Construction has begun on a residential and cultural project in Winnipeg’s Exchange District.
Work is underway on the Market Lands, where the Public Safety Building (PSB) used to be before police and prisoners moved to the former post office on Graham Avenue downtown.
Plans for the Market Lands include a nine-story tower with 95 residential units, 48 of which will charge income-based rents.
“The market-rate and income-based rental units will all have the same design and will be spread throughout the building,” said Jeremy Read, CEO of the University of Winnipeg Community Renewal Corporation 2.0 (UWCRC 2.0), one of the project’s developers.
The building will also house a creative center that will house four local arts organizations.
“It will be Canada’s first mid-rise building to meet the Canada Green Building Council’s Zero Carbon Building design standard,” said Read.
The Market Lands will also feature a food center with food from small local producers.
The project is scheduled to be completed in 2026.
The $54 million project is being developed as a partnership between UWCRC 2.0 and the Centre Venture Development Corporation (CVDC).
UWCRC 2.0 and CVDC say Market Lands will not only create high-quality, affordable housing, but will also contribute to the revitalization of the area.
The project is part of a long-term strategy to increase the population of the Exchange District.
The Community Investment Strategy for the Exchange District, released in late 2023, aims to increase the area’s population from about 4,000 people today to 25,000 people by the 2040s.
To achieve this, the strategy calls for increased residential density, improved existing streetscapes and the construction of new facilities, such as a pedestrian bridge over the nearby Red River to the eastern suburb of St. Boniface.
Market Lands is already in the works, but other aspects of the strategy are still in the “wouldn’t that be nice” phase.
For example, the strategy calls for building a rapid transit station on Main Street (Winnipeg has no rapid transit system), redeveloping a three-block section of Chinatown, and creating an “arts and festivals” campus in the Exchange District.
Whatever form the plans take, the area certainly needs an encouraging boost. The stretch of Main Street immediately north of Portage Avenue has been the site of several public urban renewal projects since the mid-1960s.
They all individually and gradually brought about improvements in the district, but none of them changed the rules of the game.
“Downtown Winnipeg has some of the highest poverty and crime rates in Canada,” said Sel Burrows, a longtime social activist who knows the area well.
Aaron Moore, a professor of political science at the University of Winnipeg (U of W), said the Market Lands would bring new and young blood to the area.
“It fills one of the development gaps in the downtown area,” Moore said. “Previous developments like the Manitoba Theatre Centre, the Manitoba Museum and the Planetarium tried to bring people from the suburbs into the city, but developments like this don’t create a vibrant downtown area. You need people living and working in the area.”
Jino Distasio, a professor of urban geography at the University of Washington, said the Market Lands would provide a good use of an underused property.
“There are too many empty lots and parking spaces in the area,” Distasio said. “There is a fragmented collection of different building lots that needs something to tie it all together.”
Winnipeg historian Christian Cassidy said Market Lands’ location near city hall and the Red River College Polytechnic campus, which is crowded during the day, bodes well for its success.
“Its location on the edge of the Exchange District and the fact that a lot of people live here should also ensure that it is used in the evenings and on weekends,” he said. “As for the wider impact, I’m always skeptical when people say that a particular development will attract new private investment to revitalize the area around it.”
The PSB, on whose site Market Lands is being built, was demolished in 2020.
Designed by local architect Les Stechesen, the PSB was a notable example of brutalism.
Cindy Tugwell, executive director of Heritage Winnipeg, called the demolition of the PSB “a crime.”
“It was a beautiful building and I learned to appreciate it,” Tugwell said.
“It was well built and had a cladding of Tyndall stone from a local quarry. It could have been repurposed and preserved for future generations to appreciate. It would have stood the test of time.”
