Main Street strip’s Manwin Hotel remains vacant, boarded up a year after city ordered it closed

The Manwin Hotel in downtown Winnipeg remains vacant nearly one year after the city ordered its residents out, leaving another building on the Main Street strip at risk of fire and vandalism.

The hotel at 655 Main St. was briefly listed for sale earlier this year before it expired, agent Brad Gross told the Free Press.

Gross said building owner Akim Kambamba had some issues with the building he wanted to take care of before relisting the property. The agent did not disclose what the issues were.

The city ordered residents to leave last January amid multiple outstanding permit requirements and compliance orders.

Following a fire in a bathroom of the hotel in December 2024, the city’s planning, property and development department ordered the building’s approximately 34 tenants to vacate the premises.

Kambamba appealed the order, but the city’s property and development committee rejected the plea and upheld the vacate order on Feb. 10.

The hotel had been plagued by drug use and violence over the years, including four homicides between 2017 and 2023. It offered low-cost rents in its 36 rooms.

Main Street Project, which neighbours the building on either side, considered buying the building before it was condemned. The non-profit organization conducted its own assessment and determined the 143-year-old structure would need to be torn down.

“If we paid, say, $500,000 we’d have to spend another $400,000 to $600,000 tear the building down. So we’d be looking at about a million-dollar investment into an empty lot,” said Jamil Mahmood, Main Street Project’s executive director.

The non-profit offered between $400,000 and $600,000, the assessed value of the land, but the owner wasn’t interested, Mahmood said.

The building was listed for $2.79 million in April when it was put up for sale. At the time Gross said the price was determined based on market value for similar properties in the area.

The building’s doors, windows and emergency exits are boarded up in compliance with city bylaws on vacant properties. Last year the city changed its regulations to beef up boarding requirements to decrease the chance of break-ins and fires in vacant buildings.

The city’s firefighters union is surprised the hotel hasn’t been hit by fire yet, as have so many other empty buildings across Winnipeg in recent years.

“Someone’s constantly breaking into them and setting fires. We don’t know if floors are compromised by accident or on purpose. So a structure of that size would certainly pose those greater risks to our members and everyone else,” said United Firefighters of Winnipeg vice-president TJ Belluk. “The only way to minimize the hazard is to tear it down.”

Main Street Project employees conduct daily inspections of the exterior of the building to make sure it remains secure, Mahmood said. Last week, an employee found one of the boards had been pried loose and they called 311 to have it fixed.

City spokesperson Julie Dooley said bylaw officers have visited 655 Main St. on multiple occasions since issuing the vacate order.

Enforcement of the city’s vacant buildings bylaw requires at least one internal and external inspection of buildings per year. Vacant buildings can be inspected more often based on available resources and requests for service through 311.

During his appeal of the vacate order in February, Kambamba said he “inherited” many of the building’s problems when he became one of its owners in 2012. He urged the committee to grant him more time to repair the building, noting he hopes to have it comply with the rules by the summer.

According to city records, no permits have been issued for 655 Main St. since 2023.

Mahmood says there has been no construction activity observed since last summer, when crews were seen tearing down a set of stairs leading to a back door on the hotel’s second floor.

Kambamba could not be reached for comment Tuesday.

If the owner was willing to revisit the building’s sale price and a donor stepped forward with a generous offer, Main Street Project might be interested in purchasing it to build high-density housing to replace the units the Manwin made available for low-income residents.

“We’ve lost a lot of those downtown hotels in the last couple years and we’re not replacing them quick enough with other options,” Mahmood said. “More people in shelters and temporary places, not housing, isn’t great for our city.”

nicole.buffie@freepress.mb.ca