Demolition is starting at a historic church in downtown Winnipeg this week.

Jamie Howison, a priest at St. Benedict's Table explained that the church has been long term tenants at All Saints Church. The building they share, however, is now being demolished to make room for a new project.

"The parish hall was in trouble," says Howison, as he explained why part of the historic church is being demolished. Not only was the building old and hard to keep up, but it was also starting to fall apart after years of housing a busy soup kitchen.

Howison said the need for this demolition came partly from the expense of running such an old building and partly from the opportunity to provide affordable living for the community and space for non-profits with the help of The University of Winnipeg Community Renewal Operation.

This group has "specialized in developing mixed-use housing in downtown Winnipeg," something that thenew space will also be used for.

The demolition is making space on the churches property for a five-story building which will provide both affordable living and regular apartments. Howison said 51 per cent of the apartments in the new space will be considered affordable while the other 49 per cent will be market-rate apartments.

The interesting part of this kind of building is that these affordable and market-rate apartments will be indistinguishable to residents in the building. In other words, it will not be obvious which apartments are which from the outside.

The ground floor space will be available to non-profits and other community organizations.

"Its kind of a win, win because this project will generate an income stream for All Saints Church that will allow them to do the kind of restoration work that needs to be some on an almost 100-year-old church," said Howison.

This building will also be wheelchair accessible and meet needs that buildings in the neighborhood are not currently meeting.

This project has been three years in the works explains Howison and said that the congregations and churches are really excited about the new building and all the people that will benefit from it.

Howison also says that the community has been very supportive and remains excited about the project.