Work finally getting underway on old arena site

Work is finally getting underway to fill the former Winnipeg Arena site with something other than overflow parking and great hockey memories.

Ground was ceremonially broken Tuesday for the new Manitoba regional offices of Western Financial Group, whose complex will comprise part of a larger retail and office development at the intersection of Maroons Road and Empress Street.

“It feels good. We had a lot of close calls ... close to having other developments that weren’t quite as grand as this,” Sandy Shindleman, president of development manager Shindico Realty Inc., said after turning the sod with other private-sector and public officials involved. “But we’re all so happy with the result.”

The $36-million project will see the three-storey complex constructed along the north end of the property and face south toward Polo Park Shopping Centre, and include an underground parkade for more than 200 vehicles as well as a lot for another 300 or so above the ground.

When the building opens in early 2013, High River, Alta.-based Western Financial’s approximately 370 Winnipeg-area employees will work under one roof after years of staffing a handful of smaller offices across the city.

Jim Savage, a spokesman for Western Financial, said building a “showcase” office complex on the five-acre property is a “big step” for the company.

“It’s the development of Polo Park. It’s the old Arena site. But most importantly for us, it’s the ability to bring together all our employees from several sites scattered across the city,” he said.

For Shindico and Cadillac Fairview Corp. Ltd., which owns the nearby Polo Park mall, the development’s launch ends more than five years of delays and speculation over what would replace the old Arena — which had been home to the WHA’s and NHL’s Winnipeg Jets, AHL’s Manitoba Moose and WHL’s Winnipeg Warriors, as well as earlier hockey teams, during its more than 50 years before it was gradually demolished and its structure imploded in the spring of 2006.

The construction comes about a year after a grocery store specializing in Asian foods was planned as an anchor retail tenant for the site.

Shindleman said his firm and Cadillac Fairview had to be patient “with dozens and dozens and dozens of machinations” for potential projects at the property.

“It’s going to be a creative re-use of this site,” he said. “We waited for the right thing.”

The complex’s retail tenants have not been determined.

Radio station CJOB moved several months ago onto the second floor of the nearby, redeveloped former CTV building. That complex has space for a 7,000-square-foot restaurant and 20,000 square feet for retailers, though it remains vacant in those sections.