Mayor's inner circle looks at speed, Portage Place and Assiniboine Park
Sean Kavanagh | CBC News | Posted: July 9, 2019 10:25 PM | Last Updated: July 9, 2019
Crammed agenda at City Hall as summer break approaches
With summer break fast approaching, the mayor's executive policy committee had a big agenda with some big decisions to make.
Green lighting approval for the sale of Portage Place mall to a Toronto developer, increasing a loan guarantee to the Assiniboine Park Conservancy and establishing a city by-law on speed limits were just some of the major votes.
Mall sale moves closer
Paul Jordan, the CEO of the Forks North Portage Partnership, told EPC selling the property to Toronto-based Starlight Investments was the best way forward for his organization and energizing development of the downtown.
"Portage Place could be the hinge for the downtown...linking the True North development and the spring development of the Bay," Jordan told EPC.
FNPP owns the land under the mall and the parking lots and Vancouver-based company Spruceland Peterson owns the Portage Place building. The deal would include all three components of the property.
All three levels of government have shares in FNPP and must approve the sale.
Jordan says the federal government is in the midst of a 30-day "duty-to-notify" while it reviews the deal. He told EPC he believed the provincial government was in talks with Starlight Investments.
When asked if he knew what the attitude of the current Progressive Conservative government was to the deal, Jordan said "I have no idea."
"To see an investor of this scale, with hundreds of millions of dollars, is very very positive," remarked Mayor Brian Bowman.
Slow down - faster
Earlier this year the Manitoba government passed Bill 14, The Traffic and Transportation Modernization Act, which placed the responsibility for setting speed limits squarely on the shoulders of municipalities.
EPC voted for a new by-law absorbing the jurisdiction of setting of speed limits, but several residents and organizations appeared before the councillors urging them to hit the accelerator on lowering the default limits — 60 kilometres per hour to 50 km/h on some streets and dropping to 30 km/h on others.
Ian Walker came to EPC with his seven-year-old son Owen, asking for the speed limit on all residential streets be dropped to 30 km/h.
"As a school teacher I often hear from parents that say they are very nervous letting their kids walk or ride their bikes to school because of the speed of the cars in their neighbourhoods," Walker said.
His views were shared by organizations such as Safe Speeds Winnipeg, Bike Winnipeg and the Winnipeg Trails Association.
Anders Swanson of Winnipeg Trails urged the councillors to take a measured approach to bringing in speed reductions, perhaps including a grace period where Winnipeg police offer information pamphlets instead of tickets.
EPC members appeared to listen and added an amending motion to have public works staff develop procedures to review and implement speed limits and do an analysis of a city-wide speed limit reductions.
EPC in favour of increasing loan guarantee for Diversity Gardens
The Assiniboine Park Conservancy got the financial comfort it was looking for from the city.
EPC councillors voted to increase a loan guarantee from $17 million to $20 million and extended the life of the agreement to 2023.
The Conservancy is in the midst of building its Diversity Gardens project. The complicated botanical gardens saw an increase in the estimate on construction costs –from $ 75 million to $97.8 million.
Conservancy CEO and president Margaret Redmond told EPC members the team in charge of building the facility was doing everything it could to control costs including scaling back some gardens outside the building.
City may punt on relationship with Blue Bombers and stadium consortium
A walk-on motion in front of EPC calls for the public service to review the existing financial arrangements with both Triple B Stadium Inc—the consortium of the city, province, University of Manitoba and the Winnipeg Football Club— and the Blue Bombers.
The direction to staff includes examining how to potentially remove the city's representative on the boards of both organizations.
The move comes at the same EPC meeting where councillors voted to grant access to city records to Manitoba's Auditor General on the sale of the old stadium land at Polo Park to the Shindico commercial development company in 2012.
- Manitoba caught for a $56M loss on stadium-building loan
- AG asks Winnipeg for records on Vimy Arena and old stadium sale
Mayor Brian Bowman said the AG's investigation and a decision by the province to forgive the football club's share of the loan to the build stadium prompted the desire to review what is the city's role.
"There is obviously going to be capital needs for the stadium in the future. So can we modernize and reevaluate the relationship to make sure that we mitigate the risk on city taxpayers going forward," Bowman told reporters.
The construction of Investors Group Field is still the focus of a lawsuit by Triple B against the stadium contractor Stuart Olson and architect Ray Wan.
The suit alleges the stadium suffered from poor or no drainage in some portions, it leaked and had little or no insulation in some areas.