Arcade fired?

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This article was published 24/06/2019 (2292 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

The fate of a semi-enclosed pedestrian walkway that wraps around the front of Manitoba’s tallest building will be decided by Winnipeg’s property and development committee today.

The glass-lined passage on the ground floor of the office tower at 201 Portage Ave. is called a “pedestrian arcade” in planning parlance, and resulted from a development agreement approved in 1988. The arcade was meant to mitigate the effect of wind drafts by shielding pedestrians, explained architect Michael Banman, who’s working on behalf of 201 Portage owner Harvard Developments Inc.

That agreement required the building to block off access to the sidewalk in front of 201 Portage in the wintertime, said Banman. When the building was built, he said, aluminum barriers were placed to divert pedestrians off the sidewalk and into the arcade. That plan didn’t work as intended.

“Most people would just look, and they probably saw that there was no construction, ‘So why are you trying to impede my path of travel?’ And they simply stepped over (the barrier) and walked away,” said Banman.

“Interesting thing is, after that first year, at the end of that first winter, the aluminum barriers were stolen, probably to recycle and make somebody a whole lot of cash. And they’ve never been up ever since.”

Few pedestrians strolled through the arcade at the northwest corner of Portage and Main when the Free Press visited on a sunny June morning. The vast majority of people in the arcade were using it for cigarette breaks in the shade.

The walkway is a security concern, said Rosanne Hill Blaisdell, managing director and chief operating officer of Harvard Developments.

“Nothing hugely criminal, but it’s a dark secluded place that nobody really goes into, where people might engage in activities that they wouldn’t do out in the open,” she said.

The arcade sits between the street and a piece of prime commercial real estate, a roughly 5,000-square-foot unit that occupies the ground floor of 201 Portage. That unit has never been leased during the building’s nearly three-decade history.

“It’s been unleasable because the arcade is in front of it,” said Hill Blaisdell.

“(For) the first time in 30 years, we actually have an interested tenant. But of course, the tenant is more interested, obviously, if it has windows to the street.”

Winnipeg city planners have recommended approval of the plan to amend the development agreement and do away with the arcade. If the property and development committee votes in favour today, Hill Blaisdell said, the plan is to build a curtain wall on the outside of the arcade and incorporate the space into the unleased ground-floor unit.

“We think that incorporating the arcade into our larger building structure will actually meet the objectives of the original development agreement, because it will put safety and security and eyes on the street, and it will have visibility of people inside and out, which today doesn’t exist,” she said.

St. Vital Coun. Brian Mayes, who chairs the committee, said he plans to vote in favour.

“The breezeway thing… You see people smoking there, but it’s not like a Parisian café or something, with wicker chairs, right? It’s basically just people freezing in the winter, smoking, or they’re out there smoking in the summer,” he said.

Mayes, who opposed the most recent plan to open Portage and Main to pedestrian crossing, believes the plan for 201 Portage shows building owners are still committed to investing in the intersection after last year’s referendum. Developer Hill Blaisdell, who supported opening Portage and Main, offered a similar message.

“There are competing forces in the markets always, but we believe strongly that Portage and Main continues to be the financial and business hub of Winnipeg, and that it deserves investment from the owners that own the assets around the corners,” she said.

solomon.israel@freepress.mb.ca

@sol_israel