Tim Tompkins fears we’re missing out.

The New York City planning expert who helped open Times Square to pedestrians appeared before a standing-room only audience of about 300 people during a public forum on Portage and Main at The Fairmont on Thursday night. While cautious not to compare the two cities, he sees the areas as similarly central to the strength of the space.

“This really is a place that is central to the imagination and identify of Winnipeg,” said Tompkins, who took a quick tour of the iconic intersection on Wednesday night.”People are passionate about it, and that’s good, because it means that this place matters.”

Presented by Downtown Winnipeg Biz, Exchange District Biz and its partners, including the City of Winnipeg, the public forum was titled Imagine Portage and Main and is part of an effort to bring forth ideas and dialogue on how to move forward.

The city is squarely behind removing the barricades that went up in 1976. A 40-year agreement with the property owners of underground shopping area Winnipeg Square to keep feet off the streets expires in 2019, but the city granted the business owners an option to renew for another 40 years in 1988.

Mayor Brian Bowman, who has pledged to open the intersection, said Wednesday he wasn’t aware of any business owners opposed to the change.

“We’re very up front about it — it has to be collaborative and it has to make sense for them,” said John Kiernan, the city’s director of planning, property and development.

Kiernan said the biggest thing he took from listening to Tompkins was to not feel like it all has to happen at once. With more than 70,000 cars moving through the intersection daily, another 70,000-plus who work in the area and nearly that many living nearby, every change has a dramatic effect.

“Let’s build on what works and adjust as we go along,” Kiernan said.

CentreVenture president and CEO Angela Mathieson said the biggest benefits of opening the intersection to pedestrians is the connectivity of burgeoning zones like the east and west Exchange Districts, the Forks, and the Sports Hospitality and Entertainment District.

The arm’s length development agency is also working to bring south Main Street into that loop.

“If we can open the intersection, I think it also opens a whole range of possible further development and densifies our downtown,” she said.

It’s not the first time the subject has been broached, of course. And they’re weren’t any concrete plans to discuss Thursday night. While opening the intersection comes with its own set of barricades, the notion being pushed was not to focus on the possible nightmares, but to dream about what Portage and Main could me to citizens of Winnipeg and beyond.

“I really think we’re coming to a place in our city where we have the political will to make the kind of changes we want in our city,” Coun. Jenny Gerbasi said in her opening remarks. “I imagine our downtown the way we want it to be — bustling and vibrant.”

kevin.king@sunmedia.ca