Buffalo Crossing to come alive

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This article was published 18/06/2023 (838 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Liz Wilson sits down having freshly exchanged her high-visibility vest and steel-toed boots for a tan blazer and stylish flats.

The wooden bench she settles on was ironically dedicated to then-50-year-old Doug Harvey, a major donor of the Buffalo Crossing development at the FortWhyte Alive sanctuary in southwest Winnipeg.

“I was just over at our new building site,” says the president and CEO of FortWhyte Alive.

The footprint of the planned $25 million, two-storey, 18,000 square-foot-facility on McGillivray Boulevard already holds a visible impression on the south end of the 660-acre urban green space and wetlands, with the concrete foundation poured and asphalt spread where a large parking lot will be.

Next is the mass delivery of timber — expected to arrive in early July — to assemble Buffalo Crossing, a visitor centre and flagship initiative in a six-project, $35 million capital campaign that will open a new entrance to FortWhyte Alive, offering some much-needed relief for the natural urban oasis and increasing its accessibility to the rest of Winnipeg.

“All of a sudden, this building is going to be erected. It’s going to be almost like Lego, so that’s super exciting,” Wilson says.

Buffalo Crossing, which broke ground in November, is expected to open in July of 2024.

FortWhyte Alive has one access point on McCreary Road, a road that winds to the only entrance building on the property. Days with heavy flows of traffic, owing to the number of schools that use FortWhyte Alive as a destination for field trips, create a bottleneck in the existing parking lot, Wilson says.

“It’ll take some of the pressure off our main entrance, we’ll be able to separate our youth programs from our public and tourism programs,” she says.

“It allows us the opportunity to open up more of our property, expand our program offerings and increase the number of youth and school groups that can come here with our expanded capacity.”

As with any project of this magnitude, Buffalo Crossing has come with its challenges, Wilson explains.

Construction is slightly behind schedule, largely owing to supply-chain issues and the added task of building the facility to passive house and zero-carbon standards. Buffalo Crossing is the first commercial building to hold these energy-efficiency designations in Manitoba.

“I hope that this is going to be a teaching tool for everyday Manitobans to be able to come in and see that sustainable, climate-resilient architecture is possible in our climate,” Wilson says.

Last week, the city cleared one of the largest remaining hurdles in the plan to build a new access point on one of its busiest thoroughfares: how those travelling by foot will safely cross McGillivray to reach FortWhyte Alive.

An update by Coun. Janice Lukes (Waverley West ) in June of 2021 detailed two possible options for pedestrians. The first included traffic lights and a crosswalk to be installed at the Brady Road and McGillivray intersection. The second was a controlled crosswalk that led from a new pathway at Front Street and McGillivray.

Given the speed limit on that stretch of the road is 80 km/h and is often occupied by large vehicles such as construction trucks, semis and farm equipment, the city decided on a plan that closely resembles the first option.

Four-way lights that also act as a controlled pedestrian crossing at Brady and McGillivray will be installed by May 2024.

“What it also triggers are upgrades to the current pathway,” says Lukes. “The pathway south of McGillivray is horrible, it’s a little sidewalk. As fate would have it, development is occurring along McGillivray. They’re going to upgrade the pathway, the other development that comes along is going to upgrade the pathway and the city will be upgrading the pathway.

“What this will do is the connectivity of separated sidewalks and bike paths is going to be incredible because the network that will get into FortWhyte Alive or out of FortWhyte Alive, into the south — from an active transportation perspective — is brilliant. And from transit, people will be able to get on the rapid transit corridor, take a feeder bus and zip into FortWhyte.”

Indeed, possibly the grandest piece to the multimillion-dollar capital campaign will be a bus loop that allows public transit to reach a part of the city it’s never touched.

“That is huge. That’s a game changer for us because accessibility has been a barrier for FortWhyte,” Wilson says.

“Unless you live close and you can use active transportation, walk or bike or you have access to a vehicle, we really haven’t been able to attract those visitors.”

FortWhyte Alive will also add a bridge for pedestrians that connects Buffalo Crossing to the other side of Muir Lake, which will be installed in the fall.

jfreysam@freepress.mb.ca