Quote:
Originally Posted by fenwick16
This is an old article from January, 2010
Some of the delay in this project might be because of the complexity as indicated in this January 2010 article. It sounds to me as though Ben McCrea really is doing all he can to save these buildings.
The more that I read about Ben McCrea the more admiration that I have for all that he has done for heritage preservation in Halifax.
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I went back last night and re-read the AllNS articles on Waterside, because I was having trouble keeping the entire sequence of events straight in my head (failed council vote, URB hearing, passed re-vote etc etc).
Having done so, on the balance of things I do think that I will somewhat reverse what I said earlier about the blame being equal. From all the details I read, I do genuinely think that he did only begin demolition in the good faith belief that the easement issue was going to be simple and quick. He has since admitted in AllNS that he should not have begun demolition without having everything finalized.
It is very unclear as to whether he would have gotten the pre-leasing he needed anyway, but it is definitely true that it is virtually impossible to pre-lease a building for which you can't say for sure when you will be able to start because of the city dragging its feet.
I do still think that McCrea can be overly "whiney" about others peoples projects rather than simply promoting the merits of his own, and that sometimes turns me off. BUT, regardless of that, I do agree with you that it would seem that the city owns the majority of the blame for this situation based on what has been reported.
PS: On a semi-related note (given the bad rap that developers seem to get in this city with some of the public seeming to think they are just money hungry) the Medjuck family today announced that they are donating $1M to the QEII Foundation for a new cardiac lab, in honour of their daughter.