Hey there, time traveller!

This article was published 10/1/2014 (2443 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Opinion

No matter where you stand on the proposal to build a 24-storey apartment tower on Waterfront Drive, it's time to stop worrying and start chilling out.

Earlier this week, city council's downtown committee upheld a zoning variance that would let a tower rise on the site of the historic James Avenue Pumping Station and incorporate the heritage structure's 107-year-old gears and engines into a "machine garden" at its base.

The proposed SkyCity Centre. (Artist's rendering)

Opponents of the proposal -- chiefly, existing Waterfront Drive, Exchange District and South Point Douglas residents -- condemned the decision as being out of whack with the character of the area.

With all due respect to the downtown dwellers, the freakout is premature. Obtaining a variance for a project this ambitious is just the first and easiest step in a process that will only become way more difficult from here on in.

And with all due respect to the tower's proponents, this project doesn't appear financially feasible. And that's just a very nice way of saying it has about as much chance of ever happening as Latvia's hockey team winning Olympic gold in Sochi.

Five years ago this month, city council's downtown committee upheld a zoning variance for another audacious proposal: a 16-storey, ultra-modern tower that would have risen on Assiniboine Avenue land once occupied by Restaurant Dubrovnik.

At the time, residents of existing Broadway-Assiniboine apartments complained the proposed tower was out of scale with the neighbourhood. But four members of council unanimously rejected their appeal.

The proposed building, envisioned by the late architect Ernie Walter, would have had 300 trees within a glass-enclosed courtyard, geothermal heating, a sushi bar, a plastic-surgery clinic, retail stores, an underground parking system capable of "self-storing" 168 cars and a vendor-friendly riverfront plaza, accessible to the public.

When asked why they approved such an ambitious plan, one of the downtown-committee councillors confided there was no actual risk, because "this thing will never happen."

Crystal Developers' Heritage Landing is being built on Assiniboine Avenue. (Artist's rendering)

The councillor's point: A zoning variance is just a zoning variance. The truly difficult aspects of building a tower come later.

They include coming up with a design that actually works, a business plan that guarantees a profit, a development plan the city can live with and most of all, finding money to actually make it all happen.

The Walter-designed Assiniboine proposal evaporated only months after the variance was approved. A subsequent plan to build a taller but more conventional tower -- D Condos -- is going ahead in its place. Developer Karampaul Sandhu has just applied for the permits to begin construction.

Casting a skeptical eye toward the James Avenue Pumping Station, it will be very difficult for proponents Sotirios Kotoulas and Peter Anadranistakis to obtain the $70 million they need to build a tower on the site, let alone convince downtown development agency CentreVenture to part with a Grade II heritage structure in the first place.

Before CentreVenture signs off on the plan, the proponents must hammer out a development agreement that would spell out precisely how the unique engines in the station would be preserved within the "machine garden," confirm the presence of a grocery store and show how all this makes financial sense.

WINNIPEG FREE PRESS Longboat Development Corporation's Alt hotel across from the MTS Centre is under construction. (Artist's rendering)

The project doesn't sound feasible if rents really are only going to be $1,300 a month for a one-bedroom apartment. Rents might have to wind up in the $2,000-a-month range to generate the return required to justify a $70-million construction budget, even if the city contributes millions in heritage-restoration funds and a financier is willing to back the project.

That, too, seems unlikely. The James Avenue proposal appears even more complicated than a stalled Creswin Properties plan to build a tower near Portage and Main. If a developer as experienced as David Asper couldn't find a way to build a 27-storey hotel-and-condo tower on a vacant plot of land near the heart of the city's financial district, how can less experienced developers be expected to finance a similar-sized tower that incorporates a heritage museum into its base?

It's not impossible to build towers in downtown Winnipeg. As you read these words, Crystal Developers' Heritage Landing is going up on Assiniboine Avenue, Longboat Development's Alt hotel is under construction on Donald Street and both D Condos on Assiniboine and Longboat's Glasshouse on Hargrave Street are not far behind.

Even if Kotoulas and Anadranistakis are successful on James Avenue, it will take several years and plenty of scrutiny before they can proceed. Until then, haters and proponents of the pumping station proposal ought to take a deep breath and relax.

bartley.kives@freepress.mb.ca