For a century, the rail yards between The Forks and downtown Winnipeg sat behind a fence. That’s changing. A 12-acre stretch of former industrial land at the confluence of the Red and Assiniboine is becoming a new neighbourhood, and Summit Design Build is the construction manager on two of its buildings.
What Railside actually is
Railside at The Forks sits on Israel Asper Way, directly in front of the Canadian Museum for Human Rights. It is one of the largest residential developments underway in Winnipeg right now:
- Up to 10 mid-rise buildings, ranging four to six storeys
- A mix of condominiums, market rentals, and below-market units
- Ground-floor commercial space in every building: retail, services, and food and beverage facing the street
- First phase: roughly 350 units, targeted for completion in 2028
- Full build-out: up to 1,200 units by 2040
It is a multi-decade, multi-developer neighbourhood, not a single project with a single builder. A number of Winnipeg development, architecture, and construction firms are each responsible for different buildings within the master plan.
Summit’s role: Site 11 and Site 13
Summit Design Build is construction manager on Site 11 and Site 13 within Railside — two of the mid-rise buildings that make up the development. Both are visible on-site signage at The Forks.
As construction manager, Summit coordinates the build itself — sequencing trades, managing the schedule, and delivering the structure, while working alongside the design and engineering teams responsible for each building.
Railside is exactly the scale of project we work at — see our large multi-family construction management services.
Why a former rail yard, and why now
The Forks has spent decades turning industrial land into public space — the Market, the river walks, the skating trail. Railside is the next stage: taking a strip of land that has sat behind a construction fence for generations and turning it into somewhere people actually live, a short walk from downtown, the river, and the Museum.
It is also a live example of exactly the kind of construction covered elsewhere on this site: mid-rise, mixed-use, ground-floor commercial, multiple buildings each governed by Part 3 of the Manitoba Building Code rather than the smaller-scale rules that apply to infill duplexes and fourplexes.
"Is Summit building all of Railside?"
No, and it’s worth being clear about that. Railside is a large, multi-phase neighbourhood with several different ownership groups, architects, and builders each responsible for their own building. Summit’s role is construction manager on two of those buildings: Site 11 and Site 13, not the development as a whole.
That said, being trusted with construction management on a project of this visibility, at this location, says something about the kind of work Summit is set up to deliver.
If you’re planning something at this scale
Mid-rise, mixed-use, multi-family construction management is exactly what Summit does, from the early feasibility and design stage through to delivery. If you’re looking at a project in the same range as Railside’s individual buildings — four to six storeys, ground-floor commercial, market or mixed-income residential above — that is squarely inside what we build.
Planning a mid-rise multi-family project in Winnipeg? Talk to the team currently delivering two buildings at Railside. Get in touch with Summit
Where Summit fits
Railside sits at the large end of what we build. We also deliver small multi-family infill across Winnipeg, through the same construction management approach at a different scale.
Keep reading
More on the building code and cost context behind projects like this:
- Multi-Family Construction Winnipeg: The 3-Storey Code Line — the Part 9/Part 3 threshold every mid-rise project has to clear
- Winnipeg Infill Construction: By-Law 59/2025 Costs in 2026 — real cost per door for smaller-scale builds