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Concourse businesses worried; disability groups cheering

Winds of change bring mixed reaction

https://www.winnipegfreepress.com/breakingnews/2024/03/01/winds-of-change-br...

DOWNTOWN senior Marilyn Brazeau is a frequent visitor to the underground concourse at Portage and Main.

Brazeau, who lives a few blocks away, is a regular customer of some Winnipeg Square businesses and, after hearing Friday’s traffic-stopping news, expressed concerns about the owners and people who work below the famous intersection.

Mayor Scott Gillingham announced earlier in the day that replacing the leaking membrane under the intersection — protecting the concourse below — would cost the city $73 million and take up to five years, creating major construction-related traffic disruptions.

The city will instead close the concourse and remove the controversial concrete barriers at street level that have prevented pedestrians from crossing since 1979.

Gillingham’s announcement comes more than five years after 65 per cent of voters in a civic plebiscite turned thumbs-down to reopening the intersection to pedestrians. The mayor said he’s working with Coun. Sherri Rollins to draft a motion that recommends the city remove the pedestrian barricades by summer 2025 to coincide with the launch of the new transit network.

Brazeau acknowledged that safety is a concern for people who access the concourse via stairwells from the street.

“It is kind of scary (in the concourse), to be honest with you but, I mean, it’s scary up here too, right?” she said, adding she’d like to hear more input from downtown residents and business owners and possibly another plebiscite, before the city takes action.

“I think it’s really controversial,” she said. “I think that people should have a say, people should vote on it, because it’s going to cost money, it doesn’t matter which way we go.”

John Young was 17 years old in 1979. At the time, he found the decision to close the intersection to people shocking. Now the executive director of the Independent Living Resource Centre, which supports people with disabilities in Winnipeg, he is well-versed in the difficulties downtown residents have navigating the corridor.

“Just imagine this — you went from Portage Place, you want to get to here,” he said Friday morning, gesturing at the concourse entry adjacent to the Richardson Building.

“But then you get to Scotiabank, and the elevator doesn’t work. You can’t keep going. You’ve got to go back home.”

He said the city had reached out to the ILRC for input on the possible change.

While he’d like to see the concourse stay open, taking down the barriers will make a big difference for many.

“One hundred per cent, this would solve it for people with disabilities, it would solve it for older people, it would solve it for a lot of people who live downtown who just want to cross the street,” he said.

If the city saves money by closing the concourse, Winnipeg Square eatery Caribbean Vibes owner Melani Bastians said the city should take the difference and invest it into social supports in the downtown core.

“If there’s any extra money that’s being saved from this (change), in the downtown core, we should find a warehouse, build a massive kitchen and… we can make massive amounts of food for the hungry,” she said.

Lasha Yaeger has managed the Winnipeg Square dessert shop Cookies By George for nearly 25 years and has followed the never-ending debate about the intersection nearly that long. She was thinking about the future of her business Friday.

While some customers order ahead over the phone, most of her business comes from people walking up and buying treats on the go — many using the underground concourse to get to her — and she’s not sure business in the winter will keep up if people have to get to her by trudging through the snow.

“As a business, it will affect me,” Yaeger said Friday. “I’m not going to get as many people walking up, especially in the wintertime. So I’m a little concerned.”

Yaeger wonders how her business and others in the downtown core, still licking their wounds in the aftermath of COVID-19, will adapt again.

“I have very mixed feelings on it,” she said.

The underground concourse was quiet Friday morning, and many of the businesses inside were empty.

Business owners in the area were skeptical about hopes from city council members that the change could help the revitalization of downtown.

Mike Publicover, who owns the nearby Stonework’s Bistro, has been working downtown for more than 30 years.

“Every mayor, every council, every time somebody has an idea to improve downtown, it hasn’t happened,” he said.

malak.abas@freepress.mb.camailto:malak.abas@freepress.mb.ca