A vacant Portage Avenue lot just beyond the limits of downtown could become the site of a 20-storey, mixed-use apartment building.

If approved, the proposal would spark construction of the city’s tallest new building outside of the downtown since 1984, when a 26-storey residential tower went up at 11 Evergreen Place.

The new plan for 634 Portage Ave. is well-suited to its site along a prominent street, according to an urban planning professor.

“It is a good fit for the street, for the location. It’s in an already-dense corridor along Portage Avenue that’s already surrounded by residential, which is great. It’s right beside several large (residential) towers already and (close to) a (rapid) transit corridor on Portage,” said Jino Distasio, a professor of urban geography at the University of Winnipeg. “We want our main avenues like Portage, our image routes, to reflect changing times.”

The site at the southwest corner of Portage and Furby Street, previously played host to an automotive centre, which has since shut down and been demolished.

“This space itself has been underutilized for a long time,” said Distasio.

The development would add 206 apartments and 9,000 square feet of ground-floor commercial space to the West Broadway neighbourhood, as part of a “high-rise multi-family cluster,” a city report notes.

The site is about a one-minute walk from the University of Winnipeg campus and a six-minute walk to Balmoral Station, the downtown end of the BLUE bus rapid transit line.

Distasio said that would ideally have potential residents using public transportation and other existing city infrastructure.

“It is a matter of promoting higher (residential) density to take advantage of transit and also to take advantage of the nearby amenities that the West Broadway and West End neighbourhoods have available….

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