|
|
Post by The Winning Pegs on Feb 24, 2011 15:43:02 GMT -5
Lets keep in mind that most of the city block north of the MTS Centre will be unrecognizable in the coming years. The former A&B Sound building, which is currently the MTS Exhibition Hall will be meeting the wrecking ball, shortly after the BIG announcement is made to make room for the future. The cornerstone of the Arena District will be rising on Portage and Donald. Of course you never heard this from me. heard what  |
|
|
|
Post by Puckschmuck on Feb 26, 2011 12:32:14 GMT -5
This can't happen soon enough for me..........................get 'er done boys!
|
|
|
|
Post by proudcanadian on Feb 27, 2011 8:15:56 GMT -5
Sold out games should be televised at the ballpark on warmer days (fall/spring). This would be great for all thesold out playoff games and for the ROTJ first game. During winter, it can be televised at the convention centre. Not all, just games that will be sold out, especially the weekends.
This would generate income for the team and the venues. Also, tickets would be affordable for all families.
|
|
|
|
Post by Bob E on Mar 7, 2011 20:11:23 GMT -5
Does this arena district happen without an NHL franchise? Seems to be alot of planning and buying of land/property - to not have this go to fruition.
Dying to know what TNSE or Longboat or whomever is planning. Anything new on this front?
|
|
|
|
Post by allthisgold on Mar 7, 2011 21:26:45 GMT -5
I read once (WFP article) that someone from TNSE said it happens even without the NHL... however one would think that the delay in the announcement of plans is due to the fact that the scale of the plans probably change depending on whether we get the NHL or not.
|
|
|
|
Post by wt on Mar 14, 2011 19:17:38 GMT -5
Parts of the plan will happen regardless, but some of the BIG parts will likely be put on hold if the NHL doesn't return in the next few months.
I guess you can take the level of property investment around the arena as a vote of confidence that the NHL will be returning.
|
|
|
|
Post by redhood22 on Mar 24, 2011 13:43:25 GMT -5
Definitely having a better transit system to downtown will be beneficial. I really hope it will be LRT as Winnipeg does have a lot of dead lines or lines that rarely get used and I feel it would be a good way to reuse the old, make it new and also build upon history (Canada being formed a country through a rail system yadda yadda yadda).
A friend of mine works at VIA and said that the city has confirmed with the station use of one of the 5 lines (i believe, don't quote me on that) for future LRT use. This would be great as the station is smack dab at the entrance of downtown, right near the forks and future CMHR and a short walk from the future SHED district (of course a skywalk would be beneficial for winter).
|
|
|
|
Post by allthisgold on Mar 24, 2011 13:58:11 GMT -5
I am a little torn on the LRT issue. Part of me feels that we should support New Flyer and go with buses. New Flyer is a significant employer in Winnipeg. I see your point though.
|
|
|
|
Post by jetsorbust on Mar 24, 2011 14:12:10 GMT -5
I am a little torn on the LRT issue. Part of me feels that we should support New Flyer and go with buses. New Flyer is a significant employer in Winnipeg. I see your point though. See that's the type of thing where I'm a bit more "right wing capitalist". Why should we make a bad decision for the city, in the hundreds of millions of dollars range, just to benefit one local business? New Flyer will either survive as a business or it won't, but we shouldn't base our decision around that. Whatever's better for the city is what we should do, and I would think LRT must be long term. Now if there was a local LRT supplier it might make sense to try to go out of our way to give them our business versus some US company, but let's not screw ourselves for decades just to give a local bus company some short term revenue boost. |
|
|
|
Post by The Unknown Poster on Mar 24, 2011 14:19:31 GMT -5
It's not like we'd get rid of busses. New Flyer would be just fine.
|
|
|
|
Post by chamele0n on Mar 24, 2011 19:50:57 GMT -5
LRT should be built along the most heavily used corridors (Pembina and Portage come to mind), buses should feed into those... having BRT as the backbone of the transit system is a joke. Look at Ottawa, where thanks to "flexibility of service", supposedly a positive point for BRT boosters, gives them a problem with bunching buses downtown. This bottleneck happens when a bunch of express buses serving various suburbs converge on a single right of way.
To me, BRT is only being pushed here for political considerations. Why are Kitchener and Victoria trying to get LRT done? Why does U of M Prof Barry Prentice say that BRT is best for Winnipeg, while much smaller and less dense Saskatoon should build LRT immediately? Just a ploy to buy union votes, and unions will tell their members to vote for those who will support their brothers and sisters, even if when one does some research, not building BRT will have no effect on New Flyer's bottom line nor the livelihood of its employees. LRT is clearly the better long term solution but the politicians only think ahead up to 4 years. I hope Katz can pull off LRT, but that will probably require a change in government at Broadway to proceed to the next step.
|
|
|
|
Post by redhood22 on Mar 25, 2011 22:50:56 GMT -5
I am a little torn on the LRT issue. Part of me feels that we should support New Flyer and go with buses. New Flyer is a significant employer in Winnipeg. I see your point though. At the end of the day New Flyer needs to adapt to changing times and if they wanted to be a gameplayer in LRT they need to diversify to meet this (in terms of business and marketing New Flyer is not in the bus industry it is in the public transport industry) so they should either look at developing an LRT production line, acquire a LRT company or pursue a joint venture. -Talk about being excited about the prospect of an NHL team, we're discussing how other companies should benefit from an NHL return- I definitely think the statues of former Jets (bronze or what have you) downtown would be a great addition |
|
|
|
Post by rtabaracci on Mar 26, 2011 13:24:17 GMT -5
I've always thought that the city should make use of the abundance of seemingly unused tracks around Winnipeg for LRT. You could probably get from South Pembina, through to downtown and then out to the airport fairly easily with only a few extra lengths of track to build. Then again, what do I know?
|
|
|
|
Post by WJG on Mar 26, 2011 15:01:10 GMT -5
I'd love to see LRT on old abandoned lines.
I think it would be awesome to take LRT each morning from the South End to the Weston rail yard near the Health Sciences Centre.
|
|
|
|
Post by stbvoyageur on Apr 10, 2011 23:04:56 GMT -5
From this article (which is great by the way) two points which I feel are integral to the long-term success of this proposed development really jumped out at me: Community facilities needed to attract people downtown. “There appears, as with other cities, a desire to promote inner city living. This raises a range of issues around what we might call ‘liveability’. There is plenty of research that shows that attracting people back to live in the city is more than developing nice housing or allowing for higher density developments. People want to be sure they will be safe, i.e., crime prevention and safety, that there will be good facilities available such as good schools, libraries and other community facilities, that there will be parks where they can walk a dog, kick a ball or fly a kite that are easily accessible, that there will be somewhere to do everyday shopping and that there will be good public transport or somewhere safe to park their vehicle,” wrote Dr. Caroline Miller of Massey University.As of today only 13,000 people call downtown home. During the week roughly 60,000 - 70,000 people work downtown. This means that during the evenings and weekends the downtown is quite barren....something i can atest to having resided downtown for a number of years. The vision for dowtown needs to include a well thought out residential component. Not just high-end condos and apartments, rather a range of options for many people in different tax brackets. Prepare for the unexpected — such as higher fuel prices. “I also wondered a little about the future proofing of this,” wrote Dr. Caroline Miller of Massey University. “The development of your entertainment and convention facilities does seem to be based on a very traditional model of people travelling to view or attend an event. If fuel costs continue to escalate and we are approaching peak oil, then there may be moves to more use of technology to link people remotely rather than bringing them to a single place. In that case your expensive new facilities may not get the use you expect. It may also mean that any building should be as flexible as possible in terms of their present and future uses.”It would great to have an LRT system connecting all of Winnipeg (N,S,E and W) to downtown.....from there it would be worth looking into developing a street-car system like Wininpeg once had to get people around. Manitoba is one of the biggest hydro producing places in all of North America. Why we aren't capitalizing on this in Winnipeg is beyond me.....especially with peak-oil around the corner.100% with you on this. One it could link downtown to the suburbs, two it could do it in a cost-certain way, the price of hydro is alot less vulnerable than oil. Three, I don't understand with the burgeoning rise of metropolitan train transport throughtout the globe, why we couldn't become an engineering hub of electric rail, it's in our back yard. I think the problem is that the provincial and civic governments have been competing instead of collaborating for too long. I wonder if the return of the Jets would bring a brewery back to Winnipeg. If the Moose name was retained, perhaps we could become a western brewer for the beer. Molsons would be on the radar, too. I think that TNSE will monopolise the arena district, interested to see what comes out of that. Would love to see the Met revitalized, maybe the Garrick reopened. As well as a bowling alley. A bakery. And a few more ethnic restaurants like Montreal. A little bit of flavour. The city with the province should be working towards building a Portage Ave corridor extending to Main St., so that people could actually consider walking from the Forks to the MTS Centre. Getting diverse people to live downtown is the key, I agree. The more people that reside around the MTS Centre, the easier it will be to make places like Portage Place desirable to frequent. I like the mall, especially the walkways, and the theatre. I also having no problem sharing this city with everyone, I think there is still alot of racism towards aboriginal people and other immigrants that needs to be overcome to improve downtown. You can't hide that is a largely aboriginal community just north of the CP tracks, with all its bars and pawn shops that constitutes one of the poorest neighbourhoods in all of Canada. A hockey team is a good start, but the 6 pm lockdown has to end, we need to make Portage Ave have a little bit of an identity, other than its two faces of day and night. |
|
|
|
Post by Bob E on Apr 11, 2011 19:21:50 GMT -5
Would love to hear something about the arena district. Plans, drawings, etc.
One thing that would be very cool would be a tunnel from the new development, below Portage Ave, to MTSC. Visiting players, guests could simply walk to the games without going outside. And the tunnel could have a hockey shrine or history of pro-hockey in Winnipeg or shops, whatever - for visitors to see.
That would be cool.
|
|
|
|
Post by Puckschmuck on Apr 11, 2011 19:23:31 GMT -5
Would love to hear something about the arena district. Plans, drawings, etc. One thing that would be very cool would be a tunnel from the new development, below Portage Ave, to MTSC. Visiting players, guests could simply walk to the games without going outside. And the tunnel could have a hockey shrine or history of pro-hockey in Winnipeg or shops, whatever - for visitors to see. That would be cool. They already have skywalks, I don't see a need to shuffle people underground like they do at Portage and Main. I hate that! |
|
|
|
Post by Bob E on Apr 11, 2011 23:02:29 GMT -5
Would love to hear something about the arena district. Plans, drawings, etc. One thing that would be very cool would be a tunnel from the new development, below Portage Ave, to MTSC. Visiting players, guests could simply walk to the games without going outside. And the tunnel could have a hockey shrine or history of pro-hockey in Winnipeg or shops, whatever - for visitors to see. That would be cool. They already have skywalks, I don't see a need to shuffle people underground like they do at Portage and Main. I hate that! Nothing connects a new development to the MTSC. I would think skywalks would impact the 'look' of MTSC if you were to connect it. Just my opinion. I know it's just across the street, but at 35 below, you don't want to have to bundle up just to walk across the street. |
|
|
|
Post by redhood22 on Apr 13, 2011 22:11:14 GMT -5
I definitely don't agree with underground tunnels. Yes I know the -40 weather can be excruciating at times but hiding everyone underground definitely won't make downtown look any livelier (that spelled right?).
If we are to make sheltered walkways I will say that skywalks are the way to go, but they need more glass! More natural light and it should be easy to see people walking in them, that will at least show that there's people out and about.
Fact remains we need more pedestrian activity and more apartments/condos downtown.
|
|
|
|
Post by swervinmervin123 on Apr 13, 2011 22:36:44 GMT -5
I definitely don't agree with underground tunnels. Yes I know the -40 weather can be excruciating at times but hiding everyone underground definitely won't make downtown look any livelier (that spelled right?). If we are to make sheltered walkways I will say that skywalks are the way to go, but they need more glass! More natural light and it should be easy to see people walking in them, that will at least show that there's people out and about. Fact remains we need more pedestrian activity and more apartments/condos downtown. *2! |
|
