Winnipeg, MB

The federal, provincial and city governments made a deal to fund the redevelopment of Winnipeg’s main street, Portage Avenue. I laughed to myself. “Nothing’s going to happen,” I thought and forgot about this silliness.

But six months later, they announced they were closing Portage Avenue to build on its eight blocks of extra-wide road, a new windowless all-in-one ‘centre’ with department stores, housing, shops, cafés, office buildings and whatever else we’d all like. I had a bird.

I called George Baird in Toronto and asked him to help me prepare an appropriate alternate. I had no city planning experience; George, I believed, was Canada’s leading urban mind.

We worked together and prepared a new master plan. We presented it to the politicians and they stopped their silliness. I was $50,000 lighter and believed that they would now retain us to implement our plan. No way!

They hired a ‘staff’ architect and then made a 50-person bureaucratic office for him, the government’s idea of efficiency. They then had developers bid to do parts of the scheme. Portage Avenue has become the best example of how to kill a once thriving place.