Four months after angering area residents and businesses by closing its branch at 888 Main St., CIBC has decided to give back the bricks and mortar. The bank won't be reopening the location, but it has donated the 12,000-square-foot building to the Mount Carmel Clinic, its longtime neighbour in the Point Douglas community.

However, the gesture is not enough to placate some of its harshest critics.

"We want to serve notice that we're not at all satisfied," Winnipeg Centre MP Pat Martin (NDP) said in an interview yesterday.

"We want to remind them they have an obligation to provide a certain level of service in exchange for a monopoly on some very lucrative financial services, such as credit card transactions."

Martin made his comments prior to a community meeting hosted by CIBC last night at Canad Inn Polo Park. He said the goal of the more than 300 people who were expected to attend was to convince the bank to reverse its decision last month to close four banks in the Polo Park area and amalgamate them into one mega-branch at Empress Street and Ellice Avenue.

Rob McLeod, director of communications for CIBC, said the bank hopes to alleviate at least some of its customers' concerns by offering subsidized transit service to the new branch, upgrading or leaving behind ATMs at the soon-to-be closed locations and talking to the city about improved transit service to the Polo Park area.

Martin calls the offers "non-starters. We don't want their charity. We want their banking services."

Winnipeg North Centre MP Judy Wasylycia-Leis (NDP) said the donation of the branch follows months of discussions about various options, not the least of which was keeping it open.

CIBC announced in May it was closing the Main Street branch, along with another one at Stafford Street and Grosvenor Avenue and a sub-branch at Regent Avenue and Day Street this past summer. "This is a concession from CIBC to the community following the closing of a very important branch," she said yesterday.

She said the Main Street location was the last of 10 branches from all the Big Five banks to close in the area in the last seven years. "It was quite devastating for the community, not only for residents but for businesses along Main Street who need a place to do their transactions," she said.

Frank Sottana, district vice-president of branch and small business banking for CIBC in Manitoba, said the bank made the decision to give the building away after hearing of the type of work Mount Carmel does and its need for additional space. He estimated the building's resale value at between $250,000 and $300,000.

Frank Maynard, chair of Mount Carmel's board, said it plans to spend about $250,000 upgrading the branch so it can accommodate its medical and other services.

Sottana said there aren't any plans as of yet for the vacant Stafford and Grosvenor branch or the 1797 Logan Ave. and 1020 Notre Dame Ave. locations which will close next spring. The bank will let the leases expire at Polo Park Shopping Centre and Tuxedo Park Shopping Centre.