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Why Is The WDC Messing With a Waterfront Jewel? |
 FEBRUARY 27, 2012
Francis Fares is building the most imaginative and sensational development in the city's history: King's Wharf. If you have any doubt go to: http://www.kingswharf.ca.
For the record: I don't know Francis Fares. I met him once, very briefly at a Christmas party.
King's Wharf will have condo and apartment buildings, most with some ground floor commercial space, an office tower, a sensational soaring condo tower, a 200-room hotel, a marina, water taxi service and parking – all encircled by a public boardwalk that ties into the waterfront trail system.
Fares is doing it all without public money, yet he is creating public infrastructure for generations to come. He is paying millions o...
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Bayers Lake expansion approved behind closed doors |
APRIL 19, 2011
In early April, Halifax Regional Council approved a two hundred and fifty million dollar expansion to Bayers Lake Business Park in a closed-door session with no public input. Here's the link to the Spacing Atlantic post: http://goo.gl/BknZM
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To City's Largest Commercial Land Developer Downtown A Distraction |
 MARCH 21, 2011
Last November the Planning & Design Centre at Dalhousie's school of architecture produced its semi-annual pamphlet, SEEK, that identifies about 20 private and public projects that are proposed, approved or set for construction downtown. But the centre did something much more instructive than just identify projects. It asked the Altus Group to estimate the taxes per square foot that each of the projects would pay each year to the city: $27.7 million was the low estimate, $39.5 million was the high. Each year.
For a city facing $30 million in debt this year that should have been an ear-splitting wake-up call.
In the last 10 years only six buildings have been built downtown, and of the p...
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Public Hearing For Fenwick Tower Redevelopment on Feb. 1 |
 JANUARY 19, 2011
The Metlege family's plan to redevelop Fenwick Tower and adjacent lands gets a public hearing at 6:30 p.m. on February 1 at City Hall. Staff have recommended the city enter a development agreement with the family to allow the project to go forward. It's an ambitious and imaginative plan that includes recladding the tower and adding a curved roof, a new apartment building on south street and connecting South St. to Fenwick with a pedestrian walkway lined with retail. Joe Metlege is encouraging people to attend the meeting and let council know how they feel about the project.
See the drawings on the Fenwick Facebook fan page: http://on.fb.me/elVtqO
Go to the Fenwick Tower page: http://www...
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Boo! |
 JANUARY 19, 2011
There's something pathetic about a city that makes a church congregation jump through hoops as it tries to redevelop its property to rebuild a smaller sanctuary and finance it for the future by building 65 apartments for seniors.
The Chronicle Herald called the redevelopment of St. John's United Church property at Windsor and Willow streets controversial. The project is not at all controversial. A few residents are upset about it because they think it's too big. It's not. In fact, it is only about 12 feet higher than the existing church at its highest point and will be much lower than the church had been at the west end where the new sanctuary is located.
City staff, cautious to a fault, r...
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City staff recommends Brightwood viewplanes be eliminated |
JANUARY 10, 2011
A report by city staff to the Harbour East Community Council for its next meeting Thursday recommends that viewplanes from Dartmouth's Brightwoood Golf Course be eliminated. The city position is that viewplanes from privately owned property are not to be protected. The staff report also recommends that existing viewplanes from the Dartmouth Common be continued if updates to the city's mapping are made. Staff had requested a review of Dartmouth viewplanes some time ago due inconsistencies in the view plane mapping. The staff report is important for development in downtown Dartmouth as it also suggests the city review its policy regarding building height and form in the area. The bureaucrats w...
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United Gulf Revises Plan for Halifax West High School Site |
 DECEMBER 23, 2010
United Gulf Developments is moving ahead with its proposed mixed use project on the former Halifax West High School site on Dutch Village Road. The company says it took feedback from a public meeting last year and has provided the city with a revised plan that eliminates 14 townhouses that had been proposed and instead will consist of 100 residential units in two seven storey buildings, (east view above) the main floor of each which will be commercial space. An additional six-storey, 74,000 sqft commercial building will be located on Dutch Village Rd. The project will have 330 underground and 76 surface parking spots. Next step in the process: a staff report must be done on the revised plan ...
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Agricola liquor store site options |
 OCTOBER 31, 2010
Two drawings by Kassner Goodspeed Architects (above) are of a proposed 12-storey apartment building with townhouses and commercial space being considered by an Ottawa developer for the Agricola Street liquor store site. They were displayed at a public meeting last week and are on the website of downtown councilor Dawne Sloane. NSLC has an option to become a tenant in the project. Hair stylist and cafe owner Fred Connors, and Dimo Georgakakos, owner of Gus's Pub, were at the meeting and both say they support the project saying it would bring more people into the neighbourhood. The development does not yet have city approval.
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MacRae, WDC Go Public With Queen's Landing |
 OCTOBER 13, 2010
Waterfront Development Corporation, the province and and Ben MacRae's Armour Group Limited issued a press release today announcing the project, which includes 100,000 square feet of office space, a 200-room hotel, and underground parking.
The release goes on to say Queen's Landing will include a Visitor Information Centre; retail and entertainment areas; a 250-room hotel complex with meeting and convention space; an office building with more than 120,000 sq. ft.; and 70,000 sq. ft. of residential or other commercial space. There will also be new parks and plazas, children's playgrounds, wharves, enclosed public galleries and sacred spaces for memorials honouring our military heroes.
G...
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Gladstone North Work Underway |
 OCTOBER 5, 2010
Work is underway on the former CNIB and Corkum land at Gladstone and Almon Street for Gladstone North, a mixed use building being developed by Danny Chedrawe's development company, Westwood Group.
The new project will have 92 apartments in six storeys, consisting of one and two bedroom suites and four executive penthouse suites.
There will be 22,000 sqft of ground floor commercial space and two levels of underground parking for 108 cars.
It is the last stage of the project in which Westwood redeveloped almost the entire parcel of land between North and Agricola Streets along Gladstone over 10 years with a 14-storey apartment tower, a 14-storey condominium tower, townhouses and The ...
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On The Brightside |
 SEPTEMBER 30, 2010
Dartmouth property owner and developer Roger Eckoldt has signed a lease with Harbourside Engineering and Consulting for the 5,000 sqft of commercial space on the second and third floor in Brightside, his new mixed-use building at 19 Portland St. (Photo shows final construction work on top floors). His daughter Ursula Prossegger, who runs Urchin, the family's property management firm says asking price for the commercial space was $25 sqft (net).
Two one-bedroom apartments on the fourth floor of about 1,000 sqft are for rent at $1,500 each, including heat, water and a parking space.
Eckoldt will occupy the 2,500 sqft loft penthouse with 900 sqft roofdeck on the fifth and sixth floors. ...
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Westwood says three of five levels leased in Spring Garden building |
 SEPTEMBER 21, 2010
Michael Haddad, commercial leasing manager for Danny Chedrawe's Westwood Developments says the first three floors are leased of the four-storey building the developer is building at the northeast corner of Birmingham Street and Spring Garden Road.
Westwood was asking $21/sqft plus $6-7 operating costs for the 5,000 sqft floors.
TD Bank is moving from its location a block away and taking the street-level space and offices are spoken for on the second and third floors. There is also 5,000 sqft below-grade level for lease.
Haddad says the company was encouraged by interest in the building.
Westwood also owns all of the real estate along Spring Garden between Queen and Brunswick S...
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Zoning with a (Caribbean) Twist – A tragedy in Four Acts. |
AUGUST 31, 2010
Waye Mason blogs about "the new, black owned, busy and delicious Caribbean Twist restaurant at 3081 Gottingen Street (that) had been told that they had to close because the building was “not zoned for a restaurant.”
Another example of the tortuous process of trying to do something in Halifax metro.
Here's the link: http://bit.ly/9kVrBO
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The city should not protect viewplanes from private property |
 AUGUST 25, 2010
City planner Mitch Dickey says the city's philosophy is that views from private property are not protected
Dartmouth viewplanes established in 1977 included the privately-owned Brightwood golf club because at that time it opened its grounds to the public in the offseason. According to local residents that public access has stopped.
Harbour East Community Council is expected to discuss next month whether revisions or changes should be made to the view planes from Brightwood Golf Course and the Dartmouth Common.
CBCL is being paid approximately $25,000 by the city "for an evaluation of the existing viewplanes and to provide recommendations to make any needed changes to ensure the or...
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It's Scotia Square All Over Again |
 AUGUST 14, 2010 (POSTED BY: TOP BANANA)
Certainly the city needs more convention space, but not everyone is sold on the 'our-way-or-the-highway' approach of proponents for Rank Inc.'s plan for the Herald lands. The architect's model, left, looks like a retro clone of Scotia Square, the city's big, bland 'urban re-development' project of the 60s that saw blocks of mixed use buildings torn down to be replaced with walls of concrete. The center should be on the edge of downtown – not smack in the middle and we should learn from past mistakes. We need streetscapes with life and pedestrians; not another concrete Siberia.
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Regional Plan for Absurdity |
 AUGUST 11, 2010
With its focus on encouraging development and density on the peninsula HRM's Regional Plan sets out restrictions for rural development that lead to absurd, if not perverse land use.
Outside the central core a land owner can only divide a parcel of land of 25 acres or more into eight lots.
The Avalon Park development near Portugese Cove follows the rules, but to meet the restrictions the developer has created waterfront lots of extremely long narrow strips. Avalon Park is 550 acres with only 40 lots.
It's not the developer's fault. He wants to maximize the value of his land. It's the bizarre result of bureaucratic intent to control behaviour gone very bad.
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