Exchange District 'investment strategy' calls for 15,000 more residents over 20 years
Some businesses in downtown neighbourhood say they'd like to see similar focus on public safety
A long-term development strategy for Winnipeg's Exchange District calls for public and private investments that will increase the population of the downtown neighbourhood and several adjacent areas by 15,000 people over 20 years.
The Exchange District Community Investment Strategy, published Wednesday by the neighbourhood's Business Improvement Zone, seeks to increase the population of the area from about 4,000 people right now to up to 25,000 people by the 2040s.
To make this happen, the strategy calls for residential intensification, the improvement of existing streetscapes and the construction of new amenities such as a cantilevered pedestrian bridge along the CN Mainline railway bridge over the Red River to St. Boniface.
Some of projects in the strategy are already in the works, such as CentreVenture's planned redevelopment of the former Public Safety Building site, which the downtown development agency calls the Market Lands.
Other projects are aspirational. The strategy calls on the city to reimagine Albert Street and the eastern section of Alexander Avenue as shared thoroughfares for vehicles and pedestrians, redevelop three blocks of King Street within Chinatown and build a signature-look rapid transit station at the corner of Market Avenue and Main Street.
The strategy also calls for the expansion of the footprint for Exchange District festivals from the existing Old Market Square into an "arts festival campus" running from Chinatown to the new park outside Burton Cummings Theatre.
According to the strategy, all this investment would bring new residents to the Exchange District who would generate $9.3 million of new property-tax revenue for the city every year. The document does not, however, identify how much public and private investment would be required to make this happen.
David Pensato, executive director of the Exchange District BIZ, said the document is a strategy, not a plan.
"What this really does is confidently show the direction is good and these types of revenue projections are good. This then needs to come together into a series of smaller, specific plans," he said following a presentation of the strategy Wednesday at the Manitoba Architects Association.
Reaction to the strategy was mixed among some owners of Exchange District businesses.
Jon Thiessen, the owner of U.N. Luggage on McDermot Avenue, said he appreciates the emphasis on future population growth but would like to see the BIZ focus more right now on public safety.
"I think it is good to have a vision," said Thiessen, whose business has operated in the Exchange in some form since the 1940s.
"I would love, though, for that amount of concentration and that amount of effort be put into issues that are pressing now, before the neighbourhood slips backward."
Brian Scharfstein, who owns Canadian Footwear on Adelaide Street, was even more concerned the BIZ is not sufficiently focused on public safety.
"I think it's a big-picture, long-term, pie-in-the-sky kind of plan," said Scharfstein, whose business near the Exchange dates back to the 1930s.
He said some customers and staff are afraid to come to his Adelaide store and that he is investing in downtown real estate but not more retail operations in the centre of the city.
"My numbers are growing in my other stores around Winnipeg. Downtown continues to decline because we're doing nothing to build the perception of a safe downtown for both our employees and the people coming downtown."
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