Downtown needs definitive action

With news this week that Teranet Manitoba is relocating the Brandon Land Titles office to 18th Street near Brandon University, it’s clear that the exodus of viable businesses out of downtown Brandon continues apace.

In 2014, the Manitoba government sold its property registry — which includes the Land Titles and Personal Property registries — to Teranet Manitoba for a cool $75 million in a deal that was finalized toward the end of the Selinger government mandate in 2014.

As part of the deal, Teranet Manitoba received an exclusive 30-year licence to operate the registries on behalf of the province.

But as a private business, Teranet has no government mandate to stay downtown, and will leave its 705 Princess Ave. address, where Brandon’s land titles offices have been operating from since 1890. The Manitoba Historical Society notes that the building had a modern upgrade from its original ornate Victorian Gothic style, and opened with a more “modern” look in 1958.

Teranet is the latest business to announce its departure from downtown Brandon.

Earlier this year, BMO and RBC announced plans to leave their long-standing downtown Brandon locations, with BMO moving to Park Avenue and the Royal Bank branch on Rosser Avenue consolidating with an existing branch on 18th Street.

As we noted before on this page, they join TD Canada Trust, which closed its downtown location on Rosser in 2020 and moved to 18th Street, as well as Westoba Credit Union, which shuttered its 10th and Princess location in 2017.

It is disheartening to think that we will see yet another empty storefront in the heart of the city — and there are so many empty spaces on Rosser, Pacific and Princess avenues that it’s starting to feel like a ghost town.

But quite honestly, it’s more disheartening to hear so little about the downtown’s sinking fortunes from candidates who have signed on to run in the next municipal election — particularly our mayoral candidates.

Yes, of course there are efforts afoot — from housing incentives to downtown initiatives meant to help our most at risk citizens.

Brandon city council has recently passed the Downtown Market Housing Incentive Program, which was backed by millions of dollars in federal Housing Accelerator funds. The city is aggressively funding developer milestone payments and giving 20-year municipal tax offsets to get people living downtown. This is good.

The most recent success in the downtown has been the 72-unit project at 1200 Pacific Ave. that broke ground this summer. That’s a definite success.

And yes, there are commercial improvement funds available through the Brandon Downtown Development Corporation in the form of grants of up to $20,000 to help new businesses move into older spaces.

The current council’s efforts are designed to try to bring more living spaces to downtown Brandon. While this is a worthy goal, residential units alone won’t save downtown Brandon if the commercial spaces become a row of dark, vacant monoliths.

Neither RBC nor BMO own their respective downtown buildings — they’re leased. And when the banking institutions pull out in October, it’s entirely possible that the owners of these properties could let the storefronts sit empty for years. That has been the case for the former Westoba headquarters at 10th and Princess.

Here are a few back of the napkin suggestions on what we could do.

City hall could establish an aggressive task force to specifically deal with vacant downtown buildings and find ways to negotiate sub-leases or partnerships to convert them into indoor public spaces, food halls or business incubators before they stand empty for too long.

It’s also quite clear that our city’s focus for downtown remains car-centric, even as we begin to prioritize the construction of new housing in the region. Perhaps it’s time that our city use its Grow Brandon partnerships to find a way to match its efforts at housing density with better investment in street-level vibrancy.

Let’s make sections of the core more pedestrian-friendly during summer months, add more green spaces and give people more reasons to step outside and come downtown. Working with the Downtown Biz and the Brandon Chamber of Commerce makes sense — it’s in their best interests to see a thriving downtown, too.

Why bring this up now? We are well into September, and mere weeks away from choosing our next mayor and council. I challenge our leadership candidates to take either of the ideas I have outlined and run with them, or more hopefully come up with something even better. It’s time downtown’s future was on the ballot. The hollowing out of the city is a mistake that needs to be addressed in a faster and more aggressive way.

And to be honest, it’s irritating to hear from candidates who merely speak about “listening more” to constituents and the need for better communication from city hall, or who talk about “prioritizing public safety” and other platitudes.

What is going to be different four years from now if you’re elected to office? It’s time to hear something definitive from our candidates.

So far, all we’re hearing is the sound of moving trucks.

» Matt Goerzen, editor