Mayor cancels downtown street party

Mayor Glen Murray is putting the kibosh on the Get Together Downtown festival at Portage and Main in 2004.

The controversial street party saw the famous intersection and the downtown portion of Portage Avenue closed for a weekend, at a cost of about $300,000 to the city.

The parties brought about 50,000 Winnipeggers into the downtown area. While some businesses celebrated the party, others – especially those located on side streets – complained bitterly, saying business was down all weekend because of traffic snarl-ups and parking problems.

• Aug. 1, 2002: Business owners left out of downtown street party

When the festival was cancelled in 2003 – blamed on the heavy construction on the True North Arena – Murray vowed to bring it back in 2004. However, he now says there's no money in the budget for the party.

"Probably in the future [we'll just] put the money into the festivals fund and let the festivals do it. But we haven't done it, and we don't have it budgeted right now," he says.

"What happened when we took the $300,000 of our money off, we lost about $500,000, $600,000, in that range, of private sector donations. And the private sector doesn't want to pay the whole freight for doing those kinds of festivals, so what we might try and do is expand some of our existing festivals."

Murray has said he'd like to close Portage Avenue for a street party during the Juno awards in April 2005; he says that may be the time to re-launch the annual party – but he'll have to see how the budgets look over the next few years before making any decisions.