Portage Place pitch seeks to raise downtown for its residents By: Dan Lett Posted: 7:00 PM CDT Friday, May. 12, 2023

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 12/05/2023 (891 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

If he’s said it once, Mark Chipman has said it a thousand times.

The co-owner of the Winnipeg Jets and downtown arena in which the NHL team resides has always maintained that buildings, on their own, will never fix all of the problems that exist in the core of the city.

They can make a positive contribution, move the downtown closer to a critical mass of density and activity, but they are not a cure-all, magic bullet or even a catalyst.

So, it was hardly surprising Chipman was once again stressing that message Friday, when he unveiled his boldest and riskiest downtown gesture to date: a $500-million reimagining of Portage Place mall into a multi-use development the likes of which this city has never seen.

The new-and-improved Portage Place — which will undoubtedly undergo some sort of renaming at some point in the future — would be anchored by a new $300-million health-care tower offering walk-in and primary care clinics, renal dialysis centre and rapid access to addictions medicine facility.

There are also plans to establish a new and improved Pan Am Centre for Advanced Musculoskeletal Medicine, which would (if it comes to fruition) replace the existing Pan Am Clinic (75 Poseidon Bay).

The rest of the building is to be a mash-up of services and businesses: the downtown branch of the YMCA-YWCA would remain, as would Prairie Theatre Exchange; there would be commercial office space; a large-footprint grocery store and new residential tower (with some units dedicated to low-income tenants); indoor and outdoor community meeting places, including youth drop-in centres; and a dash of retail and food services.

It’s a unique and creative combination of features, Chipman said, that could really push the downtown closer to what everyone wants it to be.

“I’ve been making this point for 22 years… Buildings don’t in and of themselves make downtowns work.”–Mark Chipman

However, he insisted, it’s still not a magic bullet.

“I’ve been making this point for 22 years,” Chipman said over the din of 100 or so people gathered for the announcement in the Edmonton Street atrium at Portage Place. “Buildings don’t in and of themselves make downtowns work.”

Even with that caution, there are a lot of reasons to be intrigued, even encouraged, by this project.

It’s going to be 100 per cent privately financed by True North Sports and Entertainment Ltd. (Chipman is its board chairman), and it’s going help transform the way pedestrian and vehicular traffic navigate that portion of downtown.

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The biggest reason to have some hope is, finally, we are talking about a development that is not trying to serve as a beacon to attract people downtown from their homes in the suburbs. This is a development that largely seeks to serve the people already downtown.

It’s also a project seeking to preserve an existing physical asset; not add a new one.

These are no small distinctions.

In the past, Winnipeg adopted the approach favoured by large urban centres all over North America: build enormous retail, cultural or sports attractions or amenities that would restore visitors to downtown and, in the process, make it a safer and more functional neighbourhood.

Through painful trial and error, many discovered that strategy simply did not work. All over the continent, grand downtown retail centres that were once heralded as saviours are being repurposed or reduced to rubble and redeveloped.

Jim Ludlow, president of True North Real Estate Development, a subsidiary of the company that owns the Jets and Canada Life Centre and is the developer of the Portage Place do-over, acknowledged there are cities where big downtown retail centres do work.

The Eaton Centre in Toronto and Pacific Centre in Vancouver, for example, where residential density is more than sufficient to sustain them.

In the rest of the country, the experience has been quite different, Ludlow noted.

While a new-and-improved Portage Place won’t solve all of the problems of downtown, it could move it one step closer to a solution.

Last fall, a private company bought the largely empty Hamilton City Centre (a downtown retail hub once anchored by the now-defunct Eaton’s chain), razed the building and is in the process of constructing three new residential towers.

The Portage Place redevelopment will be markedly different, and considerably more complex, than the Hamilton example.

Rather than single-use (such as residential), it will be completely multi-use. Most importantly, Portage Place (or whatever it will be called) will no longer be a retail shopping mall anvil hanging around the neck of the city’s core.

The critics who raised concerns when it was revealed earlier this year True North had obtained an option to purchase the mostly empty mall should have reason now to stand back and take in this proposal for all of its glorious and somewhat unexpected complexity.

It’s not a perfect solution, and there are strong signals the final product may well be much different than what we saw this week.

However, even with all those caveats, it’s worth a very long, hard look.

All with the knowledge while a new-and-improved Portage Place won’t solve all of the problems of downtown, it could move it one step closer to a solution.

dan.lett@winnipegfreepress.com

Dan Lett
Columnist

Dan Lett is a columnist for the Free Press, providing opinion and commentary on politics in Winnipeg and beyond. Born and raised in Toronto, Dan joined the Free Press in 1986.  Read more about Dan.

Dan’s columns are built on facts and reactions, but offer his personal views through arguments and analysis. The Free Press’ editing team reviews Dan’s columns before they are posted online or published in print — part of the our tradition, since 1872, of producing reliable independent journalism. Read more about Free Press’s history and mandate, and learn how our newsroom operates.