CentreVenture Turns the Corner

Share

CentreVenture Development Corporation held its annual general meeting this week with the theme "Turning the Corner". It's a comment on the physical development activity that is finally making a breakthrough on both Portage Avenue and Main Street. The agency itself has turned its own corner maturing into an organization other cities and downtowns across North America could only hope for. The Free Press opinion that CentreVenture has facilitated developments on Main Street such as the WRHA building, Red River College, United Way building etc., and its now time for CentureVentre to bow out and let the private sector take the lead, is optimistic but not realistic. Unfortunately, we've already seen the challenges the private sector faces in spurring investment around the MTS Centre. We still need organizations like CentreVenture to fight through the challenges of downtown development. Projects like the conversion of the Avenue Building into a mixed-use development would never see the light of day if not for CentreVenture putting into place the right economic formula for the private sector to do their thing. CentreVenture is evolving into an agency that understands the importance of leading and even filling a planning void to spur development as opposed to simply making deals. CentreVenture has begun working to create synergy by clustering projects, undertaking land assembly, and encouraging a mixed-use approach to redevelopment efforts. They have recognized that for downtown to attract investment, its districts need to be unique and complete before spreading development further out. This has been quite a fundamental and important shift in how it sees itself that has proven effective. CentreVenture is also aggressively championing market gap challenges, and the need for more tools, making it simpler and less costly for developers to do business, while pointing the development community to areas of needed revitalization. Recognizing that it is more expensive to develop downtown properties, they challenged the city and the province to commit to appropriate tools to stimulate more development, like TIFs. A few short years ago, no one wanted to entertain the notion that there were serious economic challenges in developing housing downtown. CentreVenture announced at the AGM that government funding which is expected to provide three years worth of housing support will more likely be gobbled up before the end of the year--it proves developers are not shying away from our downtown when given the right tools and assistance. And most recently, the agency has taken on the role of developing a master development plan for Portage Avenue to create a fully-developed, mixed-used entertainment district feeding off the massive traffic generator, the MTS Centre. Where the private sector has not been able to assemble the land, and deal with the economic challenges, CentreVenture will now succeed in paving the way for the private sector in way that all downtown agencies have a role to play. At their AGM CentreVenture championed and showcased a multitude of developments that have taken place under their guidance--the RRC Culinary Institute, hundreds of units of affordable housing, parks and green space development, and the once-dead Ryan Block mixed use parkade. All in all, over 250 million in redevelopment efforts over the last 48 months in which they have had a role in. All of these gains demonstrate CentreVenture is an agency that today understands the social, economic, and taxation benefits of the developments they nurture, far outweigh their bottom line.

Their continued transformation of Main Street and Portage Avenue is only the beginning.