Right in the Centre: Decisions are hard
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- Published on Thursday, September 22, 2016
By Ken Waddell
The Banner
This past week, PC cabinet minister Ron Schuler issued the following statement on Facebook. “Today the board of directors of Manitoba Liquor and Lotteries Corporation announced that they will cancel the decision to relocate their headquarters to down town Winnipeg. The board felt that the 75 million dollar project was not in the best interest of Manitoba taxpayers and as Minister responsible for Manitoba Liquor and Lotteries I fully support the boards decision.”
Many taxpayers heaved a sigh of relief as this is one of the first major money saving moves the PC government has made and it’s one of the largest so far. They also cancelled the East Side Road Authority which made sense as it essentially was set up by the NDP to be a second department of highways.
Cancelling the building of a new headquarters for MLLC was a very smart move. Gambling is not a growing industry in Manitoba. Manitoba is saturated with casinos and the ones we have are struggling to maintain, let alone grow. Maybe people have come to the conclusion that it is more fun to actually do stuff than sit at a casino. Successful casinos in other parts of the world actually have other stuff to do than just gamble. In Manitoba, the rural casinos are located at The Pas, at South Beach and out in the country south of Carberry at Sandhills. Quite frankly, there are few other attractions except the gaming at South Beach and at Sandhills. The view from the hotel at South Beach is of a swampy slough. There is no hotel at Sandhills.
Everybody at MLLC has a desk and a warm, dry place to work. A new office building made no sense and would have provided little advantage to the operation.
The NDP opposition said it was a short-sighted move to cancel the project. They dreamed up the idea but never figured out if it made long term economic sense. It didn’t and the new board canned the idea. Part of the NDP rationale was to help rejuvenate downtown Winnipeg, albeit on the backs of all Manitoba taxpayers. Downtown Winnipeg, downtown Brandon and in fact, downtown anywhere in Manitoba, needs rejuvenation. However it is hard to rejuvenate downtown when past decisions have so badly hampered downtown development. When councils and developers teamed up to put restaurants and shopping malls around the edge of cities and towns, the fate of downtown was doomed. Classic case in point is the Shoppers Mall and the Corral Centre in Brandon. It’s doubtful if downtown Brandon will ever develop in the face of those two establishments and the development of 18th Street. From the Shoppers Mall to the Corral Centre and all along 18th Street is Brandon’s “new” downtown. But seeing as it has been going that direction for 50 years, it’s hard to call it new.
Were it not for “forced” development by government expenditure, Winnipeg’s downtown would be a much different place. Without all the government spending on the Manitoba Hydro building, The Forks, the Canadian Museum of Human Rights and the MTS Centre, downtown Winnipeg would be a much more dismal place. Even still, there is a huge amount of vacant and decaying space in central Winnipeg.
The MLCC cancellation decision was a very good decision. It leaves more money in taxpayers pockets to spend and invest where they might want to do so. It sends a clear message to government agencies, “Make do with what you have”, which is a good solid message that all the rest of us have to live by.
As for downtown re-development, if in fact it is deemed to be a good thing, then politicians, especially city, town and municipal politicians, have to look to the future and decide what they really want to have. Do they want a crumbling, rotten centre, hampered by archaic zoning rules? Do they want new development on the edges of their town or city? Do they want to tear down the central core and make parks and green space? More residential development? Decisions are hard I guess, as evidenced by the fact that so few decisions are being made. If a person really wants to feel discouraged and futile, just try and get a building permit through a council for re-developing an old building. It’s a nightmare in all urban centres, so it should be no surprise that people go elsewhere with their dreams, ideas and investment.
