[someone123]

ANS reported on this a bit tonight. Halef and Fares take possession of the lots on September 30. They are partnering with Plazacorp and are in discussions with the NSLC.

The plan is for two rental buildings plus a new flagship NSLC. They mentioned starting the first building in the spring, with the second to follow in 8 months.

It's great news that they're doing rental with retail. It seems pretty likely that they can follow through with an aggressive start date, whereas the highrise condo type proposals have often ended up in limbo. It will be great if in a year's time these are both under construction along with the new library and City Centre Atlantic expansion. Maybe we'll also hear about new plans for the Bank of Montreal/TD block soon.

Looks like there will be huge improvements for this part of the city! It would be great if the level of density/population hit a point where it could sustain some larger urban format stores like the ones that have set up shop in Toronto and Vancouver (Best Buy, Future Shop, Canadian Tire, Home Depot, etc.).

I would also love to see more of a plan to extend the Spring Garden retail area out along Queen Street and past South Park on Spring Garden Road. The idea would be to plan for medium- to high-density residential along those corridors with a strong commercial component. The area around Queen/Fenwick could be consolidated and turned into even more of a high-density node.