Winnipeg's Exchange District | East/West | Development

[EastK]

Originally Posted by Authentic_City

Thanks. It sure seems like Brazier would have been a simpler and more direct route.

It already is. I live in EK and whenever I bike downtown I just use Brazier. It is already a quiet street and it takes you from past Oakland all the way to the river. Honestly like one other person said if you know your way around the city there are a lot of streets that run parallel to major roads and function almost like bike lanes. There are also a lot of shortcuts you can take across the city that avoid busy roads and are a much nicer ride(One cycling organization put out a really neat map a while back detailing a bunch of them). I never understood why people would want the misery of dealing with major roads in this city anyway.

[davequanbury]

Originally Posted by Hecate

Car culture in Winnipeg will not change until there is proper effective accessible public transit. Very few people “embrace” winter cycling. If I had a small restaurant in front of a bike lane and needed product deliveries and had multiple take out pick ups on a daily basis I’d be looking for a new location. If I had a home design store and people needed space to load large pieces to their vehicles and a bike lane went in, I’d be looking for a new place for my business. It’s really that simple. This isn’t manhattan. You also suggest putting bike lanes along major thoroughfares, which is also ridiculous considering most of the thoroughfares have side streets that run parallel to them a block away. It would make more sense and be much safer to have the bike lanes run along these routes instead. For example instead of putting a bike lane along Henderson put it on brazier. And then connect to the pedestrian bridge at the Disraeli.

...no bike lanes on major roads... no bike lanes on streets with restaurants or stores... is there a street downtown that you think would be appropriate for a bike lane?

[armorand93]

Originally Posted by davequanbury

...no bike lanes on major roads... no bike lanes on streets with restaurants or stores... is there a street downtown that you think would be appropriate for a bike lane?

Memorial fits the description well. Not a "major" road no restaurants, maybe one store thats about to go Dunder Mifflin, thats worth zero bucks... which also happened to get rid of the best restaurant in Winnipeg & let it rot as empty space.

Memorial/Balmoral wouldn't be a bad bike lane, to be honest.

[esquire]

Originally Posted by armorand93

which also happened to get rid of the best restaurant in Winnipeg & let it rot as empty space.

you can't be serious

[drew]

^ where else could you find an individual portion of jello with a dollop of whip cream on top - kept fresh under that attractive layer of plastic wrap?

mmmmm. That was some good eats up there.

[buzzg]

Originally Posted by armorand93

Memorial fits the description well. Not a "major" road no restaurants, maybe one store thats about to go Dunder Mifflin, thats worth zero bucks... which also happened to get rid of the best restaurant in Winnipeg & let it rot as empty space.

Memorial/Balmoral wouldn't be a bad bike lane, to be honest.

Memorial is getting bike lanes as we speak. Problem is they connect to absolutely nowhere. There's no proper connection to Assiniboine, which itself doesn't connect safely over the bridge; St. Mary has a lot of speeding traffic and just a painted, dangerous bike lane – and a fake one east of Memorial (which just ends in the middle of nowhere, not connecting anywhere again; north of Portage the street is way overbuilt and they easily could/should have added lanes through to Ellice, and/or connecting to Central Park via Webb.

Osborne has plenty of room for bike lanes from the bridge to Portage (on Leg and GWL grounds) and they completely shit the bed on this.

[esquire]

^ Osborne is kind of awkward because the trees hugging the east side of the road do not allow any room for a bike lane. Even the sidewalk is awkwardly placed.

[robertocarlos]

What about a bike-lane and sidewalk on the other side of the trees?

I don't like the sidewalk that is there now.

[headhorse]

it would have been nice if they had decided to put a bike path between the two rows of trees on the east side of Osborne. I'm pretty sure the plan is instead to just have cyclists use the one way traffic lanes around the legislature to connect to Memorial from Assiniboine.

[GarryEllice]

Originally Posted by buzzg

north of Portage the street [Colony/Balmoral] is way overbuilt

So true. I don't know why Balmoral/Colony & Ellice has to be a 7-lane extravaganza while Balmoral & Sargent works perfectly fine with 4 lanes.

(I know the traffic engineer answer would simply be "there's space for 7 lanes so let's have 7 lanes", and in Winnipeg, "traffic engineer" and "city planner" appear to be synonyms.)

Originally Posted by robertocarlos

What about a bike-lane and sidewalk on the other side of the trees?

I don't like the sidewalk that is there now.

Agreed, the street is too wide, and the traffic too fast, to have such a small sidewalk squeezed right up against the street. It's an extremely unpleasant stretch to walk. A walking path between the double rows of trees would be so much nicer.

[oftheMoon]

I noticed a "moving sale" sign on the door of Antiques & Funk on Main St. Any ideas where they're moving to? Did that building sell as I recall it was recently on the market.

[buzzg]

Originally Posted by esquire

^ Osborne is kind of awkward because the trees hugging the east side of the road do not allow any room for a bike lane. Even the sidewalk is awkwardly placed.

Originally Posted by robertocarlos

What about a bike-lane and sidewalk on the other side of the trees?

I don't like the sidewalk that is there now.

There's plenty of room to either just expand the existing sidewalk for shared use, or build a new sidewalk on the other side of the trees, and use the existing one as the bike line. I as well don't think we should be having sidewalks with zero buffer (/boulevard) right up against busy roads. St. Mary's in Norwood is terrifying sometimes.

[bomberjet]

Originally Posted by oftheMoon

I noticed a "moving sale" sign on the door of Antiques & Funk on Main St. Any ideas where they're moving to? Did that building sell as I recall it was recently on the market.

The building next door was for sale/sold. There was speculation antiques would be prime for redevelopment. Seems that is happening.

[Labroco]

Originally Posted by bomberjet

The building next door was for sale/sold. There was speculation antiques would be prime for redevelopment. Seems that is happening.

The property had not sold yet...

[GarryEllice]

Originally Posted by oftheMoon

I noticed a "moving sale" sign on the door of Antiques & Funk on Main St. Any ideas where they're moving to? Did that building sell as I recall it was recently on the market.

I was in there today and asked. Moving to a warehouse space on Regent. He gave three reasons: landlord wants to do something else with the space, business owner transitioning towards retirement, and free customer parking.

[esquire]

^ That's a pretty underwhelming shop for such a prominent location. I won't be sad to see it go somewhere else. The building could use a little fixing up, or better yet, total replacement.

[wardlow]

Originally Posted by GarryEllice

I was in there today and asked. Moving to a warehouse space on Regent. He gave three reasons: landlord wants to do something else with the space, business owner transitioning towards retirement, and free customer parking.

I smell a local media story that focuses on the third reason and ignores the first two.

[EdwardTH]

Originally Posted by wardlow

I smell a local media story that focuses on the third reason and ignores the first two.

Yeah for sure they will spin it as "another business driven away from exchange district" but given reason no 1 "landlord wants to do something else with the space" this is actually a major win as far as I'm concerned. It sucks to have such a dumpy place in such a prominent location, the exchange doesn't need a glorified pawn shop and this will allow the site to live up to it's potential.

[buzzg]

Agreed with all the above. I go in there often because my office is across the street – it has got to be the worst antique store in the city. The prices are absurd for the quality and condition things are in. It's a junk store. Very few "antiques" and the ones that are in there are in rough shape, yet very expensive.

I'd hope to see a new building go there, and maybe keep the Bannatyne facade or reuse the bricks on a new build. The front is a complete loss, nothing left of the original Main Street facade. Something at least with windows on Bann would be nice, if not a door.

[DonaldSmith]

There is a 25,000 ft^2 candy factory in the Exchange converting to 70 units. Does anyone know if that is the building on the same block as the Ashdown condos?