The barricades that block off the famous Portage Avenue and Main Street intersection from pedestrian traffic are likely to remain intact despite statements by mayor Sam Katz to the contrary.

During an October campaign forum, the mayor said that he would possibly negotiate with stakeholders to replace the barricades with movable bollards, opening up the intersection on evenings and weekends.

“Evenings and weekends are a reasonable compromise,” he said, according to the Winnipeg Free Press.

However, progress on pedestrian traffic has likely hit another roadblock, with downtown development committee chair Justin Swandel saying that any efforts to change the current system must come first from the stakeholders involved.

“It’s not in our (the city’s) hands,” said Swandel, city councillor for St. Norbert and the chair of the standing policy committee on downtown development.

“It’s in the hands of the people who signed the agreement,” he added, referring to a 1979 contract signed during the construction of the Trizec Building (now the Commodity Exchange Tower).

The contract eventually saw the city and seven adjacent property managers agree to erect barricades, forcing any pedestrian traffic into the underground concourse, which links the buildings on all four corners.

Without the unanimous consent of the seven property owners as well as city council, the barricades will remain in place until 2016.

Brad Salyn, spokesperson for the mayor’s office, agreed with Swandel’s assessment.

“Ultimately, (any decision) would have to be driven by the stakeholders,” he said. “You can’t push people one way or another.”

Russ Gourluck is a retired teacher and the author of Going Downtown: A History of Winnipeg’s Portage Avenue.

“It’s a convenient reason to do nothing,” he said of Swandel and Salyn’s statements.

Rather than misleading Winnipeggers, the city should give up on pedestrian traffic along the intersection and focus on downtown housing, Gourluck added.

“(Changing the intersection) is a futile attempt to revive an era that will never return,” he said, explaining that automobile dominance in the 1950s and 1960s precipitated the current design of the intersection.

“Movable bollards don’t make any sense – it would be a waste of time and money.”

In 2007, an architectural plan commissioned by the Glen Murray administration was amended to include the idea of movable bollards.

According to the Winnipeg Free Press, six out of seven stakeholders agreed to the proposal.

The one holdout was Oxford Properties, which managed the shops of Winnipeg Square before Crown Realty Partners (CRP) took over the space.

Frank Sherlock is the former director of property management for the Winnipeg office of Oxford Properties. He is currently the vice president of CRP Manitoba.

“The reality is that the City of Winnipeg never came to us with a request to amend the concourse agreement,” he said.

If the public was serious about eliminating or changing the intersection the city would have requested those changes, he added.

Victoria Nikkel, 27, has worked as a server at the Velvet Glove restaurant, located in the Fairmont Hotel, for the last eight years.

She agrees with Sherlock.

“I think the barricades are there for a reason,” she said, adding that her customers never complain about being unable to cross the intersection.

“They like the concourse, they like the safety of it and they like the aspect of not having to go outside in the winter.”

Published in Volume 65, Number 14 of The Uniter (December 2, 2010)