Exchange District
The Exchange District is a National Historic Site of Canada in the downtown area of Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada. Just one block north of Portage and Main, the Exchange District comprises twenty city blocks and approximately 150 heritage buildin ...
of
Winnipeg
Winnipeg () is the capital and largest city of the Provinces and territories of Canada, Canadian province of Manitoba. It is centred on the confluence of the Red River of the North, Red and Assiniboine River, Assiniboine rivers. , Winnipeg h ...
,
Manitoba
Manitoba is a Provinces and territories of Canada, province of Canada at the Centre of Canada, longitudinal centre of the country. It is Canada's Population of Canada by province and territory, fifth-most populous province, with a population ...
, Canada, serving as the
Winnipeg Police Service
The Winnipeg Police Service is the police force of the city of Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada.
History
When Winnipeg became a city, in 1873, an election was held to select the city's new mayor and Alderman, aldermen. Those appointed decided to h ...
headquarters from 1966 to 2016. Along with the associated Civic Centre Car Park, the Public Safety Building was connected to the
City Hall
In local government, a city hall, town hall, civic centre (in the UK or Australia), guildhall, or municipal hall (in the Philippines) is the chief administrative building of a city, town, or other municipality. It usually houses the city o ...
by an underground walkway.
Built in 1965, the structure was designed by Libling Michener & Associates in the
brutalist style
Brutalist architecture is an architectural style that emerged during the 1950s in the United Kingdom, among the reconstruction projects of the post-war era. Brutalist buildings are characterised by minimalist constructions that showcase the ba ...
of
modernism
Modernism was an early 20th-century movement in literature, visual arts, and music that emphasized experimentation, abstraction, and Subjectivity and objectivity (philosophy), subjective experience. Philosophy, politics, architecture, and soc ...
, and clad in Tyndall limestone. The land that the building resided on is approximately one-half hectare.
In 2020, the Public Safety Building and Civic Centre parkade were demolished to make way for new multi-use facilities, called Market Lands, the construction of which is currently ongoing.
History
The plot of land on which the building was built was originally part of a river lot granted to Alexander Ross, a Scottish-born fur trader and the first
postmaster
A postmaster is the head of an individual post office, responsible for all postal activities in a specific post office. When a postmaster is responsible for an entire mail distribution organization (usually sponsored by a national government), ...
of the
Red River Colony
The Red River Colony (or Selkirk Settlement), also known as Assiniboia, was a colonization project set up in 1811 by Thomas Douglas, 5th Earl of Selkirk, on of land in British North America. This land was granted to Douglas by the Hudson's Bay ...
.
Winnipeg
Winnipeg () is the capital and largest city of the Provinces and territories of Canada, Canadian province of Manitoba. It is centred on the confluence of the Red River of the North, Red and Assiniboine River, Assiniboine rivers. , Winnipeg h ...
was officially incorporated in 1875, and on June 7 that year, the third generation of the Ross family signed over a portion of the remaining land to the municipality at the below-market rate of $600, with a stipulation that the land be always be kept for
civic
Civic is something related to a city or municipality. It also can refer to multiple other things:
Civic or CIVIC can also refer to: General
*Honda Civic, a car produced by the Honda Motor Co.
*Civics, the science of comparative government
* Civic ...
purposes, otherwise it would revert to the family. Sale of the property would need to be vetted by one of the Ross descendants, of which there were an estimated 19 still alive as of 2012.
In 1964, following the opening of the
Winnipeg City Hall
The municipal government of Winnipeg is represented by 15 city councillors and a mayor elected every four years.
Along with being the current provincial capital of Manitoba, Winnipeg has served as the capital for two other Canadian territories: ...
,
Winnipeg City Council
The Winnipeg City Council () is the governing body of the city of Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada. The Council is seated in the Council Building of Winnipeg City Hall. In the original master plan, the site of the Public Safety Building was to house the Greater Winnipeg Metropolitan government. At the time, the land was the site of a 19th-century market building that was converted into civic offices, which were moved into the new Winnipeg City Hall Administration Building in 1964.
On 21 December 1964, Winnipeg City Council awarded a contract for the construction of the new Public Safety Building and Civic Parkade at a cost of $4.8 million on the land. The Winnipeg Police headquarters moved into the Public Safety Building shortly after its construction in 1966, replacing the city's main police station on James Avenue (built in 1908).
The limestone cladding on the building degraded over the years, due to moisture seeping in between the cladding and Winnipeg's
freeze-thaw
Frost weathering is a collective term for several mechanical weathering processes induced by stresses created by the freezing of water into ice. The term serves as an umbrella term for a variety of processes, such as frost shattering, frost w ...
cycles separating the limestone sections from their braces. In many places, steel brackets were added to keep the stone sections in place. Some of the limestone cladding fell off of the building's façade and there was continued risk of stone falling off. Because of this, the city enclosed the sidewalk below with a $100,000 sheltered walkway in 2006.
In 2009, seeking to replace the police headquarters, the City of Winnipeg purchased the former
Canada Post
Canada Post Corporation (, trading as Canada Post (), is a Canadian Crown corporation that functions as the primary postal operator in Canada.
Originally known as Royal Mail Canada (the operating name of the Post Office Department of the Can ...
mail-processing facility on Graham Avenue in
downtown Winnipeg
Downtown Winnipeg is an area of Winnipeg located near the confluence of the Red River of the North, Red and Assiniboine River, Assiniboine rivers. It is the oldest urban area in Winnipeg, and is home to the city's commercial core, city hall, the ...
, where construction of a new headquarters would begin. Moreover, due to structural issues the Civic Parkade was decommissioned in 2012. By the end of 2013, the new facility's renovations cost $210 million. The new police headquarters opened in 2016, leaving the Public Safety Building and Civic Parkade vacant.
In April 2016, Winnipeg City Council resolved to demolish the Public Safety Building and Civic Centre parkade to make way for new multi-use facilities. Demolition commenced and took place throughout 2020. Despite the
COVID-19 pandemic
The COVID-19 pandemic (also known as the coronavirus pandemic and COVID pandemic), caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), began with an disease outbreak, outbreak of COVID-19 in Wuhan, China, in December ...
, the project encountered little to no work delays and remained on-schedule and on-budget.