Jets owners mull providing transitional housing to reduce homelessness in Winnipeg
Philanthropic commitment by Thomson, Chipman would be separate from Portage Place redevelopment
Winnipeg Jets owners Mark Chipman and David Thomson are considering creating transitional housing in Winnipeg to reduce the number of homeless people in Manitoba's capital.
Chipman, the executive chair of True North Sports and Entertainment, says he and majority team owner Thomson, one of the wealthiest people in Canada, have been talking about ways they could provide more housing for people who've been living in shelters and need assistance finding and keeping a permanent home.
"What we lack desperately in the city right now is the ability to transition people out of that type of living arrangement into a more independent circumstance, and it just doesn't exist," Chipman said Monday in an interview at True North's offices in downtown Winnipeg.
During a visit to the city in December, Thomson toured the N'Dinawemak homeless shelter in South Point Douglas, which Chipman helped establish.
The two got to talking about providing more transitional housing for people with a history of homelessness, addictions or struggles with mental health — and might need help with not just finding housing, but supports that allow them to remain in a home.
"When people talk about homelessness, it's a very complex subject that requires a range of different housing options for people to move through," Chipman said.
"So we're stuck with a lack of transitional housing. There are lots that are trying and some that have been successful, and that's where his [Thomson's] interest lies."
This proposed housing would not be part of the residential tower True North plans to build, in concert with the Southern Chiefs' Organization, above the west side of what's now Portage Place mall.
"We're partners and he's more than happy to be partnered in all things Portage Place," Chipman said of Thomson. "But his interest personally has been to create more housing capacity."
During that December visit to Winnipeg, Thomson and Chipman met with Manitoba Premier Wab Kinew and Winnipeg Mayor Scott Gillingham at the mayor's office. The foursome held an informal discussion about Winnipeg's housing needs.
The premier and mayor said they're happy to see the True North partners engaged in efforts to reduce homelessness, a shared priority for the legislature and city hall.
Kinew said Winnipeg could see immediate results if Thomson and Chipman use their real-estate and business acumen to assist non-profit organizations that have relationships with people in need of housing.
"If we can tap into the expertise on acquiring and renovating housing to bring new units online or standing up new housing to help us meet the needs or addressing homeless or respond to the needs around social housing, I think that would be really welcome," the premier said in an interview in his office at the Manitoba Legislative Building.
In an interview outside his office at city hall, Gillingham said "what this is all about is everybody coming together. It takes the public sector, the private sector and the non-profits to be in partnerships to really address homelessness and our need for housing."
Confidence grows
Chipman said the level of co-ordination between the city and province on the homelessness file — not to mention actual communication between the premier and mayor — gives him the confidence to follow through on True North Real Estate Development's proposed $650-million purchase and redevelopment of Portage Place.
True North has until the end of June to exercise its option to purchase the mall, something that is all but a formality after Kinew signed a letter of intent for the province to lease space in the health-care tower for 35 years.
"I sure don't think we'd be exercising the option in June if I didn't see and feel a real commitment from our public-sector partners to once and for all engage the root causes of the crisis we're in right now," Chipman said.
In 2022, Chipman described the number of people suffering from addictions and homelessness in downtown Winnipeg as "a humanitarian crisis."
The True North chair said the redevelopment of Portage Place won't solve that crisis, but added some of the services in the health-care tower will serve people who live downtown.
There are several facets to the redevelopment, which is planned to take place in stages.
Along with the residential tower on the west side of the mall, the plans calls for demolishing the atrium at Edmonton Street, and building a health-care tower that will include a new home for the Pan Am Clinic, a walk-in clinic, a renal dialysis centre and a rapid-access addictions-medicine centre, among other clinics.
Kinew said his government conducted six months of due diligence on the health-care component, and eventually jettisoned several aspects of the tower that "didn't make sense."
The premier said the original plans for the tower, as approved by the former Progressive Conservative government, called for moving every dialysis bed out of Health Sciences Centre, Winnipeg's largest hospital, and closing an Indigenous-led rapid-access addictions medication clinic on Higgins Avenue.
Those moves have been cancelled, Kinew said, adding the province has also scaled down its spending commitment in the new tower to $77 million a year from $110 million.
Manitoba Health is also expected to sign a lease for a health-card service centre in the middle of what's now the mall, Kinew said.
With the province on board, all that's left for True North to do with Portage Place before it exercises its purchase option is to sign a few more leases, Chipman said. The city and federal government are also expected to announce their own commitments to the project — likely municipal tax breaks and federal housing incentives.
"There's a lot more certainty to the new project than there was when we first announced our intention to build the rink," he said, referring to the $134-million construction of what was initially known as MTS Centre in 2003 and 2004. "We all feel very confident that we'll be able to complete this one."
The pending work at Portage Place has effectively expanded True North's footprint in downtown Winnipeg to the point where it is difficult to separate the company's downtown development efforts from downtown revitalization overall.
"Some days it's a real daunting responsibility. Other days it feels somewhat natural," Chipman said.
Glen Hodgson, an Ottawa-based economist who is an expert in professional sports, said Chipman's interest in the social welfare of downtown Winnipeg is unusual among National Hockey League owners in Canada.
While most owners have commercial developments around their arenas, similar to True North Square, few are as interested in projects such as Portage Place, that have only marginal impacts on their bottom line, he said.
"It's really hard to come up with another example of an owner who's made such a large commitment to not-for-profit investment, to building up the civic space," Hodgson said in a Zoom interview from Ottawa.
Hodgson called Thomson and Chipman's interest in developing transitional housing more than unusual.
"I think it's extraordinary. I think it's a great example for the business community across Canada, where they should be thinking about the different sort of strata of housing that's required to get people off the streets in this country," Hodgson said.
Back at True North's offices, Chipman said he is still not comfortable with the attention he personally receives, and tries not to think about the inextricable link between the success of True North's downtown development efforts and the health of downtown itself.
"I don't think we set out to have that responsibility, but we've kind of fallen in that path and so, you know, it is what it is. We'll do the best we can with what we have, and we've thankfully we've got a very strong and committed group of people that feel the same way I do."
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With files from Karen Pauls