Battle between City of Winnipeg, curling club over housing headed to municipal board

CBC

a day ago

The Manitoba Municipal Board has been asked to weigh in on a fight between the City of Winnipeg and the Granite Curling Club over a plan to build affordable housing on a parking lot next to the club.
Earlier this year, city council approved a plan to rezone and subdivide the parking lot, as part of a plan to build a 111-unit apartment complex, including 56 units with rents set below the market rate.
The city owns both the Granite Way club building and the adjacent parking lot, just across the street from the Canada Life building in West Broadway. It approached a developer, the University of Winnipeg Community Renewal Corporation 2.0, to come up with a plan for the site.
The plan has drawn opposition from the board of the curling club, which says it would involve taking away more than half of Granite's parking spaces. That would mean a loss of revenue and could drive away members, threatening the club's long-term survival, according to the board.
"The city has known our concerns for over a year and they still have not provided a single solution to any of them," said the board's secretary, Christian Pierce.
The board says it's also concerned about riverbank stabilization work, and a proposed revenue sharing agreement between the developer and the curling club intended to help maintain the 113-year-old heritage building.
"We've been given no guarantees or confirmation … that they're going to be able to address any of those concerns," Pierce said.
In February, council approved the subdivision plan, including an amendment directing city staff to work with Granite executives and the developer to come up with a parking plan and to support the club's sustainability "to the satisfaction of the director of public works and the director of planning, property and development."
The board met with city staff in March, but no further information about a parking plan or revenue sharing agreement was provided, and there have been no other meetings since then, Pierce said.
He said the curling club isn't opposed to affordable housing next to the building.
"The ideal outcome is that the city and the developer can address the Granite's concerns … so that the Granite could continue to operate for decades to come and that the development could also proceed," he said.
"But the development can only proceed if it can be shown that the development is actually going to support the Granite … not to the detriment of the Granite."
Planning, property and development committee chair Coun. Evan Duncan told CBC News he's surprised the plan has been referred to the Manitoba Municipal Board — a provincial body with the authority to overturn city land-use decisions — after council directed city staff to work out a solution with the curling club.
"I thought that at the end of the day, when they left council, that it was at a good spot and that everybody would move ahead, and that ultimately we would see not just affordable housing, but below-market-rate housing and deeply affordable housing," Duncan said.
The building, built by the UWCRC 2.0, would have 55 market-rent units, another 12 at 79 per cent of the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation's median market rent, and 14 at 69 per cent of that rate. The remaining 30 units would offer rent geared to income.
The housing the project would create is sorely needed in the city, said Duncan.
"There are Winnipeggers out there who cannot afford rent, they cannot afford a mortgage, they cannot find housing.… Housing is no longer affordable in this city," he said.
The Manitoba Municipal Board hearing is set to begin on Aug. 26 at 9:30 a.m. at the Norwood Community Centre, and could go for three days.