Pastor gets cold shoulder as city committee supports heritage status for North End church
Winnipeg Centre Vineyard Church pastor plans to plead case again before status approved for 114-year-old space
The city is moving forward with plans to extend heritage status to a North End church, despite opposition from its pastor, who says the designation will prevent the addition of Indigenous-inspired murals and renovations for transitional housing.
On Monday, the city's public works committee supported the nomination of the former International Harvester Building at the corner of Main Street and Sutherland Avenue, which has been home to Winnipeg Centre Vineyard Church for 14 years.
Its pastor, John Rademaker, argued that the special designation would restrict plans to add murals to the building exterior and develop the vacant fourth floor for transitional housing units.
He said he was surprised by how few questions committee members asked.
"I didn't get any questions on it and it felt a little cold," Rademaker said. "This is not just about bricks, it's about people."
The designation for Vineyard Church still has to get final approval. Rademaker said he plans to appear at executive policy committee and city council meetings later this summer to plead his case again, but he's not confident councillors will listen.
Two massive murals went up on the south side of the building in 2016. The award-winning piece nearest Main Street, titled Mending, shows an Indigenous woman sewing up a broken heart. The other depicts a narwhal and other northern elements.
The brick exteriors and timber beams that form the skeleton of the 1904 building were identified as key heritage characteristics when it was nominated for heritage status earlier this year.
Heritage Winnipeg executive director Cindy Tugwell said last week that development is only restricted on parts of a building that are identified as key heritage characteristics.
Rademaker fears heritage status would hamper the church's attempts to foster a relationship with Indigenous residents in the area.
He wants to add more Indigenous-inspired art to the building walls in the future to reflect and inspire the largely Indigenous surrounding community. The city has suggested that if the building receives heritage status, that won't be possible.
The city and Heritage Winnipeg, an independent advocacy group, have suggested that instead of altering the brick exterior, future art be painted on canvas or other materials and hung on the side of the building.
"Again, they're not hearing what we're saying," Rademaker said. "World-class artists do not paint onto canvas, they paint on buildings."
Building 'overlooked for years,' says artist
Andrew Eastman, co-founder of Winnipeg's Synonym Art Consultation, which painted Mending, said he feels the mural has brought positive attention to the building and the programming running inside it. He said murals on other older buildings could help bring exposure and appreciation to those buildings, too.
"I would encourage potentially opening the dialogue between Heritage Winnipeg and with the city to work together on rejuvenating some of the heritage buildings and murals," he said.
"It can really bring attention with what's going on with that building, and this building was overlooked for years."
Pat Lazo of Graffiti Art Programming, which runs the Graffiti Gallery, said murals can bring people to the area.
"I understand the importance of preserving it a historical building," he said.
"But at the same time … with the projects that we did here, we were bringing community together and beautifying the neighbourhood in an overlooked part of the city."
Rademaker also wants to renovate the fourth floor to add more transitional housing beds, which would require "major changes to the outside of the building." Installing ventilation on the floor would require drilling through the brick wall, which Rademaker believes would be prohibited or restricted after the historical designation takes effect.
He said the heritage committee is entirely focused on preserving the history of buildings regardless of how it might impact important social initiatives being carried out presently.
"It just wasn't in their grid of consideration."
Rademaker plans to advocate for revisions to the current bylaws so property owners have an appeal process.
Just over 300 Winnipeg buildings have official heritage status in Winnipeg, though hundreds more have been identified as candidates, Tugwell said.
City council approved heritage status for Trinity Baptist Church in Osborne Village last week. The congregation had argued against the move on the grounds that it violated the separation of church and state.
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