GOLD: Riverbank ‘garbage dump’ impacting ability to attract tenants to downtown building

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Envisioned as a high-end downtown high-rise near the junction of the Red and Assiniboine rivers, property managers at 300 Assiniboine Avenue aren’t using the homeless encampments outside its back door as a selling point.

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Touted as “a flagship in a hub of commerce, politics, rich history and recreation in the heart of downtown Winnipeg,” residents in 112 of the 234 suites overlook the Red River. They have seen illegal encampments multiply for three years and have watched emergency services regularly attend to fires and incidents in the camps.

The banks of the Red outside their windows are part of the city-operated Bonnycastle Park. It wraps around the 400,000 sq.-foot apartment property from Garry Street to the Donald Bridge. The building is two blocks west of the Forks National Historic Site.

Everyone at 300 Assiniboine, including tenants, security personnel and contractors, deal with the social disorder, crime and intimidation the encampments bring to the South Broadway neighbourhood.

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The owners have complained to City Hall on many occasions, and call 311 regularly to follow up on what’s being done to remove the garbage and blight harming their business.

In an email to Mayor Scott Gillingham and Premier Wab Kinew, on Oct. 10th, owner’s representative Heidi Spletzer drew a line in the sand:

“When we built this building, we signed a development agreement — nowhere in the contract does it state that Bonnycastle Park will be the next local landfill.”

She included a photo of what she called a “garbage dump” directly below a vacant suite.

Spletzer stated that since June, “each time the leasing agent takes a prospective tenant through, the client takes one look at the garbage on the park side of the property and we lose a prospective tenant just like that.”

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The email, copied to several city officials and Councillor Markus Chambers, asked, “Is the city willing to pay for our lost revenue or will you do the right thing and clean up the trash IMMEDIATELY and remove ALL illegal campers from Bonnycastle Park?”

The Sun reported on the riverbank blight last month from the vantage of a boat cruise and was invited to take a closer look.

A freshly burnt-out patch of grass marks where a tent, pitched in September beside the 300 Assiniboine west property fence, had been set afire. Initially, there were three set up. Two other tents are set up on the riverbank in the shade of the bridge.

Behind the apartments, the park side of the fence had been finally cleaned up by the city the day before our tour. Garbage had been left piled up since the beginning of summer after a year-long encampment had been abandoned.

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“It would cycle through, there was five, there was eight…” Spletzer said of the unauthorized neighbours the south-facing suites were greeted by.

Spletzer had warned Gillingham and Kinew in her email of “several more tents in the area that have been camping illegally, dumping their trash all over the place, having fires, and defecating in the backyard of 300 Assiniboine in front of our tenants. It’s absolutely gross!”

There was fresh evidence during our tour of her complaints.

On the slope down to the river were two new sites, replete with mattresses, strewn garbage, and some possessions.

There were two other scorched areas where, Spletzer says, encampments had set down for a year until the fire department shut it down.

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As we checked along the fence line, Spletzer noticed belongings of a new fence-squatter and discovered a mesh panel had been peeled back.

On the Riverwalk path heading west, the path splits around a raised berm to take users either to the Legislature or uphill towards the park entrance on Assiniboine near the Donald Bridge.

That berm held up to a dozen campers, with tents big and small and trash scattered throughout.

Yet no disorder or tents are visible in Bonnycastle Park from Main to Garry Street, before it winds behind 300 Assiniboine.

“Why does the city ignore the backyard of our building where illegal campers have been for years but move illegal campers away from the rest of Bonny Castle Park,” Spletzer asked Gillingham and Kinew.

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Trying to get the garbage problem solved is frustrating, Spletzer said, because “the clean-up crew comes and does certain areas and leaves other areas or trash for no apparent reason. Then along comes another illegal camper, makes an additional mess close to the one left behind, and voila! The city finds an excuse not to clean up the previous mess because they think it belongs to the new illegal campers.”

Official protocols limit the intervention of city staff with encampments to situations presenting “an immediate risk” to public or personal safety.

Spletzer had asked the City through 311 to post “No camping” signs and “No open fires” signs in the afflicted areas but got no action.

“We have great tenants in our building. All of which would like to enjoy their homes free of the (issues) that go on in the Park.”

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Coun. Chambers was asked by The Sun on Oct. 15 if there was some obstacle to fulfilling the request for the signage.

“Great question!” Chambers replied, “Let me look into that and get back to you as soon as I can.” No further information has been provided.

Spletzer credits Chambers for having helped move a previous year-long encampment in 2022 but “I haven’t heard hide nor hair of him since.”

“Why do we as building owners and dwellers need to constantly be on the city’s case to keep our neighbourhood clean, livable, and safe?”

— Marty Gold is a Winnipeg journalist. You can find more of his work at The Great Canadian Talk Show.

Have thoughts on what’s going on in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada or across the world? Send us a letter to the editor at wpgsun.letters@kleinmedia.ca

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