Yes, open Portage and Main. No, don’t close the concourse

Opinion

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 20/03/2024 (565 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

The numbers don’t add up. Neither does the fact that not a single stakeholder in the concourse at Portage and Main has been consulted regarding the mayor’s decision to close it. No one — not property owners around Portage and Main, not the arts community, not the public, has been asked if they agree.

I have a vested interest: my husband’s massive sculptured concrete wall. All 415, important Western Canadian contemporary artwork, feet worth of it will very likely be buried if the mayor has his way.

Put that aside; let’s talk facts.

First, that bogeyman $73-million figure to repair the concourse. The mayor’s own planning department clearly had no idea the mayor was even considering closing it, was obviously caught completely off guard by the mayor’s desire to know what it would cost to close it, and scrambled to come up with an embarrassingly wild-eyed estimate of $20 to $50 million. Even that ludicrous ballpark is “subject to further study.”

In non-planning department-speak, this means “oh my God a bunch of money and probably, maybe, more, but we don’t know because we haven’t had time to properly run any numbers.”

Immediately following those fuzzy numbers, the department said exactly this: “Given the information now available on the costs of this work, it would be prudent to re-engage with the property owners to confirm their willingness to proceed with such an agreement (they mentioned earlier in the report that property owners should be consulted on cost-sharing for the entire remediation project) in order to extend the life of the concourse.”

Note: “re-engage” and “to confirm their willingness” tells me property owners have been willing to pony up.

A little math now: up to $50 million, likely more, to close the concourse, $73 million to repair it. Maybe $23 million gets saved. If, as the mayor suggested after some outcry (mostly from this furious widow), somebody figures out how the artwork could be moved elsewhere, what would that cost? Carve out 415 feet of 12-foot-tall concrete pieces, hoist them up, cart them off someplace, and … well, I’m no engineer, but that sounds like a huge multi-million dollar feat to try to pull off. The whole close the concourse/move the art thing, would very likely match or even exceed the cost of repairs.

So you may as well just fix the damn thing and keep it open. Nobody’s saying you can’t also just put pedestrian crosswalks up on top. It is not an either/or situation at all.

In a distracting sidebar, the mayor earnestly explained last week the city loses a million a year to run the concourse. Property owners could kick in $250,000 each from petty cash to cover that picayune loss. For comparison, it costs the city $1.6 million a year for graffiti removal.

Now, about consultations. There have been none. The mayor told the property owners he would be making his announcement.

That’s it. The arts community wasn’t consulted, possibly partly because, as I discovered, it didn’t seem to occur to anyone, not the mayor or any councillors, that there is — duh — a big hunk of art down there. One councillor cared enough to ask on my behalf, was there a report he could see on moving the art? No. There is not one. Nobody thought about it. Neither the 87-page full consultants’ report on this, or the city’s own executive summary even dreamed the concourse might be closed.

But the mayor asked the planning department on Jan. 18 for that wild-eyed decommissioning ballpark.

Both the full report and the city’ own public service stressed consultation with the property owners to cost-share the bill. The public service report filed with the standing committee on property and development (dated March 7) formally recommended “that the Public Service be directed to engage with the property owners at the four corners regarding a cost-sharing agreement for the renewal of the concourse (including the interior, the membrane, the stairwells and proposed elevators, and that the proper officers of the city do all things necessary to implement the intent of the foregoing.” The full consultants report urged exactly the same thing.

It was fully expected the property owners would be consulted to hash over who might kick in how much money to get this done. That has not happened.

The mayor’s announcement happened on March 1. Six days before the public service’s recommendation was filed with the planning and property committee.

One might also assume the public might be consulted. One would be wrong. A local radio station (ironically, our hockey all day, all the time chat station) ran a poll the other day. A hair under 70 per cent of poll respondents voted no to closing the concourse. That may be the only public feedback city council gets.

The property owners have not been brought into any discussions at all. The public, except for one little radio station poll, has not been asked what it thinks. The arts community is quietly gobsmacked by the gall of a mayor who would happily bury a massive, iconic piece of Western Canadian contemporary art — quietly because they dare not bite the political hands that feed their grants and funding (although, sidebar again, the mayor pulled the paltry $500,000 a year the Winnipeg Arts Council used to get to fund public art. He’s giving it to corporations to do what they will with it).

Draw your own conclusions. I know I’ve got mine.

Judy Waytiuk’s vested interest is in seeing the preservation of a nationally-known, iconic piece of Canadian contemporary art. She’s also a pedestrian old enough to remember hating the winter crossing at Portage and Main.