The changing nature of St. Mary’s Road

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 23/06/2019 (2619 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

The opening of the new Rusa K. Dessert Cafe at the southeast corner of Fermor Avenue and St. Mary’s Road, demonstrates the continuing growth and evolution of St. Mary’s into a community main street with a unique character.

Its arrival highlights the development of a “house business corridor” — a cluster of neighbourhood, non-destination businesses.

St. Mary’s Road began its history as a Red River cart trail in a largely agricultural community. It was and would have been one of the primary “lived on” streets, with frontage for many river lots, farms, and other agricultural settlement.

Over time it became a collector road for the community and eventually the main artery from St. Vital into Winnipeg.

This gradual growth, both north to south, as well as up and in against itself, has made for a remarkably diverse street. Three elements in particular are noteworthy.

First, along its length, there are three main urban “nodes” of walk-up, street front commercial activity.

• Between Carriere Avenue St Anne’s Road sits the historic ‘downtown’ of Old St, Vital, anchored by the firehall to the south and Woodcock Cycle to the north, featuring a streetscape courtesy of the Old St. Vital BIZ;

• The brief but charming Varennes/Elm Park cluster anchored by Ducharme Agencies;

• The mid-neighbourhood retail block centred on St. Vital Rd is the southern reach of traditional-style, pedestrian-oriented urban planning and land use.

Many single family homes and residential buildings face St. Mary’s Road. One property at a time, however, this use is disappearing from what has become one of Winnipeg’s major traffic arteries, connecting much of the southeast to the core.

But what is becoming of these properties, once the single, detached residential lot is no more?

Depending on the segment, we are seeing two very different variety of commercial mixed use.

We have seen several new, low-rise (three to four-storey) buildings arrive in the last four years in the Norberry/St. George corridor. These are sometimes purely residential and sometimes mixed-use buildings, with residential units above and commercial/retail below. These structures, through modern in architectural style and appearance, bear much resemblance to the traditional urban form found in previous decades along St. Mary’s. Each one of these buildings lengthens the footprint of St. Mary’s Road’s urban nodes.

The third and perhaps most unique feature of St. Mary’s, is the remarkable density of converted residential businesses. Though it’s not uncommon for a well-maintained house along a busy road to find a second life as a commercial property, what’s special is the consistent and recurring rows of them along many portions of the street. Some segments have been nearly completely converted to an uninterrupted row of such buildings.

Taken together, the new and old many faces of St. Mary’s Rd are contributing to a quaint, green, and picturesque transmission of its past to its future.

Ryan Palmquist is a community correspondent for St. Vital.