Big Ikea site has big ideas in the works
January 20, 2009
Winnipeg Free Press
Written by: Bartley Kives
A 500-unit condominium building, a 100-room hotel and a 16-screen movie theatre may join four big-box stores and "numerous smaller retail stores" at the $400-million Ikea development planned for Kenaston Boulevard at Sterling Lyon Parkway.
More details about the southwest Winnipeg commercial development will be presented to Mayor Sam Katz's cabinet on Wednesday, as city council begins to pave the regulatory way for the 1.5-million-square-foot commercial development to go ahead.
As early as 2011, European furniture giant Ikea hopes to open a 350,000-square-foot retail store as the anchor tenant for a commercial development that will also include "at least one store in the 200,000-plus-square-foot range," two stores with 140,000- to 200,000 square feet of retail space and numerous smaller stores, the city's planners say in a report to council's executive policy committee.
A condo project, hotel and movie complex may be added to the project, along with a 150,000-square-foot office complex, the report states.
To make the Ikea development a reality, city councillors are being asked to redesignate the industrial land at Kenaston and Sterling Lyon as a commercial and mixed-use neighbourhood -- and call a public hearing into the decision. According to the planners' report, Winnipeg has plenty of industrial land, but a shortage of commercial neighbourhoods, which means the redesignation should not have any adverse effects on the rest of the city.
But the Ikea development will require the city to upgrade roads in southwest Winnipeg and extend water-and-sewer services to the massive commercial project, the planners contend. The infrastructure upgrades, which include $18.5 million in road work alone, will be paid upfront by the Ikea developers, who will be reimbursed by the city and province once property taxes from the development begin rolling in, the report states.
City staff are calling the Ikea project a "smart development," in that the road, water and sewer upgrades required to build the new retail mecca are "also beneficial to the surrounding area" and will be built ahead of schedule by the developer. "This is something we're looking at doing for the first time," city economic development manager Barry Thorgrimson said Monday.
"We're certainly encouraging this type of development in the future."
At some point over the next year, city council will be asked to approve a plan to repay the Ikea developers over a number of years, the planning report states.
But questions remain about whether the city was actually planning to make the Kenaston Boulevard improvements. In December, when the Ikea project was announced, Katz and Manitoba Premier Gary Doer said the widening of Kenaston Boulevard south of Taylor Avenue is part of the city's long-range infrastructure plans.
The widening of that stretch of Kenaston does not appear in any city planning or capital-spending documents, including a wish list of $2.4 billion worth of unfunded infrastructure projects that circulated around city hall last week.
The city is studying ways to widen Kenaston north of Taylor Avenue, up to the St. James Bridge over the Assiniboine River.
Consulting firm the MMM Group is conducting the $750,000 Kenaston study and is also conducting traffic and infrastructure studies on behalf of the Ikea development, the planners' report states.
bartley.kives@freepress.mb.ca |
