Transit shuffle has Graham Avenue ‘circling the drain,’ area businesses say

For now, Aimee Peake can visit fellow shop owners along her strip — at the convenience store, the barber, the bong shop.

She’s questioning how long that’ll last.

“As you look out on the street right now, you see that there is not one person on that block,” said Peake, who peered from her window in Bison Books, surveying Graham Avenue.

“Nobody’s on this block. It’s like the city’s pulled the plug and we are all circling the drain.”

She’s among the downtown Winnipeg business owners sounding alarm bells: some shops along Graham Avenue, near the former Hudson’s Bay Co. flagship store and further east, risk closure.

Stakeholders had hoped to see foot traffic increase as post-secondary students returned downtown, but little has changed, according to seven businesses the Free Press spoke to.

Many companies on the strip, which ends at the former Bay building, grew their business around bus commuters. Some 1,800 buses could travel down the street daily pre-COVID-19 pandemic.

Buses disappeared from Graham this summer during Winnipeg Transit’s route network overhaul. Politicians and the local business improvement zone touted a pedestrian- and bike-oriented reimagining of the area.

Victor Brydon called the reimagining a “buzzword.”

“There’s been no reimagining,” he said inside Aluminum Sound, his shop at the corner of Graham Avenue and Vaughan Street.

Walk-by traffic formerly accounted for half his sales. Now, with no vehicles allowed on the side of Graham that Aluminum Sound occupies, he’s seen a roughly 50 per cent drop in customers. He’s signed a shorter lease than usual, Brydon said.

“Within the next year, you’re gonna see most of these businesses gone along here,” Brydon said.

Brydon’s looking for something — some event, like a busker festival or food truck weekend, could help, he said.

“This store has to make money. This is what I live on,” he said. “If it’s not, we’re not gonna stay.”

A stretch of Graham Avenue — from Carlton to Garry streets — was painted as part of the stretch’s reimagining. Table tennis sites and picnic tables dotted the area.

Paint was peeling by August, roughly a month after artists finished the murals. During the lunch hour on Tuesday, nobody was playing table tennis; picnic tables, also unused, were pushed together and off to a side.

The decorations don’t extend west beyond Carlton Street to businesses like Bison Books.

Eateries in Cityplace, near the artsy landscape, said they’ve also noticed less foot traffic post-transit overhaul. For Bodegoes restaurant, the midday traffic is missing.

The company has started covering taxi and ride-share costs for staff; employees sometimes can’t take a bus home, said owner Andrew Van Seggelen. “I think the city just needs better consultation with the businesses directly downtown.”

Transit changes were years in the making and information was publicly accessible, said Mayor Scott Gillingham.

“We’ll continue to work with the business owners along Graham Avenue,” he said, adding there is “no specific program” planned for the area in the near-term.

He pointed to ongoing projects downtown, including the Southern Chiefs’ Organization’s construction on the former Bay building and True North Real Estate Development’s work on Portage Place mall. Both are expected to create hundreds of residences in the next few years.

“There is a lot of work happening to invest in our downtown,” Gillingham said. “Unfortunately, these changes don’t happen overnight.”

Two years is too long to wait, Peake said. She said her business is doing OK — it’s a draw for book lovers — but it is also drawing fewer walk-by customers and issues with shipping wares via Canada Post and to the United States.

Graham Avenue is still pockmarked with empty storefronts, she added.

“This building is always full and it’s always full because we have a good landlord,” Peake said. “There are other buildings that are always empty. You can deduce why that might be.

“The more businesses there are, the more likely an area is to be a destination.”

The Downtown Winnipeg BIZ previously promoted the decision to pull buses off Graham Avenue. On Tuesday, the BIZ’s chief executive changed course.

In a statement, Kate Fenske said Graham Avenue is an example of how decisions can have unintended consequences. The BIZ is working to “better understand” the impacts and identify solutions, she wrote.

Bringing buses back doesn’t seem to be an option, per the City of Winnipeg, Fenske noted.

Coun. Sherri Rollins (Fort Rouge-East Fort Garry) criticized the city’s executive policy committee, saying the councillors chose to delay a key plan prioritizing Graham Avenue’s reinvention (CentrePlan 2050) until 2027.

“You’re watching momentum die until 2027 — that wasn’t the deal,” Rollins said.

Allowing personal vehicles on the entirety of Graham Avenue may help, said Aaron Moore, a University of Winnipeg political science professor who studies urban planning.

“Aside from that, they could reroute one or two buses, but I’m not sure that’s going to achieve that much.”

gabrielle.piche@winnipegfreepress.com

Gabrielle Piché
Reporter

Gabrielle Piché reports on business for the Free Press. She interned at the Free Press and worked for its sister outlet, Canstar Community News, before entering the business beat in 2021. Read more about Gabrielle.

Every piece of reporting Gabrielle produces is reviewed by an editing team before it is posted online or published in print — part of the Free Press‘s tradition, since 1872, of producing reliable independent journalism. Read more about Free Press’s history and mandate, and learn how our newsroom operates.