Former Mayor Glen Murray is moving back to Winnipeg and says he will be an “unrelenting advocate” for reopening Portage and Main to pedestrians.
“Open it up. Restore life,” said Murray. “It’s a platform for culture and commerce. This is one of the most important intersections.”
Speaking at a Liveable Cities conference hosted by the Winnipeg Chamber of Commerce, Murray told a crowd keeping the intersection closed is suppressing Winnipeg’s tax base.
“It’ll build your tax base. CentreVenture’s already spun out $600 million in net, new revenue from smart investments. Nothing will grow your tax base and reduce your tax burden faster than restoring the value so that shops can be repopulated. The whole idea of doing the museum and the MTS Centre was to create these great nodes of activity and then connect them at street level so they would restore the street level traffic so essential to small businesses and shops.”
"Why the heck did we go to all that problem and then leave it closed. This is absolutely stupid. You are suppressing the downtown tax base and the traffic thing is not that hard to fix."
Winnipeg Square businesses owner Ram Gupta doesn’t see it that way.
He’s been running Cafe Asanté in the underground walkway below Portage and Main for seven years where he says business is good. Gupta doesn’t buy the argument opening the intersection will help small businesses, he said it will only hurt his operation.
"I think we'll lose customers in the summer,” said Gupta. “The people who walk come from inside, they will go outside. That's our loss."
“I don’t see any benefit. I think this is working perfectly. Why change?”
Murray said there are intersections in other cities, citing Calgary, Toronto and Montreal as examples, where underground and surface connections do not compete with one another.
"Anybody who thinks that the underground is benefiting from the top, from the street level being closed, is exactly wrong,” said Murray. “I think it’s holding back investment in our city.”
Winnipeggers will decide the fate of the intersection, which has been closed since 1979, in a referendum on civic election day.
Two of the frontrunners in the race for mayor, incumbent Brian Bowman and challenger Jenny Motkaluk, have both said they will honour the results no matter which way the vote goes.
