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Boujee Restaurant: thrice burned, torn down, never to be rebuilt.
Tavern United: closed.
Rudy’s Eat and Drink: closed.
La Roca: hit by arson, reopened.
Commonwealth Kitchen and Bar: torched in July 2025, closed until April 8, 2026.
Blazing Chicken Shack: suffering a lack of customers the owner blames on changes to Graham Avenue that have killed foot traffic.
Exchange Event Centre: set ablaze twice, closed for the foreseeable future.
Johnny G’s Pub and Restaurant: severe fire linked to arson spree, permanently closed.
Giant Tiger, Ellice and Donald: closing in November.
Yuk Yuk’s comedy club: closed after being one of the company’s worst performing locations across Canada.
Winnipeg Transit: schedule and routing rejig a constant source of complaints.
Prior to the demolition of Boujee, the Main Street building housed a restaurant for decades. Its co-owner has said he will not rebuild in Winnipeg’s downtown, owing to constant crime and vandalism in the area. (Mikaela MacKenzie / Free Press files)
Throughout all this, what seems to be lacking is any effort to fix things.
When the Downtown BIZ was asked about all the resto closures, its response was to point out the net count was up by one. Oh, goody. One whole restaurant.
When the province was asked about suffering businesses along Graham Avenue, Jamie Moses, the business, mining, trade and job creation minister, pointed to a $1.4-million storefront improvement program.
OK, so let’s unpack that. At $1.4 million, and a cap of $200,000 per business, that means potentially only seven businesses could benefit. More importantly, as Blazing Chicken owner Eric Saniuk told the Free Press, what good is a fancy new storefront if no customers are walking by to see it?
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When the city is asked about the changes to Transit — which feed into the lack of foot traffic on Graham Avenue, which lost its status as a transit hub — the city’s response is to double down and insist — despite complaints that by now must number in the thousands — that the changes are correct and the complainers are not.
Let’s unpack the Transit move to Portage Avenue: you’ve taken traffic away from businesses that catered to it and put it on a street that between construction — the Bay, the former Portage Place — and empty storefronts, has relatively few customer-facing businesses to benefit from the traffic.
The city’s plan for Graham was to create a “vibrant, people-first destination.” It seems to have forgotten the most important part of a pedestrian corridor. Pedestrians.
A year after the change to the transit corridor, businesses told Gabrielle Piché that layoffs, reduced hours and subletting now plague an area that had been burgeoning.
“You could fire a cannon down Graham Avenue a lot of the time and not have to worry about any casualties,” Aimee Peake, owner of Bison Books, said in Piché’s July 4 story.
Aimee Peake, owner of Bison Books, says foot traffic has cratered since the city moved transit buses off Graham Avenue. (John Woods / Free Press files)
It can only be a matter of time before more Graham Avenue businesses call it quits.
When the city is asked about Graham Avenue, its response is that the mayor has sat down and spoken with the affected businesses. OK, fine. But what has been done? A conversation and $1.99 will buy you a cup of coffee.
As for Rudy’s Eat and Drink, you’d think that after an extended period of forcing it to suffer reduced patronage due to security lockdowns, Manitoba Hydro would go the extra mile to keep that tenant as a thank you. Guess not.
It’s well past the time for action. A city with a struggling downtown is a city in decline. The city must find ways to put people into its “vibrant, people-oriented” space. Whether that’s incentivizing regular events, cutting red tape, examining which regulations it can live without, rethinking its transit overhaul or shuffling resources into the Downtown Safety Community Partnership to increase patrols, something must be done.
When it comes to crime, busyness is the best disinfectant.
Just as importantly, everybody has to be rowing in the same direction, whether that’s Downtown BIZ, the city, major employers such as Hydro or the province. There needs to be a comprehensive plan that parties agree to stick with.
A pending municipal election is the perfect time to put these questions to the people asking for your vote.
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