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  #181  
Old Posted Jun 12, 2012, 12:02 PM
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There should have been an explicit trade off... "you get heritage protection in Schmidtville, leave SGR alone." Instead staff said HP is 6 years away, which is after the NSLC property will be sold. So there are no plans in place, which is really unfortunate.

What I heard at the open house was lots of people worried about the LC property, which is three blocks away and probably will not even be a Fares project.

The streets from Clyde to the cemetery are the last contiguous old stock housing from that era, and it protecting it is worthwhile.

I feel like a whole lot more communication and some more action could be going on that would satisfy most of those concerned...
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  #182  
Old Posted Jun 12, 2012, 5:27 PM
worldlyhaligonian worldlyhaligonian is offline
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Typical. There is nothing wrong with this proposal.

What is wrong with these people? They've never been to Europe?
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  #183  
Old Posted Jun 12, 2012, 5:44 PM
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Originally Posted by Waye Mason View Post
What I heard at the open house was lots of people worried about the LC property, which is three blocks away and probably will not even be a Fares project.
I do agree that it's a lot more reasonable to be concerned about the liquor store site than about a lowrise building across the street with a setback.

What's the HbD height for that lot? I'd guess that it's quite low? If the NSLC redevelopment is done properly it can be a good thing for the residential area.
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  #184  
Old Posted Jun 12, 2012, 6:00 PM
halifaxboyns halifaxboyns is offline
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The comments from FOS don't surprise me. The GM for the planning department out here retired and in his parting comments, he noted that the change that is being invisioned for Calgary is going to be tough on many communities. The fact is, some communities are resistent to change and Schmidtville is one example of that. 9 stories is a more than acceptable compromise considering the context of development around the site.

As to preserving the housing stock, they only have so much resources to go around. If it's going to take 6 years to do a heritage conservation district, it will take 6 years. It's either that or deliver a notice of motion through council directing administration to start it; but you'd better be prepared to find the $ to find resources for it.
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  #185  
Old Posted Jun 12, 2012, 6:25 PM
worldlyhaligonian worldlyhaligonian is offline
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The comments from FOS don't surprise me. The GM for the planning department out here retired and in his parting comments, he noted that the change that is being invisioned for Calgary is going to be tough on many communities. The fact is, some communities are resistent to change and Schmidtville is one example of that. 9 stories is a more than acceptable compromise considering the context of development around the site.

As to preserving the housing stock, they only have so much resources to go around. If it's going to take 6 years to do a heritage conservation district, it will take 6 years. It's either that or deliver a notice of motion through council directing administration to start it; but you'd better be prepared to find the $ to find resources for it.
Lol, how many groups are there now? Isn't it mostly just the same people again and again? Its a bunch of bullshit if you ask me.

HT,STV,FOS,FOPPP,FOCH,FOPG,EAC, blah blah blah

One thing is for sure, they are all NIMBY/BANANA
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  #186  
Old Posted Jun 12, 2012, 7:59 PM
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Originally Posted by halifaxboyns View Post
The comments from FOS don't surprise me. The GM for the planning department out here retired and in his parting comments, he noted that the change that is being invisioned for Calgary is going to be tough on many communities.
In a way Halifax might be worse than Calgary since in Halifax the growth is more moderate. Another difference is that a lot of people move to Calgary for economic reasons -- because it's growing -- whereas a lot of people in inner-city Halifax have simply been there for many decades. Areas like Spring Garden Road saw almost no construction from around 1990-2002 (there was LOTS of construction in the 1980's) and it seems like that became a new norm for many people.

Similarly in Halifax infrastructure problems develop slowly and it's hard to sell forward-thinking planning. There definitely seems to be an attitude in Halifax that transportation problems and the like aren't really a big deal and that they'll just sort themselves out, or something. We don't really need a third bridge, we don't really need Bayers Road widened, we can't have rail transit, but maybe we'll look at adding some new buses someday. Halifax's self image and planning regime is still in transition between a small town scale and the medium-sized city approach that will be required to tackle future problems.

Looking at Calgary's planning history really puts things into perspective. The C-Train was advocated in a 1967 report and the modern plan was adopted in 1977. According to Wikipedia construction started 1 month later, which I'm not sure has ever happened in the history of HRM. In 1977, Calgary had about 490,000 people. Right now Halifax is probably around 413,000.
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  #187  
Old Posted Jun 12, 2012, 8:00 PM
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I think a heritage district there is a good idea, and I think that it would be easy to put controls/stays on construction/development in that area PENDING the completion of a comprehensive plan.

It isn't the fault of the residents that they are promised a heritage area and the municipality doesn't have the resources to do it fast enough to actually do any good. I understand their frustration.

I think an HD on one side of the street and 30 foot setbacks, wide treed streets, retail at grade (100% at grade) and a 9 story building with a setback at 4 stories on the other can work! These concepts are not mutually exclusive in my mind.

The lack of trust and understanding of the new process says to me HRM has not done a good job of liaising and communicating with residents. This is arguably part of the councillors job, but it is also staff too.
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  #188  
Old Posted Jun 12, 2012, 8:50 PM
worldlyhaligonian worldlyhaligonian is offline
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Similarly in Halifax infrastructure problems develop slowly and it's hard to sell forward-thinking planning. There definitely seems to be an attitude in Halifax that transportation problems and the like aren't really a big deal and that they'll just sort themselves out, or something. We don't really need a third bridge, we don't really need Bayers Road widened, we can't have rail transit, but maybe we'll look at adding some new buses someday. Halifax's self image and planning regime is still in transition between a small town scale and the medium-sized city approach that will be required to tackle future problems.
I think part of the problem is that people actually believe we have an acceptable public transit system.

Its the worst one I've ever been on, and that includes some pretty far flung places.
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  #189  
Old Posted Jun 13, 2012, 5:12 PM
halifaxboyns halifaxboyns is offline
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Originally Posted by Waye Mason View Post
I think a heritage district there is a good idea, and I think that it would be easy to put controls/stays on construction/development in that area PENDING the completion of a comprehensive plan.

It isn't the fault of the residents that they are promised a heritage area and the municipality doesn't have the resources to do it fast enough to actually do any good. I understand their frustration.

I think an HD on one side of the street and 30 foot setbacks, wide treed streets, retail at grade (100% at grade) and a 9 story building with a setback at 4 stories on the other can work! These concepts are not mutually exclusive in my mind.

The lack of trust and understanding of the new process says to me HRM has not done a good job of liaising and communicating with residents. This is arguably part of the councillors job, but it is also staff too.
Putting controls on land development is outside of the scope of HRM - that is what the issue was when the Regional Plan was occuring. There was a lot rural subdivisions occuring which staff had concerns would put the goals of the plan in jeoprady but they had no mecahnism to stop accepting applications or stop subdivision - they could only refuse them and were trying that and being over turned at the UARB. So they had to go to the Province and get a ministerial order that temporarily limited subdivision in the rural area, which was repealed once the Regional Plan came into effect.

There is an inherant right in law that a land owner can make an application and must expect for it to be reviewed and a decision made. When property is zoned, they have a legal right to apply for the uses allowed on the land and go through the process, have a decision rendered and have a right to an appeal. If the city takes away zoning ability (down zones) there have been cases where a property owner has saught compensation and won. I suspect if you took away all development rights; you'd see a lot of court challenges because one could argue its practically an expropriation.

The only way to 100% guarentee no development occurs is for the city to own the land. Then they can decide when it gets developed.
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  #190  
Old Posted Jun 13, 2012, 7:10 PM
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I suspect if you took away all development rights; you'd see a lot of court challenges because one could argue its practically an expropriation.
This actually happened with some of the land around the Bedford Highway that was part of the estate Peter Kelly was dealing with. At one point the city decided to preserve some woodland and as part of that they down-zoned nearby private properties, effectively turning them into park land without paying for them and destroying much of their value. The details are in one of Tim Bousquet's articles.

How did the regional planning actually deal with exurban development? It seems like there's less of it now but I don't know many of the details. I think one of the solutions was to have a maximum density to severely cap how much housing could be built..? One approach would be development fees -- it wouldn't then be necessary to try to stop the development proposals because the craziest ones wouldn't be financially viable.
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  #191  
Old Posted Jun 13, 2012, 8:48 PM
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Architect Geoff Keddy wrote a letter to AllNovaScotia complaining about the round windows.

Can't say that I think he's wrong, but round windows certainly don't seem like the type of complaint that will end up being substantial.
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  #192  
Old Posted Jun 14, 2012, 2:30 AM
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There's an article about this development in The Coast: http://www.thecoast.ca/RealityBites/...readerComments

It has a slightly different version of the rendering:


Most of the responses and the article itself are pretty confused. Tim Bousquet has chimed in with a theory about how the developer might get around the "affordable housing" rules by offering 20% discounts on penthouses, which does not on the face of it appear to make any financial sense. If we're assuming a 20% discount for a fixed number of units the best choice is to discount the lowest value units. This is normally what happens in other cities and it's fine.

I find this part of the article particularly misleading:

the property height restriction is seven storeys but developers can bypass HRM by Design rules if public amenities are included

The rules are not being bypassed. The provisions for added height in exchange for affordable housing are part of the rules. It seems the FOS are adopting the old STV/Heritage Trust trick of adding their own spin to HRM rules. They used to be fond of commenting that sites had "40 foot height limits" that developers were trying to get around. Totally misleading. In reality there was a framework for as-of-right development under that height or the development agreement process under the MPS.
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  #193  
Old Posted Jun 14, 2012, 2:05 PM
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We have seen HRM put temporary stays on development before, right? This issue is whether it is forever or short period of time. I remember that the stopped rural permitting around the time they were putting parts of the regional plan in place? Some time ago, 10-12 years?

Quote:
Originally Posted by halifaxboyns View Post
The only way to 100% guarentee no development occurs is for the city to own the land. Then they can decide when it gets developed.
Well that would solve the issue, just ask the prov to either hand over the NSLC property or even just let HRM do a development proposal process on the land like the Sister Sites RFPs. You could address the residents concerns by requiring design and massing that meets the look and feel of the historic area.

There are a lot of ways to solve problems like this, I'm open to ideas... but part of what HRM does so badly is anticipating stuff like this and working to ameliorate the problem.
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  #194  
Old Posted Jun 14, 2012, 2:14 PM
halifaxboyns halifaxboyns is offline
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Originally Posted by Waye Mason View Post
We have seen HRM put temporary stays on development before, right? This issue is whether it is forever or short period of time. I remember that the stopped rural permitting around the time they were putting parts of the regional plan in place? Some time ago, 10-12 years?
Yes they did, but that was not because they had the power to do so, it was through an order in council from the Province that applied very strict restrictions and did so on a temporary basis.

That's a very nice rendering - looks good. Tim couldn't figure out planning if he was given a how to course, I'm not worried about his comments. I am a little surprised that the FoS didn't use their typical arguments about taking away from parking for the local businesses but it seems that one fell on deaf ears. I should say, we have a new General Manager of Planning out here in Calgary and as I've researched him, his blog on urban planning issues is very interesting. Rollin Stanley is our new GM and he has some great comments about interesting places, but my favorite was this one: 'No place is worth visiting that doesn't have a parking problem'. I'm excited he's in charge, should be really interesting!

Last edited by halifaxboyns; Jun 14, 2012 at 2:32 PM.
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  #195  
Old Posted Jun 14, 2012, 4:25 PM
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I have to agree with Geoff Keddy about those round windows...
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  #196  
Old Posted Jun 14, 2012, 6:02 PM
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There are a lot of ways to solve problems like this, I'm open to ideas... but part of what HRM does so badly is anticipating stuff like this and working to ameliorate the problem.
I am not really sure the root cause of this poor performance is. I don't know if it's that they're too busy and understaffed, that they are disorganized, or that they create problems for themselves. Maybe it's all 3. Stuff like Jazz and the 5 month delay for Fenwick just makes me shake my head, and the NSLC is the kind of thing that seems obvious to look at but you know it'll sit there for a while.

As I've said before, when I spent some time in other cities like Toronto and Vancouver I was amazed at how things just get done. Everything in Halifax feels like a trainwreck with months or years of bureaucratic delays. Here in Vancouver it's not uncommon for a private developer or the government to announce a major project, begin work within a couple of months, and complete it on schedule.
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  #197  
Old Posted Jun 14, 2012, 9:26 PM
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I have to agree with Geoff Keddy about those round windows...
Absolutely. They look like something you would buy at Rona.

I am unimpressed with the overall design. Looks pretty ordinary for such a prominent site.
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  #198  
Old Posted Jun 15, 2012, 10:15 AM
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Absolutely. They look like something you would buy at Rona.

I am unimpressed with the overall design. Looks pretty ordinary for such a prominent site.
This will be a nice test of the design review committee... see if they can get rid of those windows and make it a bit more exciting.
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  #199  
Old Posted Jun 15, 2012, 4:23 PM
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I have to agree with Geoff Keddy about those round windows...
I'm not understanding people's various subjective comments in opposition to these circular windows. These windows are my favourite part of this project. The building itself seems fairly typical, and the windows add something different than what we see in most buildings around the downtown. I don't find the break in pattern from 'square' to 'circle' that offensive...

To what horrible things are people associating these windows?
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  #200  
Old Posted Jun 15, 2012, 6:02 PM
pchipman pchipman is offline
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Although I do not feel offended by them, I do feel they are too small. They just look ineffective to me.
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