[Halifax Hillbilly]

I'm not sure I'd be against some of the proposed height restrictions in parts of the downtown. One reason we see so little development in downtown is because most of the land is worth a small fortune. The reason it's worth so much is because everyone feels that if they are outside the viewplanes they can take a shot at a big project. If you think you can put a twenty storey tower on a piece of land than you'll pay a pretty good price for it. United Gulf wouldn't have put up $5 million plus for the Tex Park site if they could only have built to eight stories. The price of land in downtown Halifax is inflated because people are buying with the expectation of putting up towers.

How many towers can Halifax support? Probably not a whole lot, even if we speed up the aproval process the market probably isn't big enough to support a lot of huge projects. Tex Park is pretty ambitious, as is the Brewery Market. How long will it take to fill in the huge holes in downtown if we encourage these kinds of development? A lot longer than if the height limit is eight or ten storeys (I do think seven is too low), the price of land drops, and smaller projects are economical. Personally I'd like to see four projects like W Suites in the downtown than one twenty storey tower.