KELE SCHRECKENBACH

https://www.winnipegfreepress.com/opinion/analysis/2026/06/25/closing-corydon-to-traffic-will-be-good-for-business

LAST week, the City of Winnipeg and Corydon Avenue BIZ announced that a stretch of Corydon Avenue between Daly and Lilac streets will be closed to car traffic on Sundays from July 5 through Sept. 6, the day before Labour Day.

This is a great move for the city. However, one concern brought up when people hear about such initiatives is “What about the businesses? Won’t they suffer from reduced visits and lose revenue because people are unable to reach them by car?”

The short answer to this question is “no.” Businesses not only do not go under, they usually end up doing better than before the initiative was announced. I would like to present two case studies to prove this: Copenhagen, in Denmark, and Groningen, in the Netherlands.

In 1962, Copenhagen closed the Strøget, an area of shops in the city centre, to drivers and car traffic. Business owners were very unhappy, thinking they would lose lots of customers. It got so bad that the man who proposed the project, Alfred Wassard, the lead city planner of Copenhagen at the time, got death threats and had to travel with bodyguards.

What was the result of the pedestrianization? The shops are still there and in fact doing better than ever. Huge brands such as Hermes, Gucci and Louis Vuitton have opened stores there, which points to how much business is done. The street is also a popular tourist attraction in and of itself.

Groningen started its pedestrianization in 1977; in its case, it blocked cars from the entire city centre. While the reactions were thankfully less extreme (no death threats), people were still unhappy. Drivers complained, and businesses worried about losing customers, especially those from out of town.

As with Copenhagen, Groningen went ahead with its plan. After about four years, a study measured the effects of the blocking of cars. It found, as in Copenhagen, that a large majority of businesses had not lost foot traffic. People switched to visiting via public transit and bike and enjoyed walking around the area even more when there weren’t as many cars driving through.

The common thread between these two cities, and the Open Corydon initiative, is that despite initial reactions and predictions that businesses will be negatively impacted, the opposite usually happens. Not just in Europe, either.

Montreal recently started pedestrianizing some of its streets, to great success. Look up pictures of Mont-Royal Avenue, Duluth Avenue and Promenade Wellington, for example, and you’ll see the charm and beauty that can be achieved by such a policy.

If Montreal isn’t close enough, let me present a case in Winnipeg.

The example I want to point to isn’t directly a pedestrianized street, but the St. Norbert Farmer’s Market. The market opened in 1988 with eight vendors and has grown to over 200 vendors after being open for about 38 years. It’s fair to say a lot of Winnipeggers have gone and checked out the market. If that includes you, you’ll know that the market gives you a taste of what a pedestrianized street can feel like. It’s a very nice place to be, even if you don’t plan on spending any money; simply spending time outside in an area filled with people is refreshing.