City puts old Cuban Lunch factory up for sale to kick-start redevelopment of northwestern Exchange, Chinatown
Bartley Kives | CBC News | Posted: May 13, 2019 10:52 PM | Last Updated: May 13, 2019
CentreVenture hopes to see private investors build on surface lots, redevelop old buildings
The City of Winnipeg put a 114-year-old Exchange District warehouse up for sale as its downtown development agency unveiled a long-term plan to redevelop the northwestern corner of the neighbourhood as well as the city's old Chinatown.
The Paulins-Chambers Building, a 1905 stone structure where the Cuban Lunch chocolate bar used to be made, is on the market along with a city-owned surface parking lot to the west. The Paulins-Chamber Building was most recently used to house city records.
Downtown development agency CentreVenture is marketing the properties in the hopes they can serve as a catalyst for redevelopment in the northwestern Exchange and Chinatown, which have been slower to redevelop than other portions of the Exchange District.
CentreVenture hopes the area's surface parking lots and empty historic buildings will be redeveloped once property owners have confidence the city has a long-term plan for the area.
"Sometimes, [for] developers, property owners, it's about seeing a vision. It's about seeing other people investing, the city investing in new infrastructure — sidewalks, those kinds of things encourage investment to occur," said CentreVenture president and CEO Angela Mathieson. "It's really one property at a time."
CentreVenture has commissioned a northwest Exchange and Chinatown development strategy that envisions dense development around the Paulin-Chambers Building, Siloam Mission and the northern stretch of King Street, where the pedestrian streetscape has been degraded due to decades of neglect and demolition.
In recent years, the northern stretch of King Street has been supplanted by the southern strip of Pembina Highway as the home of Winnipeg's largest concentration of Chinese-Canadian restaurants and retailers.
Mathieson said she hopes to see 500 new residential units built in the northwestern Exchange and Chinatown over the next 10 years. She also said she hopes to see the return of storefront retail stores, which can revitalize the streetscape.
CentreVenture is also working to redevelop the former Public Safety Building and Civic Centre Parkade on Princess Street.