Manitoba Centennial Centre seals entrances to contend with safety issues
The Manitoba Centennial Centre in Winnipeg has decided to lock most of its exterior doors around the clock in response to a recent increase in safety issues at the Main Street complex that houses the Manitoba Museum and Centennial Concert Hall.
In a memo dated June 5, the Centennial Centre notified parkade users they must now contact security through an intercom in order to access the complex from the exterior entrances during business hours.
Parkade users who are inside the complex can still use an interior tunnel to access their vehicles, the memo added, but most other access points to the parkade will be closed.
“There has been a significant increase over the past few months with vandalism, drug use, vagrancy and confrontations that are concerning. For the safety of all we are putting the security measures in place,” the memo stated.
Robert Olson, chief executive officer of the Centennial Centre, said the provincial Crown corporation had no choice but to bolster security due to the increasing frequency of discarded needles and homeless encampments on the fringes of the complex.
There have also been an increasing number of incidents involving glass being shattered as well as aggressive threats to staff indoors, he said.
“It’s not a complete lockdown. Obviously, we have to conduct our business,” Olson said in an interview, explaining doors to the Manitoba Museum will remain open during museum hours and Centennial Concert hall doors will open two hours prior to events at the 2,305-seat venue.
At the same time, Olson said the provincial Crown corporation he runs has seen attendance suffer due to safety concerns.
“There’s been an uptick in the occurrences of drug paraphernalia, which we clean up on a regular basis, and an uptick of encampments in and around our loading bay doors, which we’re having to move out,” he said.
“We’re locking up our garbage bins behind fences now, because they’ve been routinely gotten into and we’re worried that somebody might fall asleep inside the bin and who knows where they would go after that after the bin is cleaned.”
Olson said the Centennial Centre is also contemplating the idea of sealing off its centre courtyard overnight to prevent encampments from setting up on the concrete plaza. Most of the safety issues affect the complex overnight, not during business hours, he said.
“The sheer number of people that come to the facility mitigate that to some degree. But this is a safety issue,” he said.
“We’re still going to deal with the vandalism on the exterior of the property. We just want to mitigate the the damage that’s happening on the inside as well.”
Olson said he has spoken to police, downtown safety organizations and social agencies about the safety issues affecting the Centennial Centre.
David Pensato, executive director of the Exchange District Business Improvement Zone, said community patrols operated by his organization cannot prevent overnight incidents because the patrols don’t operate around the clock.
“There’s been challenges, as there have been elsewhere,” Pensato said. “Until we start dealing with the root causes of this, it’s going to continue happening.”
Pensato said there are not enough social services, including public washrooms, to assist people who live in encampments near the Centennial Centre.
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