Inner-city housing project dies without provincial help

An affordable housing project slated for a surface parking lot near city hall is dead after two successive provincial governments declined to fund the project.

In 2012, city council voted to sell a surface lot west of Paulin Street to the non-profit Winnipeg Housing Rehabilitation Corp., which planned to build a 100-unit high-density housing project on the plot. 

• City of Winnipeg aims at wiping out surface parking lots

Point Douglas Coun. Mike Pagtakhan now wants to rescind the sale because the housing corporation "has not received any favourable response" to requests for funding from the province over the past five years. 

In a motion presented to council, Pagtakhan proposes handing the lot to downtown development agency CentreVenture with instructions to sell it to a developer willing to build on the lot within two years.

The city-owned lot, west of the Exchange District, is currently used by casual and monthly parkers and includes a fenced -in secure parking area that was popular with Winnipeg Police Service employees before the police moved out of the nearby Public Safety Building.