No laser pyramid, but giant orbs and sky gardens: Why Winnipeg is floating wacky designs for Portage and Main
CBC
In 2014, 16 years after her departure from city hall, former mayor Susan Thompson floated some ideas for making Winnipeg a little more like Paris, Las Vegas or Dubai.
The Manitoba capital would be more exciting, she said, if there were hot tubs at Portage and Main, illuminated evergreens along Route 90 and a laser pyramid above the city, allowing Winnipeg to be visible from space.
"Why do people go to Paris? What does the Eiffel Tower do for you?" Thompson told a Winnipeg Chamber of Commerce audience during her 2014 speech.
"It is a tool in which to attract people to come to the city to spend money and attract more population."
A semblance of this philosophy made its way this week into conceptual designs for a reimagined Portage and Main.
As part of a city effort to gauge what Winnipeggers want to see when the intersection is redeveloped, the city published a series of concepts for Portage and Main that range from "quite bold to a little more conventional," in the words of Curtis Kowalke, the city's principal planner.
The conventional ideas include a simple replacement of the crumbling concrete barricades that currently line the corners of Portage and Main with ordinary bollards, as well as plans to place new lights and trees around the edges of the intersection, which would remain closed to pedestrians.
The bold concepts are a lot more aspirational.
There's one with an oversized metal orb intended to signify what a monumental work of public art would look like at Portage and Main. That drawing inspired Twitter memes involving palantirs — the seeing stones the Dark Lord Sauron used to spy on the people of Middle Earth in The Lord of the Rings.
There are other drawings featuring a quartet of lookout towers standing at each corner of Portage and Main, a circular "sky garden" hanging above the intersection, and a very expensive-looking conception of an above-ground pedestrian crossing to match the underground pedestrian circus.
It's important to note these are not actual options. The city simply wants to see what would fly with a portion of the public before a consulting firm figures out what can actually be designed and built within Winnipeg's budget.
"Obviously, we have a wide set of ideas that are currently being explored. Once that's narrowed down to comprehensive design recommendations, they will be costing that out and presenting it to council," Kowalke said outside city hall earlier this week.
A cynic might suggest the city trotted out the more flamboyant ideas for Portage and Main simply to make a simple repaving and beautification option more palatable.
The city has no choice but to remove the barricades, as they're connected to the underground infrastructure that must be ripped up and replaced. The cost for that was estimated in 2019 at $15 million to $20 million.
When Gurdeep Khinda moved from India to Montreal 30 years ago, he thought his dream of becoming an actor on stage was over. He was too busy navigating his new life and there weren't any theatre groups in the city catering to the Indian community at the time.
More than 53,000 Manitobans have accessed birth control at no cost in the first year of the provincial government's free contraception program, the province says.
The Niagara Regional Police Pipe Band is inviting beginners and youth to try its free music program to help carry on the world-calibre musical ensemble's tradition.
Mayors of municipalities across southwestern Ontario say they’ve focused on the things they could control this year, as the U.S. trade war with Canada and the world has hammered local economies.
A house filled with snakes and spiders might be straight out of many people's nightmares, but to longtime exotic pet keeper Nolan Asplund, they’re like family.
The Ontario government is introducing new rules for publicly advertised job postings in the new year, but questions remain over whether the changes will result in tangible benefits for jobseekers.
Did you know ambulance services on Prince Edward Island were once largely provided by funeral homes?
The past 12 months brought big political headlines, new partisan players and plenty of parliamentary surprises. How much do you remember from it all?
The Ontario government has quietly given itself the power to override archaeological protections on development sites.
A freezing rain event that's left roads and trees across southwestern Ontario coated in ice has also seen emergency crews overwhelmed with calls for help from people without power and snapped trees.
Annette Dionne, the last surviving Dionne quintuplet and a champion of children's rights, has died.
The Newfoundland and Labrador government is warning of multiple scams circulating leading up to the holidays.
The painted bunting usually calls the southern U.S. home and travels south at this time of year, but one decided to spend its Christmas holidays up north in Bayfield, N.B.