TRUWinnipeg.org

Someone posted the original map from the original Wilson subway report onto Flickr. I was wondering how to get the map online years ago, as it’s not simple 8 1/2 x 11 size…

Jim

Goto this photo’s page on Flickr.com

http://www.flickr.com/photos/manitobamaps/3963327000/

The city is actually considering whether or not to tear down another 1880s building within a supposedly protected National Historic Site. The landowners, even in this real estate bubble, actually believe that there’s more revenue to be extracted from a flat gravel parking lot than this two-storey building.

C’mon, this is almost 2011—can this possibly even be a consideration? Where’s the uproar?

As a postscript, check out the photo in that CBC story. Yup, Google Street View.

From the blog of The Great Canadian Talk Show with Marty Gold

http://tgcts.blogspot.com/2010/10/gerbasi-buses-running-over-sidewalks.html

[November 22 2010] Jim’s post below…

It’s time for someone else to be Councillor for downtown  Winnipeg and the south end of Winnipeg. Jenny’s been a Councillor since 1998 and I really believe this is the election that she is going to LOSE! this one – because of the failed remaking of Assiniboine Avenue, where there was insufficient consultation(s) with the neighbourhood residents and businesses.

And Noooooo, the so-called Spirit Bus will not be re-routed so that some half-brained lazy ass lethargic senior won’t have to walk all the way to Broadway to catch her bus, putting out the schedule even further behind. Walk lady … or take a CAB!

I’m ready to see Jenny topple over politically. It will be a great show come October 27 2010.

Jim Jaworski

[Post edit] … The text below the link to the TGCTS should not be construced or interpreted as being from Marty Gold of TGCTS program. These were the words/thoughts of myself – Jim Jaworski. I apologize if construed otherwise.

I would like our fellow readers to do individual quiet meditation to create reality on two issues that will be decided on in the six months (end of February 2011), where to locate the rail depot for the Southwest Rapid Transit line and the second is which LRT vehicle manufacturer to go with.

The first issue is one that I have written about, regarding the future Portage Avenue line, which is a few years away still. When I suggested a possible location for that, I read a very few short days later that that location may be redeveloped. This time I will not put into print where I think the depot should go. Instead I will just meditate that the the EPC & Mayor will start discussions with its city planners on determining how  large a rail depot we will need – how many rail cars will serve this line several decades from now and making room for a rail car wash facility and administrative offices. This land can be found adjacent to the line and a possible land swap or just straight out expropriation must be done within the next 2 years if Winnipeg’s LRT is to be open by the summer of 2014.

The other issue is regarding the choice of LRT vehicle. When the City recently had talks with Bombardier about doing the project as a P3, the rail company said No, because two of their most recent contracts had some financial difficulty due to the recession in those cities.

That’s fine, and if Bombardier doesn’t want to, or cannot partner with the City on an LRT a P3 contract, then so be it. Maybe it was never meant to be. There are other LRT contractors in the marketplace that can and will provide Winnipeg with LRT rolling stock.

I have been to Central Park a few times in the past 5 years, including one or two Critical Mass bicycle rides.

It has the potential to be such a beautiful urban park, and decades ago the writers of the Downtown Winnipeg Plan (1969) said that its boundaries should be expanded and the park itself be upgraded.

…the extension of Central Park for at least one block to the south, as far as Ellice Avenue. These two elements are the major commitments in the public sector required by the plan, and if realized, would provide not only the physical framework within which other development would take place, but also the stimulus or catalytic action which would spark such other development.

A large central area park inevitably attracts high density development. This is demonstrated by the central parks in all of the great cities of the world; Winnipeg’s Central Park has also attracted such development. Already there are a number of major structures sited on its edges, and a new high-rise apartment block is about to be constructed there. Extension of the park southward would create the circumstances for further such projects. The most serious consideration should be given to extending Central Park as far southward as the lane immediately north of Portage Avenue. The illustrations of the plan in fact show such an extension, over the land now occupied by the Winnipeg Free Press.

There is no doubt that such a proposal will be considered prohibitively expensive, if not wildly irresponsible. Nevertheless, it should be borne in mind that all of the great cities of the world, and a large proportion of those of lesser rank, have very extensive and highly developed parks, and even who systems of parks, in or adjacent to their central area. Indeed, it is the presence and the quality of these open spaces which give these cities much of their charm and character. Winnipeg has no such central open space, apart from Central Park, and Memorial Park, both of which are small, not particularly well located, and not as successfully related to the rest of the Downtown as such open spaces should be.

The extension of Central Park as far south as the lane above Portage Avenue would create a major Downtown public open space, well related to central area activities, and an integral part of the proposed central area feature or “spine” lying between Carlton and Edmonton Streets. Such a space, apart from drawing to its borders new high density apartments, would serve as a major activity centre for the community. It could be used for large-scale outdoor assembly in the summer-time: for concerts, for rallies, for the numerous activities for which such spaces are used in other cities.

But perhaps the greatest potential for such a park lies in its winter use. It could become the focus of a great winter carnival to rival the Bonhomme Festival of Quebec City or the winter celebration of Soporo, Japan. Besides having the possibility of development into a major tourist attraction, it could provide for Winnipeggers themselves a colorful and exciting diversion to relieve the starkness and severity of the long winter. Ice sculptures, torchlight parades, snow events, outdoor dancing and barbecues, which might form part of such a festival, require large open spaces. An enlarged Central Park would serve this proposal admirably.

Now this is happening.

Before that happened though the park “housed” drug dealers and panhandlers, but not since part of it has been upgraded with an AstroTurf so that neighbourhood citizens can play soccer or other ball games like that.

In the past month I have not seen any panhandlers or drunks around during the day. Don’t know about the evening, but this article in the Free Press says that the AstroTurf field is used into the late hours of the evening, totally transforming the park from one of fear to one of safety and fun.

The other project that is transforming downtown Winnipeg is the new Plug-In Gallery that is going up at 460 Portage Avenue, at the former location of Army Navy Surplus store. Plug-In’s moving from their current location on McDermot Avenue.

With a Winnipeg subway, both would be easily accessible from the Memorial/University of Winnipeg hub station.

Check ‘em both out.

See also:

CTV Winnipeg story on Central Park makeover

Here at TRU Winnipeg, we’ve found that critiquing the local discussion on urban issues is rather like playing a never-ending game of whac-a-mole—each time we smack down the clueless assertions of one ostensible academic, instantly pops up another.

The most recent bit of disingenuous drivel comes from University of Winnipeg professor Christopher Leo, who claims “expertise” in urban planning, “inner city development,” and “urban issues.” As putative proof of such qualifications, Prof. Leo touts his accreditations from the University of Toronto. Funny, then, that this man—who was educated in a truly transit-oriented city—consistently and persistently self-promotes with a blog that reliably proffers on his purported subjects of expertise statements ranging from the outright false to the downright absurd.

Let’s take his latest: “Does rapid transit fight sprawl? Not necessarily so,” in which he claims that “it looks as if Winnipeg will finally get the first leg of a rapid transit system.” Really? If I can be forgiven for using so un-academic a source as Wikipedia, “A rapid transit, metro, subway, underground, or elevated railway system is an electric passenger railway in an urban area with high capacity and frequency, and which is grade separated from other traffic.” What it looks like to us is that Winnipeg is building a buses-only road. That’s not rapid transit, but don’t try telling that to Prof. Leo, to whom I’ve tried to make clear the difference each time he spams my personal email with his latest self-indulgent blog update. In true 2+2=5 fashion, he continues to misuse the term “rapid transit” presumably in a belief that if one wills something to be true, so it becomes. Nice try, Chris.

Bad enough it would be if this were the only whopper to emanate from his keyboard into the blogosphere, but Prof. Leo won’t stop there. Incredibly, he claims, “[t]he system’s most significant long-term benefit has been largely neglected in discussions leading to the decision to develop rapid transit [sic]….” What? How? Oh, he says, it “paves the way for new kinds of neighbourhoods that will be less dependent on automobiles around the clock, not just on the daily commute. That’s because the existence of the transit line creates new incentives for the development of such neighbourhoods.”

Is this a joke? Just follow the road (for buses only, running parallel to Pembina Highway leading to well outside of the city grid) and in just a few years’ time you’ll find, where today there’s only farmland, a veritable high-density utopia of walkability! To illustrate his point, Prof. Leo provides a picture of a postmodern, New Urbanist development in suburban Portland, OR, The Crossings at Gresham Station, that appears to be a little slice of Europe right here in North America! What Prof. Leo doesn’t mention is that, Gresham, OR is at the terminus of a light rail line that’s part of Portland’s 85km LRT system. What’s that in the foreground, Chris? It’s not a bus, and if you think that some bus-only road is going to replicate that kind of “transit-oriented development” you must’ve done a lot of LSD at U of T.

Prof. Leo’s academic hallucinations don’t end there. He envisions this bus-only road “opens up possibilities for a more urban style of development, a market that is generally under-served in Winnipeg: A denser neighbourhood consisting of a mix of homes, apartments, local shopping and public facilities, all within walking distance of the transit stop.” It’s difficult to believe that someone so deluded is actually employed as an instructor at an institution of higher learning.

Chris, do you even live in Winnipeg? We’re talking the actual city of Winnipeg as per the pre-1972 boundaries. There are in existence today a number of pre-1920 neighbourhoods consisting of tightly-packed two-and-a-half-storey houses, three-storey walkup apartment buildings, and there even remains a smattering of mixed-use storefront buildings that could comprise local shopping. Many, at least on the residential side, offer a sufficient density to be considered walkable, even as they suffer from a lack of commercial amenities for want of a decent transit service that would make their compactness advantageous vis-à-vis the spaciousness of suburbia. This explains their being undervalued, and it also explains why TRU Winnipeg has, for the past half decade, been advocating tirelessly for the implementation of the Norman D. Wilson subway plan that would regenerate old neighborhoods, adding value and the attendant densities that come with a boom in infill development.

Unfortunately—but unsurprisingly for a tired hack who is in fact a closet sprawl apologist—Prof. Leo uses his position to sabotage the would-be renaissance by lending his voice to the perpetuation of myth and the defense of the indefensible when he writes of this miraculous bus-only road, “Appropriately for a blue-collar town with a deeply-rooted culture of caution and frugality, it will be a low-budget diesel bus system, rather than a more expensive, classier and more environmentally friendly rail system.”

Winnipeg might be “blue collar” but we’re hardly third world. Buying into a non-solution to a longstanding problem—Winnipeg’s transition from a micro Chicago to a mini Detroit—only compounds the issue. What’s more, Prof. Leo is ignoring Winnipeg’s pioneering legacy in the realm of electric rail that began with the 1891 introduction of streetcars that by the 1930s would grow into a network with some 200km of lines.

With a chorus of hackademics, politicos, and “business improvement” drones continually popping up to spout ignorant balderdash supporting a failed status quo under a deceptive cloak of progressive urbanism, we TRU urbanists are obliged to be indefatigable in swinging our rhetorical hammer at such sprawl-apologist moles embedded within the garden of New Urbanist advocacy.

-DALLAS HANSEN

Chickens for WinnipEGGers, an advocacy group led by St. Boniface resident Darby Jones, had been seeking a reconsideration of a bylaw banning the farm animals from city property. And why not? Urban agriculture is on the rise, with more civilized Midwestern cities such as Minneapolis and Chicago permitting an unlimited number of hens so long as they’re penned.

Concerns about the quality of factory-farm eggs and an increasing interest in self-sufficiency are driving this growing trend toward backyard chickens, but the City’s recent refusal to consider the idea demonstrates that, once again, Winnipeg is decidedly behind the times.

Not only is this arbitrary ban—founded upon myth and falsehood—an egregious violation of individual property rights, it’s a nonsensical rejection of the very industry on which this city was founded and which continues to be a mainstay of our economy: yes, agriculture.

With demand for locally grown, organically raised food on the rise, the city will, sooner or later, have to rescind its prohibition on urban hen-raising. Think there’s any chance Winnipeg—for once—will be ahead of the curve? Don’t bet the farm on it.

-Dallas Hansen

An example of what can be done to make living in the big city more enjoyable, a subway art program. This one is in :

More photos…

Robert Galston, The Rise and Sprawl

[Editor's note:Where the hell is Heritage Winnipeg? Let Sport Manitoba know how you feel about their disregard for our city's history by phoning them at (204) 925-5907.]

Point Douglas is going to look great in two years…

…from my rearview mirror. I can’t wait to move out and leave the renewal to the professionals.

Sport Manitoba is getting their wish, and will make the neighborhood north of the Manitoba Museum a little more boring, dangerous, and windswept. The City of Winnipeg has issued a demolition permit for them for the old portion of the Smart Bag Building on Alexander Avenue. All without a public hearing (not even one announced 30 hours before it begins), too. Instead, permission to demolish was granted in principle a year ago, when the original demolition request was withdrawn until Sport Manitoba could find the money to go ahead with the demolition.

On command, fire officials have also declared the structure unsafe, which is a lie.

Dating back to 1884, it is one of the oldest warehouses in the Exchange District. Not that it matters to any of the philistines involved in this farce.

Robert Galston, The Rise and Sprawl

Manitoba is, according to Prof. Allen Mills’s piece in the Free Press today, under “soft despotism,” and governed by bureaucracy.

I should know: I live in North Point Douglas. Here, as in the North End (where between Selkirk and Redwood, conditions are becoming so deplorable that they would make villages in the third-world blush with embarrassment), there is no representation at either the Municipal and Provincial level. This is because the Councillor and MLA for the area, Harry Lazarenko and George Hickes, are both speakers of their respective government assemblies. And also because they both happen to be disconnected dinosaurs.

Of course, Manitoba’s despotism isn’t so soft everywhere, as anyone would quickly learn if they chose to engage in trade of bottles of scotch, automobile insurance, or hydroelectricity, or dared to set their own price on cheese and milk. Or, if their sanctioned, more “socially responsible” activities got in the way of the plans of the Province and their subsidiary City of Winnipeg, such as owning property.

This is happening to Mike Gobiel , who last week told the Free Press he heard from PCL Construction that he was losing the building that he moved his hobby shop business into recently, to make way for a curve to the northeast in Waterfront Drive at Higgins. (This is to make way for the new span which will rise alongside the existing Disraeli, but also to prepare for the enhanced Higgins Avenue and Louise Bridge project later in the decade. Pleasant waterfront roadway to commuter artery in less than 20 years. Way to go, Winnipeg.)

Anyway, the City eventually did get around to contacting Mr. Gobiel about the expropriation of his property–by email. And this only some three months after twice saying he could could go ahead and renovate the place, go ahead and occupy it, because the building would not be affected.

As Mr. Gobiel wrote in a letter sent April 1: “We bought this building in Dec 2009 and got occupancy. When we did our due diligence in November I was told 120 Higgins [Gobiel's business] was not affected at all by this Disraeli project by city planning so we proceeded to buy and was allowed to start renovations inside. We applied for occupancy in December 09 and again asked about the bridge and was again told no worries not affected and was given occupancy on the 24th of Dec 09.

The offer the city has made in the letter we finally had emailed to us [is] peanuts to what we invested.”

Well, whaddaya gonna do? Who is John Galt, right? It’s not like the rest of us have businesses on Higgins Avenue or bought houses in Elmwood.

But for those who are concious enough, there are two open houses hosted by the City and Plenary Road consortium next week, one on Tuesday, April 13, 2010 at Bronx Park Community Centre (131 Chelsea Pl.), 4 – 7 p.m. The second is Wednesday, April 14, 2010 at Norquay Community Centre (65 Granville St.), 4 – 7 p.m.

These “Information Open Houses” are billed as having detailed information on “one of Winnipeg’s most attractive and innovative engineering projects.” Representitives from the City and Plenary will be on hand to offer spin and calmly direct your concerns to computer-generated pictures of cyclists and flowers.

I’ve been to about five or six City open houses in my life, but that’s enough to tell me they are a joke: a pointless excerise in manipulation; not a consultation, just a con.

And that’s exactly why people need to go.