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West End is a vital part of city
Focus, Saturday, October 15, 2005, p. a15
DALLAS HANSEN
WHEN 17 - year-old Philippe Haiart was shot dead Monday night near
Sargent and Maryland, some of the blame was pointed at the
neighbourhood itself. Internet message board chatter, overheard bus
conversations, and the news coverage of this tragedy have suggested
that the West End is so thoroughly rotten that it's no place for the
middle classes.
"I regret ever moving to the West End," claimed one homeowner. "This is no place to raise a family."
Until this week I had been a loud advocate of the area around Sargent
and Maryland, strolling its sidewalks almost daily. There, within ten
minutes' walking distance, I've enjoyed a panoply of independently
owned stores, restaurants, and other services. In recent weeks, I've
drunk mango bubble tea, played billiards and foosball after midnight,
slurped Vietnamese soup, stuffed my face with Jamaican-style curry
goat, purchased long-distance phone cards, and wiped grease off my
fingers after three slices of pizza and three pieces of fried chicken
for $5.
The West End's dazzling diversity of food offerings was indeed so
impressive as to seem reminiscent of Vancouver's Commercial Drive --
where I lived for six years -- and to prompt me to suggest that Sargent
Avenue would become the next Corydon.
Late in summer I eyed a lovely neo-Dutch colonial at Sargent and
Banning priced at $109,000. The house was almost entirely original,
save for the kitchen and bathroom, both of which were tastefully
remodelled. I was sufficiently impressed to offer $115,000, so as to
smash the competition. But I was outbid; a few thousand short in fact.
Later, I learned the sellers bought the house in 2000 for a mere
$37,000.
A disappointment indeed, but nearby I found a 1911 Arts and Crafts
movement home just off Ellice, and this weekend I'm moving in. Careful
not to be outbid a second time, I pounced as soon as it appeared on the
market, and discovered the owner was someone I knew: an older
skateboarder I had looked up to as a tyke in the early 1990s.
When he bought the house, only one family had lived in it, and the
original owner's son, who followed his father's footsteps into the
engineering profession, passed on sometime after reaching age 90.
Thus the house has been spared the horrors of such "renovations" as
vinyl siding, stucco, and wall-to-wall carpet, leaving the original
windows, exterior, and hardwoods intact. The garage-sized outbuilding
that served as the engineers' workspace will become an Arts and Crafts
movement furniture workshop, for I plan to spend the winter holed up
with chisels and saws, with an eye toward joining the ranks of William
Morris and other writers who moonlighted making furniture.
Obviously, even in the wake of another violent tragedy, my enthusiasm
for the West End hasn't waned. Some middle-class families, however, are
thinking differently. Why? Where are they going to go? When gun
violence hit Corydon Avenue earlier this year, no one seemed bent on
dismissing Crescentwood as an uninhabitable ghetto. After numerous
violent deaths over the years at Pembina Highway bars, no one has
painted Fort Garry as unfit to raise a family.
In his novel, Under the Ribs of Death, set in Winnipeg during the
1920s, author John Marlyn described north and south Winnipeg as two
different worlds alien to one another. With, however, the recent boom
in housing prices, the working and middle classes have been moving into
neighbourhoods that in recent decades have been packed with poverty.
Higher rates of home ownership and better property values have led to
great improvements in the housing stock, with many houses being
restored to their original spendour. This has been an encouraging
trend, and it oughtn't to abate now, simply because of one violent
death.
Without question, the streets of the West End remain mean. There are
drugs, there is prostitution -- both of which existed in perhaps
greater abundance on Commercial Drive while I lived there. But walk
down the Drive and one look at the vehicles parked on the street --
Jaguars, Porsches, BMWs, even the odd Bentley -- and you know it's a
place for the rich as well as the poor, and for everyone in between.
New immigrants and their entrepreneurial spirit have in recent years
uplifted the inner city, and stable new homeowners provide a customer
base for their services. The West End will continue to need more of
both.
The fearful few who are pondering a move ought to keep in mind that,
statistically, an early death is far likelier while driving a car than
strolling a sidewalk.
Category: Editorial and Opinions
Uniform subject(s): Real estate industry; Urban gentrfication
Length: Medium, 625 words
© 2005 Winnipeg Free Press. All rights reserved.
www.dallashansen.com |
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