Spring Garden Rd Redevelopment
 

Looks like SGR is getting a makeover next spring.

Spring Garden to get major makeover

Planners envision greener, more pedestrian-friendly street


Enjoy your quiet summer stroll down Spring Garden Road while you can, because this time next year, downtown Halifax’s busiest shopping district will be undergoing a massive reconstruction.

The sidewalks will be torn up, the power lines will be moved underground and the street will probably be narrowed. City planners hope it will all end up making Spring Garden Road more enjoyable for pedestrian shopping.

"We want to alert everyone that there are changes. You owe it to yourselves to get familiar with it," manager Bernard Smith of the Spring Garden Area Business Association told 50 or so business owners at the group’s annual general meeting Tuesday night at the Lord Nelson Hotel.

Barry Yanchyshyn, a landscape architect for Halifax Regional Municipality, told the meeting that the street renewal project will cost about $3 million and is to be carried out from May to September.

When construction is finished, he said, there will be more sidewalk space and cafes, better lighting, more trees and hopefully less traffic and parking.

"You’ve got to get transit to the place, you’ve got to get taxis to the place, you got to have handicapped parking stalls," Mr. Yanchyshyn said. "I question whether you need on-street parking."

Mr. Yanchyshyn said the streetscape will be designed as a comfortable place to walk and shop but through traffic will be discouraged. Every detail will be designed to accommodate pedestrians. The sidewalks will even be textured so blind people can recognize intersections and business entrances with a few cane taps.

Andy Fillmore, the city’s urban design project manager, also told business owners what changes are in store after the HRM by Design planning strategy comes into effect.

He said all ground-level development on Spring Garden Road will be reserved for retail or service providers. Buildings fronting on the street will have a height limit of just under 17 metres at the street. The buildings can go higher but the height over 17 metres must be pushed back from the street by about three metres.

"It ensures sunlight still reaches the sidewalks," Mr. Fillmore said.

"(HRM by Design) identifies Spring Garden Road as its own special precinct with its own set of objectives.

"To draw people, you have to provide that high-quality pedestrian environment that we’ll bring them. They’re not going to come to a service strip."

Coun. Dawn Sloane (Halifax Downtown) said she liked what she saw at the meeting, although she hopes construction can begin sooner to avoid the tourist season as much as possible. She said March would be ideal.

"I don’t want them to lose their customers to a big-box store," Ms. Sloane said.

There will be some public input into the Spring Garden Road improvements, but not as much as with other projects like HRM by Design.

The Spring Garden project is expected to go before council for approval early in the new year.

Ms. Sloane said the $3-million price tag, to be paid with tax dollars, is justified.

She said Spring Garden Road is a draw for people visiting the city. And with gas prices skyrocketing, she expects more people from outside the peninsula will move downtown, and Spring Garden plays an important role in the downtown lifestyle.

"This is our urban centre, this is our main walk," she said. "This is what people see, this is our flagship."

If they are going to discourage through traffic then they better offer an alternative. It acts as the southern terminus for Barrington St traffic that needs to turn west and is also a major transit route. I also wonder why the majority of this work needs to be done from May to September. SGR seems to work pretty well right now and I hope HRM's interference doesn't screw it up.

This sounds excellent to me. While SGR does technically "work" - a sprucing up would do wonders. Adding a few new benches and planter boxes, while a quick fix in the interim, is not a solution. Burying the power lines and widening the sidewalks will go a long way to making this street not only more pedestrian friendly, but more attractive for shopping, which is what SGR primarily is.

It was mentioned in the article they would still accomodate transit, taxis and wheelchair/accessible parking... just try and discourage so much through traffic, because it does get congested on that road which can be a bit of a turnoff to shoppers, I would imagine. It's a turnoff to me, any time I've done any window shopping on that road.
They'll probably try and encourage people to either take Morris and University, or Sackville and Bell Road. South Street could also handle the traffic very well, but it's a bit farther south and less convenient.

"She said Spring Garden Road is a draw for people visiting the city. And with gas prices skyrocketing, she expects more people from outside the peninsula will move downtown, and Spring Garden plays an important role in the downtown lifestyle."

How funny this statement is, considering she has been an anti development advocate on anything new, let alone the fact that the peninsula is very costly to move onto now.

South street could never deal with the traffic, its bad now.

Is it? Every time I've been on it at peak times I seem to get through relatively quicker. Quicker than queuing at the lights on Bell Road at the Willow Tree...

To some degree traffic can add to the perception of activity on a street and therefore make it seem more attractive to shoppers. It's good that they're just vaguely talking about "discouraging" traffic rather than banning it, and transit of course is essential for that street.

The sidewalks really do need to be expanded and on-street parking makes relatively little sense on that street. As for on-street parking, it should go, but is it even currently legal along the main stretch? They don't say exactly which part of Spring Garden they'll be renovating.

Anyway, overall clearly some maintenance on the street is needed and this is good news. I do think, however, that it would be better if they could do much of the renovation work outside of the peak May-Sep season. Also, I hope they announce a similar plan for Barrington soon that involved heritage restoration incentives.

This is great project! :D

Every part of this project sounds great. I only hope they consider cyclists in this project as well.

I think most of the drivers will use University Ave.

Trillium and Spring Garden Revitalization Time!! :D

I think this is great news. Getting rid of the power lines is a huge thing. It would add so much to the street. And widening the sidewalks will make it much more pleasant. I wonder how far down Spring they will go? I'm assuming it will be the area between South Park and Queen, but I would hope they would come right down to Barrington. I'm also assuming they will be putting in the natural gas lines too as they seem to have finally reached that end of town.

This sounds amazing. It'll make SGR even more attractive.

To me the money would be better spent on Barrington street first, then SGR. SGR works now, barrington is a dead. Doing SGR first i believe will further degrade Barrington street to a point there will be little to no hope for it.

No...they'll wait until the SGR renovations are complete and then tear up the street to put the gas lines in!

It sounds good to me, but two things jumped out as suspicious (in addition to the gas lines not mentioned in the article). First, how much of SGR are they going to do. $3 million isn't that much money these days. Burying power lines ain't cheap either. Second, why place height restrictions on the north side of the street if sunlight is your only concern. The last time I checked Halifax was still in the Northern Hemisphere, so should the sun still be in the southern sky.

Sloane said it was our flagship... isn't Barrington in her district? Isn't that our "Main Road"? When will that buffoon finally get voted out, and somebody with at least a 1/4 of a brain rep our main engine?

Hopefully this is the first step in turning SPR into our "Oxford". Buses, and Taxis, nothing else... <sigh>

I hope burying the power lines here will lead to more areas in the city doing it as well. Even just that alone will make such a huge difference.

Absolutely, this announcement could have been just about burying the lines, and I still would be ecstatic.

THIS might be an idea that can be incorporated into the SGR redevelopment.

Basically it is a "scramble" of pedestrians crossing an intersection with all traffic stopped. They are given something like 30 seconds to cross the intersection in any direction. They've introduced these intersections in the U.S., Vancouver and Toronto (just to name a few).

SGR is already a pedestrian controlled road and this idea would further attract more people to walk there while dettering traffic. Since they are planning to tear up the road it would be easy to install, and it would go along with the "green" idea for the revamp. I'm not saying install at all the intersections along the road, only a two or three intersections (South Park, Dresdon and maybe Queen). I can say from personal experience that if this idea was to work anywheres in HRM, SGR would be the best testing street.

This is what already happens on SGR, especially at Queen, even though the signals do not accommodate that. :stunned:

I've wanted to see them put in a pedestrian scramble at SGR and Barrington for years... you'll be lucky if you can get one or two vehicles through that intersection during busy pedestrian times...

THey're having an open house for this on Spet. 17 from 6pm-9pm at the Lord Nelson.

HERE is some information available.