Yet another parking lot fiasco for city

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On Feb. 6, I spent eight hours, beginning at 9:30 a.m., attending a Zoom meeting with Winnipeg’s property and development subcommittee, waiting to comment on actions the city might take to save the Lemay Forest.

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Opinion

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 11/02/2025 (249 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

On Feb. 6, I spent eight hours, beginning at 9:30 a.m., attending a Zoom meeting with Winnipeg’s property and development subcommittee, waiting to comment on actions the city might take to save the Lemay Forest.

Instead, I found myself listening to an interminable debate over an infill development which, in the end, lasted 10 full hours.

I finally gave up and clocked out at 5:30 p.m. to start dinner and was later informed that my name was finally called at 9 p.m.

MIKE DEAL / FREE PRESS
                                The Granite Curling Club is at the epicentre of another Winnipeg battle between housing and parking lots.

MIKE DEAL / FREE PRESS

The Granite Curling Club is at the epicentre of another Winnipeg battle between housing and parking lots.

Now, the fact there were people at that committee meeting who had taken an unpaid day off work to speak about the Lemay Forest was bad enough. What really got my knickers in a knot was the single subject that ate up 10 hours of the meeting.

I am referring, of course, to the debate that occurred over a rezoning request made to facilitate the development of an apartment block next to the Granite Curling Club. A development which would be built, not by knocking down riverside greenspace and trees, or any trees at all, because it will be constructed — hallelujah! — on the footprint of an existing parking lot.

Championed by the University of Winnipeg’s Community Renewal Corporation and Number TEN Architectural Group, the proposed building will be virtually net zero in its operation, because solar panels installed on the structure will allow it to produce its own energy.

Even better, the building will provide both affordable and deeply affordable housing. More than 50 per cent of the units will be rented either at a cost below the CMHC’s median rental rate, or better still at a “rent geared-to-income,” rate.

Which means if you’re on minimum wage, social assistance or a limited pension, you could actually afford to secure a home there.

In fact this building ticks almost every box for sustainable, equitable and environmentally sound housing.

So why is its construction being contested? Well surprise, surprise — it’s all about a parking lot. One that the city, not the curling club, owns.

Now as those of you who read the Free Press know, I am not a fan of the fact that 40 per cent of downtown is relegated to parking lots. To me, 32,000 parking spaces in a downtown area that’s just three square kilometers is patently absurd.

What it says is that parked cars are more important than people and the environment.

So why is the curling club executive opposing the elimination of one parking lot to make way for affordable housing? Well, according to the executive it’s because a reduction in on-site parking would impact the club’s sustainability.

It’s interesting how the word “sustainability” can be twisted around to justify the most unusual things. Does sustainability equate to convenience, privilege and drivers’ rights to parking? Is it too much to ask of a curler to walk a block from on-street parking, which is ample in this area?

After all, curlers are presumably physically fit if they’re getting down in the hack to throw, then sweep, those rocks. And even if they are unable to walk a block or two, the club still has 15 parking stalls that could be designated for visitors with mobility issues.

Furthermore, the curling club is right across the street from what may be the biggest parking lot in downtown Winnipeg — the Canada Life lot, which is basically empty from 6 p.m. to 8 a.m. every single day plus Saturday and Sunday. Surely this wealthy insurance company would allow curlers to leave their parked cars in that vastly empty nighttime lot.

But instead of listening carefully to the testimony of the 70 club members who support rezoning for the development, two councillors — Jason Schreyer and Russ Wyatt — decided to pander, for hours, to the club’s pro-parking executive.

The fact that they forgot that this was a meeting to vote, not on a development plan, but on rezoning the area for residential use, and were not reminded of that fact by their chair, Evan Duncan, let loose a procedural nightmare. Which allowed councillors to free associate, tossing around ill conceived “ideas” about how to keep the parking lot-obsessed club executive happy.

By the time Wyatt suggested felling riverside trees to make way for yet another parking lot to replace the one being developed into housing, I was apoplectic.

Thank God for the civil servants at the meeting who pointed out that his “idea” would contravene city policies.

Bottom line?

If I sometimes wonder why this city can’t get its act together to save the Lemay, a forest of some 19,000 riverside trees, and endorse environmentally sound infill, this parking lot fiasco of a meeting certainly confirmed my worst suspicions.

Erna Buffie is a writer and environmental activist. Read more @ https://www.ernabuffie.com/

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