CentreVenture signs agreement to support study on restoring historic downtown Winnipeg church

CBC News

· Posted: Apr 25, 2025 2:49 PM EDT | Last Updated: 9 minutes ago

An statement has been made to statesman a study connected the anticipation of restoring a historical downtown Winnipeg religion threatened with demolition.

CentreVenture Development Corporation signed a memorandum of knowing to money the archetypal signifier of a practice restoration survey astatine Holy Trinity Anglican Church, a much than 140-year-old religion astatine the corner of Smith Street and Graham Avenue, adjacent some the Canada Life Centre and Millennium Library.

The church, built successful 1884, needs an estimated $7 cardinal successful repairs owed to important structural issues.

The statement was signed with the Parish of Holy Trinity, the Diocese of Rupert's Land of the Anglican Church of Canada, Monteyne Architecture and CentreVenture, a Friday quality merchandise from the improvement bureau said.

The diocese "celebrates the imaginativeness that this concern volition enactment toward," executive archdeacon Simon Neal Blaikie said successful the release, calling it "a great time for the metropolis of Winnipeg and the parishioners of Holy Trinity."

Mayor Scott Gillingham called the religion "a landmark of Winnipeg's past and a cardinal portion of our downtown."

CentreVenture's president and CEO, Rochelle Squires, said practice buildings are "a unsocial asset" to Winnipeg's downtown, with each telling "a unsocial and affluent communicative astir our shared history."

Under the agreement, CentreVenture — an arm's-length City of Winnipeg improvement bureau focused on downtown projects — has committed to backing up to fractional of the outgo of a feasibility survey into stabilizing and restoring the building, which is simply a designated National Historic Site of Canada and a protected humanities gathering successful Winnipeg.

The religion has important structural damage, including h2o harm and cracks that creep up the walls astir the altar and elsewhere successful the building.

In an annual study released past year, the parish said it has been alert since the precocious 1980s that "major repairs to physique a instauration nether the historical religion would beryllium indispensable to debar a collapse."

When Holy Trinity was built, it was not uncommon for buildings successful Winnipeg to beryllium constructed without foundations.

Without an estimated $7 cardinal successful repairs, "structural nonaccomplishment and/or the gathering being condemned is apt a substance of months to a fewer years astatine most," an April 2024 station connected the diocese's website said. 

The archetypal signifier of the rehabilitation survey volition beryllium led by Monteyne Architecture and includes gathering monitoring, surveying, conditions assessment, biology and hazardous materials assessments, geotechnical investigation, structural investigation and preliminary plan of a caller foundation, CentreVenture's merchandise said.