Making a statement on Sargent – Winnipeg Free Press

Opinion

Sargent Avenue is the gateway to Winnipeg and it seems almost no one realizes it. This unassuming avenue covers the shortest driving distance between the airport and Portage and Main and it’s home to the fastest transit connection to downtown.

Sargent Avenue is our version of Toronto’s UP Express and Vancouver’s Canada Line.

It’s easy to forget this when you’re from here. Most of us probably hop on Route 90 and speed around the “inner ring road” straight to the neighbourhoods we call home.

But for folks arriving in Winnipeg for the first time, visiting the city like many of us have done in other cities, the obvious route is straight to the heart of town and the fastest, most convenient route in Winnipeg is Sargent Avenue. In fact, the last time I arrived back in Winnipeg, I encountered a couple visiting Canada from Europe standing at the bus stop. They were on their way to their bed and breakfast for a three-day stay in Winnipeg and then they were off to Churchill.

Bit by bit, we’ve been building a city for these kinds of visitors. We built the Canadian Museum for Human Rights, the first national museum outside of the national capital region. The WAG now includes the largest collection of contemporary Inuit art at the Quamajuq art centre. Companies offering Indigenous experience tourism in Manitoba doubled between 2019 and 2023. The Richardson Airport is brand new and our premier convention centre doubled in size less than a decade ago.

These investments demonstrate we are building a city people are visiting. Indeed, Travel Manitoba’s Tourism Strategy has set a target of 12.8 million visitors by 2030. Additionally, for over 10 years, having the Jets back means Winnipeg’s name is plastered across screens throughout North America all hockey season. Our name is out there in ways most of our peer cities on this continent could only dream about.

So what will people see when they arrive?

If I arrived in Winnipeg like I arrive in other big cities, I’d be taking the fastest transit connection to downtown.

And you know what?

I’d be in for one of the most unique welcomes to any city I’ve ever been to. No city I’ve visited has had a main transit link pass down a street with as much character. From charming giftshops and chocolatiers, restaurants with menus from every part of the world to the three-storey walk-up apartments and some of the best urban parks, the pieces are extraordinary. You know them as a Winnipegger.

But of course, as a Winnipegger, you’ve heard about Sargent’s low lights as well. Reports of retail theft, derelict properties, economic struggle, rubble piles sitting for years, curbs and sidewalks cracked and pot-holed. For newcomers and visitors, Sargent Avenue is often their first view of Winnipeg. In those minutes, all of our neighbourhoods are represented by Winnipeg’s West End.

This is the first picture visitors receive: a city with some of the most charming character and a city that struggles to address some of its most basic challenges.

We ought to celebrate this route. There are many ways to do that. There are several ways we should be looking at this issue at a municipal and provincial level. They can be fit into three categories: maintenance, capital investment and economic recovery.

Maintenance is critical. Pretty much all of Sargent Avenue experiences a high level of litter and, to a lesser extent, graffiti. The West End BIZ team performs daily litter removal and yet the build-up over the course of one day is still substantial. The first way to address litter is for the city to add waste bins with a regular emptying schedule. Each block on both sides of the street should have a waste bin — similar to the philosophy of waste bin spacing at theme parks. Next, Sargent Avenue must be prioritized for city cleaning efforts in the spring and fall and monitoring of the street to stay on top of litter is critical.

Bylaw enforcement and expedited removal of derelict and dangerous properties and those sitting as rubble piles must also be prioritized.

Holding property owners accountable everywhere in the city for unsightly property is important, but it is particularly important along gateways welcoming visitors. Where property owners are stuck between jurisdictional challenges, governments need to work together to expedite clean up.

Capital investment will create a beautiful and welcoming presence. The city already plans to carry out road renewal on parts of Sargent and has completed a significant amount of the street between Wall Street and Arlington. These streets and the sidewalks are gorgeous and welcoming.

Carrying out improvement like this on other parts of the street is important. Sidewalks in particular are important to the Sargent experience as most businesses front right onto public walkways.

In addition to roads, the transit situation must be improved. Sargent Avenue is the fastest link between the airport and downtown and is slated as a frequent service route in the coming transit master plan.

Unfortunately, the route is treated more as a rush hour commuter service, with buses arriving every 20 minutes for most of the day and evening. This service level must be increased to between five and ten-minute headways to facilitate convenient movement along the street.

Next, improve the transit capital infrastructure. The West End BIZ is already looking at frequent service intersections at Erin and Wall, Sherbrook and Maryland and Balmoral. Creating beautiful and inviting transit hub infrastructure that improves walkability and transit navigation will not just make the transit trip to downtown that much more inviting, it will help connect tourists with local amenities and small businesses.

Finally, the neighbourhood requires economic recovery as one component of addressing root causes of issues like crime.

Investing in the transit infrastructure and service to connect residents in a very high ridership neighbourhood with job opportunities in the Erin and Wall corridor and out in the St. James area is a solid way to help families get onto strong economic footing.

By investing in the service for tourists, improving amenities like grocery stores along transit lines and by addressing problematic landlords that prey on vulnerable individuals, the city and the province are tackling two birds with one stone.

Thinking about how we invite people to Winnipeg is going to become ever more critical as we continue to invest in visitor assets.

Investing in Sargent Avenue is critical for what we want to say as a city and province to those arriving in our city.

Joe Kornelsen is the executive director of the West End BIZ.