Wednesday, April 18, 2007
Bringing Back The Met
The city has finally sold The old Metropolitan Theater in lovely downtown Winnipeg.
Heritage Winnipeg is heralding the sale as a huge success. Of course success is all relative. If success is having a valuable property such as The Met sit vacant for twenty years, I'd hate to see their idea of failure.
Success also doesn't mean profit. The rumored $100,000 price tag for the property is a fraction of what the City could have gotten for the property - if they would have torn the theater down twenty years ago.
I'm all for keeping old buildings in the city, they do have great character. But people in the city complain about not having enough development downtown, but at the same time groups like Heritage Winnipeg are there to explicitly stand in the way of development, by restricting what people can do with old properties downtown.
Heritage Winnipeg is heralding the sale as a huge success. Of course success is all relative. If success is having a valuable property such as The Met sit vacant for twenty years, I'd hate to see their idea of failure.
Success also doesn't mean profit. The rumored $100,000 price tag for the property is a fraction of what the City could have gotten for the property - if they would have torn the theater down twenty years ago.
I'm all for keeping old buildings in the city, they do have great character. But people in the city complain about not having enough development downtown, but at the same time groups like Heritage Winnipeg are there to explicitly stand in the way of development, by restricting what people can do with old properties downtown.
