New life being breathed into Winnipeg Hotel, oldest building in city's downtown

The oldest building in downtown Winnipeg could geta new lease on life, provided its bones are still strong.

Work has begun on a structural inspection of theWinnipeg Hotel, with heritage lovers tightly crossing their fingersit can be restored to a former glory and reopened as a boutique hotel.

"Absolutelyelated," saidCindy Tugwell, executive director of Heritage Winnipeg. "The transformation, if that takes place, from what it is now to what it could be, I think it would be forever changing of Main Street."

Built in 1873, thetwo-storey structure at 214 Main St. was first called theGarry Saloon,likely named after the Hudson's Bay Company's Fort Garry, from which the land had been purchased.

It has been there to witness the arrival of the railroads and electricity, the evolution of roads from dirt to asphaltand the population and economic booms and busts that marked the city's growth. In fact, it even witnessed the 1873 incorporationof the city, predating that by a few months.

"It was really the hotels on Main Street that had this city come alive and the history that can be told from that building," Tugwell said.

InSeptember 1892it was the site of the reorganization meeting of the 90th Battalion rugby football club into the Osborne Football Club, which became the founding member of the Manitoba Rugby Football Union,a forerunner to the CFL,according to local history blogger Christian Cassidy.

Its history is embedded in Winnipeg's DNA but a few years ago, the hotel was itself nearly history.

It saw numerous renovations and owners through the yearsand a change in its fortunes. Features like the wrought iron balcony above the main entrance were removed, the street-levelpicture windows replaced with glass blocksand the brick frontage covered in plywood and tiles.

Over the past several decadesits care wasneglected and it gained a seedierreputation, with theownerand nine women being arrested in the mid-1980s for running a bawdy house.

Tugwell described it as "an eyesore that everybody just hurries to walk by or drives by or feels unsafe around."

More recently, it continued to function as a hotel occupied primarily by long-term residents in need of housing.Similarly, the nearby Macdonald and Fortune blocks faced a similar decline and bleak future.

The owners of all the properties were approached in 2015 by developers who wanted to tear the buildings down to make way for a new 150-room extended-stay hotel. The owners agreed to the deal but the city had been contemplating adding the buildingsto the historical resources list, thereby preventing them from being torn down.

Proponents of demolishing them estimated the cost of saving the Macdonald and Fortune blocks alone would exceed $17 million. They tried to convince the city that no one would spend that.

That's when John Pollardstepped up. The local businessman,co-CEO of Pollard Banknote, offered to buy and preserve the two conjoined blocksat the corner of Main Street andSt. Mary Avenue.

The city ultimately decided to protect theproperties, which killed the developmentdeal. So the owners tookPollard's offer. The package included theMacdonald-Fortune blocks, the Winnipeg Hotel and the vacant lot between them.

Four years and multiple millions of dollars later, theMacdonald-Fortune blocks reopened, their facades appearingas they did in the 1880s, as if froma time capsule.

"We're really lucky. This is an anomaly to have a family like thatto take over those buildings and do what they've done is huge.It's so rare,"Tugwellsaid.

"They just came in and they took the hard waythe most expensive way, the most difficult way but they did the right thing and that's going to resonate for generations to come. I'm so happy that the Winnipeg Hotel was part of that package, because he's going to see what he can do and I know thatdemolition absolutely would be a last resort."

Pollardwasn't sure the Winnipeg Hotel could be salvagedwhen he bought it.Although the purchase was made in 2016, the title wasn't set to transfer to until 2018 so he had to wait to get inside to do a full structural analysis and determine what, if anything, could be done to save it.

At the time, Pollard's son, Ryan, who led the redevelopment of theMacdonald-Fortune blocks, said "we haven't had very much time to think about exactly what that is going to be, but the loose plan is to redevelop it into a boutique hotel. We like the idea of keeping the same use."

The hotel's bar at the time was the oldest business in the city to be continually operating out of the same location.

It's beenthere since 1881, when the hotelexpanded to three storeysto meet the demand brought by an influx of settlers on thenew Canadian Pacific Railway. Newly-renamed the Winnipeg Hotel and boasting57 rooms, three parloursand a modern dining room, its first guests checked in that September.

By 1882,Winnipeg's population doubled to 25,000 and the hotel soon expanded once again. Afour-storey brick section,increasing the capacity to 80rooms, was added in 1901.

That same year, the owners purchased the neighbouring Dominion Hotel with plans to demolish it and build a five-storey addition. Itwould have included 70-80 more rooms, a billiards room,anexpanded restaurant and elevators but the plans never materialized.

Another booming section of the city caught the owners' attention. They sold the Winnipeg Hotel to buythe Queen's Hotel at Portage Avenue and Notre Dame Avenue (now the courtyard for the BMO tower).

The Pollards took possessionin 2019 and helped the tenants find new places to live before closingit to begin inspection work. The family runs Home First Winnipeg, a not-for-profit charitable corporation established to provide affordable housing.

"That's a testament to what that family's like. They're just a wonderful philanthropic family," Tugwell said.

The hotel property also came with a vacant neighbouring lot, formerly the Dominion Hotel location and several subsequent businesses beforethe building was razed around 2010.

Once littered with discarded clothes and bottles and other trash dumped from hotel windows, the lot has been cleaned and fenced off.

This past summer it opened asan outdoor pub and music venuecalled Blue Note Park a nod to the Blue Note Caf that once occupied the space.

Since being able to get inside the hotel, the Pollards have peeled back some old renovationlayers but are reluctant to say how everything is going, preferring to wait until they are absolutely certain of the building's fate.

In response to why the family tackles projects other developers see as unwieldy and too costly, Ryan said that's never what their decisions havebeenmeasured against.

"We think the buildings that went up in Winnipeg around the turn-of-the-century and still stand today are a defining part of the character in our city.It's been a lot of fun to play a small part in keeping this sort of architecture alive in Winnipeg," he said.

Cassidyhas seen optimistic signs outside ofthe Winnipeg Hotel. Some original details, such as stained glasswindows and the frames above the street level picture windows were discovered as the facade was pulled apart.

They had long ago been boxed in andcovered by plywood and tiling, which protected them.

"It is remarkable how intact the Winnipeg Hotel's 1895 facade is now that much of its 1960s renos have been removed. You can even see where the 'Juliette balcony' was attached [above the main entrance]," Cassidy wrote in a post on his Facebook page.

While the architecture and the original details of the building are important, getting thebuilding functional again and used in a way that brings people to it "is really the big win here," Tugwell said.

"We'll always have the history of the hotel, regardless of what they can architecturally keep or they have to recreate.We need to bring people back onto the street. It was part of the culture to be on Main Street and we were at risk of losing that.

"I feel like we're going to get a piece of that back."