’s the residential tower, grocery store, health care centre and retail shops. Construction is set to be completed in phases, with the housing component ideally ready in 2027, and the full development within three or four years.

Attendees sample free doughnuts and ask the architects questions. They’re excited by True North’s promise that rental apartments will be affordable, and groceries and medical care will be close by.

But there is a catch. RaeAnne Paxton says the construction process will remove their “lifeline” to get around downtown.

The skywalk at Carlton on Portage Avenue will be closed as of mid-July — for three to four years, a spokesperson for True North confirmed.

The skywalk at Vaughan Street will be closed temporarily at some point during construction, likely for about several weeks, but details are yet to be decided.

Paxton, 70, has lived in the 55+ Fred Douglas Chateau building with her husband for 13 years.

The Portage skywalk, which allows pedestrians to stay warm in winter and dry in summer, connects downtown from the old Bay building on Vaughan Street to the Radisson Hotel near Portage Avenue and Smith Street.

“A lot of people moved (downtown) specifically for access through that… it’s a lifeline to them, right?” she says. “It’s social, so they can get out, they’re not strapped to the house.”

Joan Clement also had questions about the skywalk closing.

“We moved from rural (Manitoba) to downtown to be close to everything. I walk to my doctor, I walk to my dentist, I walk to my eye (doctor), whatever,” she says. “(Downtown) is really centred within all of the services.”

Both are excited about the future of Portage Place. True North is “moving people in the right direction,” Clement says.

They know the downtown community, which has 20,000 residents, is about to be transformed, and will provide convenience to their lives.

“When the Jets game is on or there are concerts on, it’s the most amazing thing to see so many people coming through downtown. It’s busy and it’s vibrant, and it’s the way it needs to be,” Paxton says.

“The issue is the downtown always gets a bad rep.”

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The aggressive construction schedule begins in July with the closure of the skywalk from Portage Place east to the Hydro building, along with access to the skywalk via Carlton Street. Alternative routes will be marked out with signs to ensure an easy transition, says True North communications director Sean Kavanagh.

The Carlton Street parkade entrance will close in mid-July, meaning 200 stalls will be unavailable.

Instead, users must enter and leave via Vaughan Street.

Outside Portage Place, construction fencing will be erected in the fall, and several entrances, including the doors at the Edmonton Street centre court, will close. A new entryway will be put up on the Promenade side, north of the mall.

Drivers can expect lane closures on Portage Avenue starting in September, and the closure of the westbound Portage Avenue at Edmonton Street transit stop and shelter, which will be moved farther west.

The only permanent closure is a small bridge that connects the Manitoba Health building at 300 Carlton St. to the mall, something most shoppers don’t even know exists. It will be gone as of July 11.

This week, the Free Press joined Kavanagh on a tour to look at the changes coming to Portage Place.

Early stages of construction are already visible. Most of the tenants have left the food court. All that remains is the Tim Hortons outlet, which will eventually close, and a Thai restaurant.

Signs from the mall’s heyday remain, including a marker that directs shoppers to the Bay, which has been closed for five years. Other signs placed around the centre remind visitors that a new development is in the works.

One side of the mall, next to the Vaughan Street skywalk, will be transformed into a 15-storey residential tower. The centre block of the mall will be given a makeover, but not demolished, and turned into community spaces.

“Both the (YMCA) portion and this are built like bomb shelters,” Kavanagh says. “They were built in an era where they still really, really, really over-built, and so the bones are good.”

The future of some spaces, such as the former IMAX theatre on the third flood, which closed in 2013, is up in the air.

Community ambassadors from social service agency Okichidah Pimahtisiwin Kiskinawmatowin, brought in by True North six days a week and trained by longtime advocate Mitch Bourbonniere, walk around the hallways in yellow vests, with naloxone strapped to their waist, in case someone in the mall overdoses.

Kavanagh says they defuse tense situations and help the private security guards and police.

In their first six weeks, they’ve intervened in multiple overdoses, Kavanagh says.

“Fortunately, we’ve seen those numbers decline. But this is a model we’re going to continue to follow, relationships between ourselves and outreach and police, fire, ambulance, and community services, everywhere we can.”

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The original Portage Place mega-project was supposed to put a jolt into a rundown north Portage Avenue.

The Winnipeg Core Area Initiative, launched by all three levels of government in 1981, resulted in $196 million being spent over a decade. Some of its investments were more successful than others — it funded preliminary studies that eventually led to the development of The Forks — but it also led to the creation of Portage Place in 1987.

Although that was nearly 40 years ago, the headlines could have been published today — the downtown was stagnant, a victim of urban blight, while people had abandoned downtown to move to the suburbs.

Just as today, Winnipeg politicians asked what they could do to save downtown. For the 200,000 people who attended the opening of Portage Place, which boasted 153 stores, it might have seemed so.

But in less than a year, retail tenants reported they had trouble paying their rent. By 2005, its vacancy rate dropped from 97 per cent to five per cent.

In a way, it was the end of an era beyond Manitoba — it was one of, if not the, last mall built downtown in a major city in Canada, says Jino Distasio, an urban geography professor at University of Winnipeg.

“In its day, I will always say that Portage Place was one of the most well thought-out design … all of it was the best of the best,” he says.

“But even that was just not enough to convince the average person that the downtown, as a destination for shopping, hadn’t passed its prime.”

In the last 20 years, additions to the mall came and went. Eventually, the consensus formed that that Portage Place was not, in fact, what would attract people downtown.

Distasio guesses downtown has lost more than two million square feet of retail space in the last two decades, and lists expensive downtown projects that were lauded as possible saviours of downtown: Eaton Place (now Cityplace), Mountain Equipment Co-Op, the Hydro Building, the iconic record store A&B Sound.

“We keep asking the same question: Will this be the next, will this project be the cure-all?” he says.

He says the current downtown depression can’t be blamed on the COVID-19 pandemic.

“We’re, for the most part, post-pandemic. We’ve seen a return to work, we know that there’s people in the downtown. What we don’t know is what the heck they’re doing.”

There’s no denying that this time, the situation is different: in the parcel of land from Portage and Main to Memorial Boulevard, about one billion dollars worth of change is about to land.

The Portage Place transformation has been pegged at $650 million, the Southern Chiefs’ Organization’s redevelopment of the former Bay building is worth $310 million. There are smaller projects such as the work to reopen Portage and Main to pedestrians and the revitalization of the Air Canada Window Park on Carlton Street, which is set to reopen in September.

“Downtown Winnipeg is going to look very different in five years,” Downtown BIZ CEO Kate Fenske says.

“It’s really exciting, but it is going to be a little complicated, a little uncomfortable for us to get there. I can’t wait to see it on the other side.”

“Downtown Winnipeg is going to look very different in five years.”–Kate Fenske, Downtown BIZ CEO

Fenske says the move to the suburbs, and the Core Area Initiative of the 1980s teach the importance of getting everyone on the same page. To do that, the community must have a strong voice alongside business owners, and opportunities must be quickly pursued when they arise.

“(The) thing that I think we still have work to do on is, we understand that things take time, but we need to move faster,” she says.

“When we see a good opportunity, when we do see that the decision needs to be made, it’s getting everyone on the same page and everyone doing their part to get it to the other side.”

For Distasio, turning Portage Avenue into a “walking street” is paramount — to invest in street-level vibrancy through retail and housing growth, to encourage people to stroll and linger.

The change that’s coming to downtown could be what finally gets us there.

“To me, it could help transform a street that really needs to be transformed,” he says. “Portage Avenue is struggling, there’s no way to sugarcoat that anymore.”

malak.abas@freepress.mb.ca