Reopen Portage and Main? Public forum goes tonight
Portage and Main closed to pedestrians 37 years ago this month, when underground concourse opened
The man who helped transform New York City's Times Square into a pedestrian plaza is in Winnipeg tonight to weigh in on reopening Portage and Main to pedestrians.
The Downtown Winnipeg BIZ is hosting a public forum with Tim Tompkins, president and CEO of the Times Square Alliance, to discuss the idea of taking down the walls around the city's iconic intersection.
The free forum with Tompkins will take place 5:30-7:30 p.m. at the Fairmont Winnipeg.
"We went through a similar process of talking about what's the right balance for a place that's kind of a hub of the city. And from a transportation point of view, from an identity and historical perspective, my understanding is that Portage and Main is a really important iconic destination, and it's also the centre of the hub of a lot of different neighbourhoods," he said.
"For a place that is the hub of the city, how do you find the right balance between keeping traffic flowing, between creating a great pedestrian environment that's going to help all the businesses, and also help make this an icon for the city that it's always been? And those are some of the same issues we faced in Times Square."
Once a bustling, lively corner, pedestrians were banned from crossing at Portage and Main in the 1970s. The city signed a 50-year agreement in 1976 with private developers to create Winnipeg Square, a concourse and shopping mall underneath the intersection.
The concourse officially opened Feb. 24, 1979.
Before that day and ever since, there have been Winnipeggers calling for the intersection to be reopened. During his 2014 election campaign, Mayor Brian Bowman called Portage and Main a symbol of civic pride and vowed to open it to foot traffic by 2019 if elected.
Tompkins said the solution in the case of Times Square was "a very radical one" — closing down one of the streets in the area.
"I don't think anybody's proposing that here; I'm certainly not in a position where I'm proposing anything specific for Winnipeg," he said.
Earlier in the day, Tompkins met with City of Winnipeg directors, managers and planners "about the collaborative process undertaken by the Times Square Alliance in working with the public and private sector, changing obstacles into opportunities for a better, more vibrant community," the Downtown Winnipeg BIZ says on its Imagine Portage & Main website.
He also met with Portage and Main property owners to discuss how turning the intersection into a public space can lead to increased property value. Property managers in Times Square "were fine with slowing down traffic to accommodate pedestrians as long as it translated into greater sales … which it has," the BIZ website says.