When Portage and Main opened to pedestrians on June 27, I drove downtown, parked and walked from corner to corner to corner to corner.
It was glorious.
And it wasn’t just me getting my steps in at Winnipeg’s most famous intersection for the first time in 46 years. There were lots of people doing the same thing. I high-fived a couple of them as we passed each other for the second time. (The only danger of a collision was between the many street-crossers who were video taping their historic walks.)
It’s been weeks since pedestrians have been co-existing with vehicles at Portage and Main and the primary result thus far is renewed life in the downtown core. There’s a pulse that simply didn’t exist when the God-awful concrete barriers were up.
(I overheard a few naysayers commenting about not wanting to cross the “death” intersection but so far, dead bodies haven’t been the traffic bottleneck they predicted.)
Winnipeggers famously don’t like change and I’m sure that’s a big reason why there was opposition to the decision to open Portage and Main up to pedestrians after all these years. It’s seems like such a no-brainer today. But we like to be on the winning side so I think we’re just as famous for claiming to be totally in favour of something we once opposed after it turned out great.
Remember those people who gave the old Eaton’s building a hug before it was demolished to make way for what is now Canada Life Centre? I bet a lot of them are Jets fans.
I know a couple of people who were vehemently opposed to an Academy Road restaurant opening a patio many years ago. They even went door-to-door with a petition but their protests were ultimately in vain. So, imagine my surprise when I walked by the super-popular patio not long after it opened to see the two of them enjoying a glass of wine al fresco. The owner welcomed them with open arms and today, they’re regulars.
Sometimes it just takes time to gain a new perspective and I hope that’s the case with Portage and Main. Just ask Darren Yewchyn, who owns Smoke’n Bob’s, one of the most recognizable street-food vendors in town.
I’ve always thought office vacancy rate studies from real estate companies were informative but if you wanted the real story, you needed to talk to people with boots on the ground.
I spoke with him in front of 201 Portage shortly after the COVID-19 pandemic hit and he told me foot traffic — and his sales — had plunged as companies moved to a work-from-home model.
He still has his finger on the pulse and says employees are returning to their offices in significant numbers as Smoke’n Bob’s enjoys its 35th year in the heart of downtown Winnipeg.
“The offices are filling up. We’ve definitely had a better this year than last year and with the corner opening up, there should be a lot more walking traffic. It was mayhem (on the day Portage and Main opened). There’s a lot of good buzz,” he told me.
— Geoff Kirbyson, Publisher
Manitoba Inc.
