Winnipeggers await cleanup of Windsor Hotel rubble

Murray Stenlund had always worried the Windsor Hotel would catch fire one day.

So on Wednesday, when Stenlund saw thick plumes of smoke engulf the vacant 120-year-old building in Winnipeg's downtown, he knew the inevitable had finally happened.

"We knew what was going to happen there eventually," he told CBC on Thursday, in front of the pile of rubble that was once the Windsor Hotel.

He said he would walk by the hotel nearly every day, worrying the vacant structure, like many others in the city, would eventually catch fire.

"It's going to be a long process here, I think, cleaning this up, and planning what's going to be here in the future," said Stenlund.

Fire crews responded to a report of a fire at the hotel on Garry Street near St. Mary Avenue at about 10:50 a.m. Wednesday. They attacked the fire as the building started to collapse.

By Wednesday evening, after an emergency demolition order was issued, the hotel was reduced to a pile of wood, brick and dust.

Winnipeggers are now left wondering how long it will take to clean it up, with some hoping the city does more to deal with vacant buildings' owners, or speed up the cleanup process when those buildings get demolished.

Cindy Tugwell, executive director of Heritage Winnipeg, said the city should get tougher with people who own vacant buildings and create a task force that keeps track of those buildings in Winnipeg.

"I think that you should have the right to own a property, a private property, but you also should have a moral obligation to keep it occupied, maintained, so it becomes a vibrant part of downtown," Tugwell said.

She said the number of vacant buildings Winnipeg has lost recently is "alarming," and she wasn't surprised to see the Windsor Hotel join that list.

"What it's doing is creating more urban blight, more dead spaces, more dead zones, there's nowhere to go if you're walking around," Tugwell said, adding that in 2010, she advocated to have the hotel designated as a heritage building, but the city opted not to.

'We all don't want to see rubble sitting there'

While it's the owners' responsibility to clean up the Windsor Hotel rubble, a city councillor says if that doesn't happen, the city should be able to do something about it.

"We really have to get on board at looking at, OK, if they're not going to do it, the city is going to have to come up with the funds, and the ability to get started on getting rid of this rubble," Daniel McIntyre Coun. Cindy Gilroy told CBC on Thursday.

Gilroy brought up the idea in a motion to city council last April, saying the city should be able to remove the debris and add the costs to the owner's property tax bill.

"We all don't want to see rubble sitting there for years and years and years. This is an example of what the city needs to do and get moving on in terms of finding a mechanism in order to get rid of this rubble faster," she said.

The Windsor Hotel was sold in March to a corporation called Garry 187 Enterprises Limited for $1, before it was shut down under a provincial health order.

The corporation is owned by two Winnipeg businessmen, Sabino Tummillo and John Garcea.

CBC News has reached out to both men for comment.

The cause of the fire has not yet been determined.