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  #81  
Old Posted Dec 9, 2012, 9:32 PM
Drybrain Drybrain is offline
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Originally Posted by worldlyhaligonian View Post
Obviously the HRMxDesign one is impossible.
The built quality of this area is so horrible, though--obviously Purdy's Wharf isn't going anywhere, but a lot of these structures are worth demolishing. We're talking about parking garages here--those facilities can be relocated on a rebuilt site, or better yet, undergrounded. The HRMxD plan includes more east-west connections, which is crucial for pedestrian-friendliness and facilitating a proper neighbourhood in the area--if that isn't paramount, there's no point in removing the interchange.
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  #82  
Old Posted Dec 9, 2012, 10:03 PM
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It hardly seems to make sense to demolish relatively new structures that serve a useful purpose just to recreate a historical street layout that has no practical context today.
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  #83  
Old Posted Dec 9, 2012, 10:28 PM
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Originally Posted by Keith P. View Post
It hardly seems to make sense to demolish relatively new structures that serve a useful purpose just to recreate a historical street layout that has no practical context today.
It's not to recreate the historical layout exactly, just a pedestrian-amenable layout with more through-street. Really, it's the blockbusting superstructures that are there now, oriented to an inner-city highway, that are really obsolete and anachronistic, constructed in that unfortunate part of the last century when fine-grained urbanity was mowed down for mediocre stuff like Scotia Square. The pendulum is well on its way to swinging back the other way, so there's no reason to tear down the highway only to retain all the other unfortunate elements of the built environment. Normally I'm not one to advocate for demolition over reuse, but we're not talking about heritage buildings here, or even plain, workaday old buildings that can be adapted to different uses. They're parking garages, and that's all they'll ever be.
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  #84  
Old Posted Dec 9, 2012, 10:51 PM
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Originally Posted by Drybrain View Post
It's not to recreate the historical layout exactly, just a pedestrian-amenable layout with more through-street. Really, it's the blockbusting superstructures that are there now, oriented to an inner-city highway, that are really obsolete and anachronistic, constructed in that unfortunate part of the last century when fine-grained urbanity was mowed down for mediocre stuff like Scotia Square. The pendulum is well on its way to swinging back the other way, so there's no reason to tear down the highway only to retain all the other unfortunate elements of the built environment. Normally I'm not one to advocate for demolition over reuse, but we're not talking about heritage buildings here, or even plain, workaday old buildings that can be adapted to different uses. They're parking garages, and that's all they'll ever be.
The parking garages support Purdy's and the Casino. Without them the utility of those two developments is significantly reduced. I would guess that each has at least 6 levels of parking and you cannot go that far down that close to the harbor to put them underground as you state. I would not want tax dollars used to relocate them.
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  #85  
Old Posted Dec 9, 2012, 11:29 PM
ILoveHalifax ILoveHalifax is offline
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Originally Posted by Drybrain View Post
It's not to recreate the historical layout exactly, just a pedestrian-amenable layout with more through-street. Really, it's the blockbusting superstructures that are there now, oriented to an inner-city highway, that are really obsolete and anachronistic, constructed in that unfortunate part of the last century when fine-grained urbanity was mowed down for mediocre stuff like Scotia Square. The pendulum is well on its way to swinging back the other way, so there's no reason to tear down the highway only to retain all the other unfortunate elements of the built environment. Normally I'm not one to advocate for demolition over reuse, but we're not talking about heritage buildings here, or even plain, workaday old buildings that can be adapted to different uses. They're parking garages, and that's all they'll ever be.
Maybe after we tear down the parking garages and rebuild the old street network we can rebuild the old buildings that were there.
Any luck we can find some rats to infest them as well.
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  #86  
Old Posted Dec 10, 2012, 12:32 AM
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Originally Posted by ILoveHalifax View Post
Maybe after we tear down the parking garages and rebuild the old street network we can rebuild the old buildings that were there.
Any luck we can find some rats to infest them as well.
Oh, now--it's pretty well become urban-planning dogma that urban-renewal projects like Scotia Square/Cogswell were more damaging to cities than they were beneficial. Today, the most wealth-generating parts of cities across North America (outside of financial districts), tend to be the ones with a lot of repurposed older buildings, street-facing storefronts, and old-fashioned street networks.

The "rats" comment is just silly. Neighbourhoods in Halifax, or anywhere else, didn't get run-down because the buildings were old; they got run-down because of a lack of investment and interest. It doesn't matter how new or old the buildings are--Uniacke Square is run-down, even though it's only 45 years old. Granville Mall, built in 1863, is in great shape because it's a place people want to spend time in. It's about desirability. And people in 2012, especially younger people, increasingly desire walkable urban environments, with well-maintained old buildings if possible. Robert Moses is dead, and so are his ideas.
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  #87  
Old Posted Dec 10, 2012, 12:35 AM
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Originally Posted by ILoveHalifax View Post
Maybe after we tear down the parking garages and rebuild the old street network we can rebuild the old buildings that were there.
Any luck we can find some rats to infest them as well.
Good point ILoveHalifax. I wish many of the heritage buildings such as the Pentagon Building still existed but we can't recreate the heritage that has been lost.

I wouldn't mind if the Cogswell Tower and parking garage were torn down. However, I would want it to be replace with something ultra-modern. I don't think that the Purdy's Wharf parking garage looks that bad.
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  #88  
Old Posted Dec 10, 2012, 12:43 AM
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Granville Mall is in great shape? It didn't really look like that when I was back in August. It seemed to be more or less treading water, with a couple of successful businesses and some empty storefronts. Fundamentally the downtown core seems to be suffering from a lack of residents, and larger modern developments (e.g. 250 unit Bank of Canada apartments) can bring in a lot more population than the old buildings can or could sustain. If we did rebuild everything by Cogswell I think there would still be an imbalance and vacancies because the space available would not fit modern demands.

Scotia Square is unappealing to a lot of people but in terms of financial return for its owner it is probably a very successful development. To this day it has a high office occupancy rate (something like 95%) and it's been around for decades. Purdy's Wharf similarly isn't very pedestrian-friendly but it is a desirable office complex that commands high rents and has a high occupancy rate. Meanwhile, many of the older buildings downtown remain underused or are being converted to residential because they are not very desirable as office space or because they cannot satisfy the demands of many tenants. Heritage buildings can't satisfy the TD, RBC, or IBM type tenants who want on the order of 100,000 square feet of space. Many NIMBY/STV types don't seem to get this at all, or if they do they don't acknowledge it.

I agree that it is preferable to build balanced neighbourhoods that are pedestrian-friendly and have a mix of buildings and modes of transportation. I also think that in a lot of cases organic (free market) growth creates better end results than heavy top-down planning exercises where bureaucrats or developers have to anticipate what people want. Yet another problem is that developers often create externalities when they are not kept in check; they'll create buildings that are profitable but bad for neighbourhoods as a whole that might not generate much net benefit to society.
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  #89  
Old Posted Dec 10, 2012, 4:32 AM
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Granville Mall is in great shape? It didn't really look like that when I was back in August.
Oh, I just meant that physically the structures are in good shape (i.e., old doesn't mean rundown). I know there's some trouble with the business model around there.

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Heritage buildings can't satisfy the TD, RBC, or IBM type tenants who want on the order of 100,000 square feet of space... larger modern developments can bring in a lot more population than the old buildings can or could sustain. Many NIMBY/STV types don't seem to get this at all, or if they do they don't acknowledge it.
That's true, and I'm definitely not in league with the STV camp. (I'm excited for Nova Centre, for example.) But Halifax has a high vacancy rate for class A office space, and building a giant office tower is not really the savviest business decision right now. We need the kind of start-up and small business incubation a city of our size can really excel at, leveraging the city's reputation for quality of life, and the university population. That's what'll keep people here post-grad, and that's what attracts the bigger companies--not big office developments and tax incentives, which rarely work anyway. Halifax is simply not going to become a big, muscular player on the international or even national business scene, not in the short term. Our goal shouldn't be to compete with Calgary and Toronto or whoever--we're in the league of Portland, OR, or Boulder, CO.

I think the idea of "modern" demands vs., I guess, "historic" demands is a bit fallacious. Cities today need basically the same things cities of the past did: walkable neighbourhoods, a mix of building types, large spaces and small spaces, old and new. So as older buildings become less attractive for large companies, we still need to keep them around--they'rel small-business incubators, breeding the next round of innovation.

Anyway, I kind of lost the thread from the Cogswell discussion. Basically, we can afford to lose the parking garages, which, really, aren't built for "modern" purposes, anyway, but for mid 20th-century purposes.
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  #90  
Old Posted Dec 10, 2012, 4:44 AM
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Originally Posted by Drybrain View Post
But Halifax has a high vacancy rate for class A office space, and building a giant office tower is not really the savviest business decision right now.
I'm not sure how much the class A vacancy rate downtown matters given how old some of the office towers are. Waterside in retrospect was a great business decision because they managed to sign on RBC. In the future, maybe the current RBC building will become cheaper office space suitable for companies that couldn't afford a new building and might have otherwise moved out to a place like Burnside. To me, aggressive building seems very positive for the downtown core regardless of vacancy rates, as long as heritage buildings aren't demolished.

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We need the kind of start-up and small business incubation a city of our size can really excel at, leveraging the city's reputation for quality of life, and the university population.
I agree with this, although I think it's important to recognize that Halifax has a mix of different businesses with different needs. It has the regional banking offices, for example, that need large amount of space and can afford to pay for new buildings. A mix of old and new buildings will support the widest possible variety of downtown businesses.

It would also be good to see more inner-city business areas outside of the old downtown area. If some of the business campus type development in Burnside instead were directed to, say, Young Street, it would be a lot better for the city.
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  #91  
Old Posted Dec 11, 2012, 2:34 AM
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Originally Posted by ILoveHalifax View Post
Maybe after we tear down the parking garages and rebuild the old street network we can rebuild the old buildings that were there.
I think the best case scenario would be to replace the Purdy's and CasinoNS parkades with structures that include both parking and other uses (office and/or residential and/or storefront). The current Purdy's parkade looks awful IMO and would look even worse if it were much more exposed (which it will be once the interchange comes down). I am skeptical that we should expect the redesigned Cogswell area to be an incubation area for small-scale, local businesses though. More likely what will happen is that the new spaces will have higher-than-average rents compared to the rest of downtown (as new developments generally do) and we'll see a lot of established companies moving into that area, along with hopefully more residents, which in turn would allow small startup companies to take over adjacent, older underused areas like Granville Mall and the downtown sections of Barrington and Gottingen Streets. I also see a lot of potential in the mall portion of Scotia Square if it is fixed up a bit and treated more like a real downtown mall rather than a glorified convenience store for the office workers elsewhere in the complex.
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  #92  
Old Posted Dec 11, 2012, 2:19 PM
OldDartmouthMark OldDartmouthMark is offline
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Originally Posted by Drybrain View Post
Oh, I just meant that physically the structures are in good shape (i.e., old doesn't mean rundown).
That being said, weren't the buildings in Granville mall gutted and rebuilt while maintaining the original facades sometime in the '80s? Therefore, they are actually relatively new (1980s vs nineteenth century, that is).
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  #93  
Old Posted Dec 11, 2012, 2:37 PM
OldDartmouthMark OldDartmouthMark is offline
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Originally Posted by Keith P. View Post
The parking garages support Purdy's and the Casino. Without them the utility of those two developments is significantly reduced. I would guess that each has at least 6 levels of parking and you cannot go that far down that close to the harbor to put them underground as you state. I would not want tax dollars used to relocate them.
I have to say I shudder every time I read about people wanting to remove parking from the downtown. I think the concept of making the downtown completely pedestrian friendly and car unfriendly is way too idealistic, even if you build more residential property downtown.

While I'm sure nobody will disagree that HRM's current transit system is woefully lacking, even if a good transit system were in place it is not practical to eliminate or even reduce downtown parking. Not everybody wants to or can afford to live downtown, and Halifax does not have the weather of, say, California. I don't know about everybody else here, but if we're getting a typical Nova Scotia rain and wind storm or snow/sleet/slush or just freakin' cold weather I'm not taking the bus to go downtown. I'm driving or I'm going elsewhere.

Not to mention if I'm in a time crunch, for example leaving work (not in the downtown area) to go to the Maritime Centre to have my passport renewed. By the time I messed around with transit I may as well write off my day, whereas a quick car trip, park in one of the public parkades, it's an hour at the most.

If we want to take my 88-year-old mother-in-law downtown, we're not taking the bus.

Everybody wants a strong and healthy downtown area, but if you make it difficult for people to get there (and park there), they are going to choose more convenient locations to go to and spend their money.

While I agree that the Cogswell interchange in its current state has limited usefulness without the rest of the originally planned highway system, to consider tearing down everything that is car-friendly for some idealistic place where everybody will happily bus, walk and bike to, will be selling the downtown area short, IMHO.
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  #94  
Old Posted Dec 11, 2012, 3:47 PM
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That being said, weren't the buildings in Granville mall gutted and rebuilt while maintaining the original facades sometime in the '80s? Therefore, they are actually relatively new (1980s vs nineteenth century, that is).
The west side was rebuilt, but the east side is original.

Re: lack of parking—I agree, we can't go ignore the needs of drivers. But those garages take up loads of prime land, and I suspect (though I don't know) that they were built at a time when we over-estimated the need for parking. There are two—maybe we only need one? If the Cogswell goes and a new community is constructed here, Upper Water Street will become a neighbourhood street again. Nobody wants seven-storey parking garages occupying an entire block of their neighbourhood.
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  #95  
Old Posted Dec 11, 2012, 3:58 PM
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Originally Posted by OldDartmouthMark View Post
That being said, weren't the buildings in Granville mall gutted and rebuilt while maintaining the original facades sometime in the '80s? Therefore, they are actually relatively new (1980s vs nineteenth century, that is).
Actually happen in 1972, and the section of which the Delta Barrington and Boston Pizza are located were essentially tore down and additional floors added.
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  #96  
Old Posted Dec 11, 2012, 6:27 PM
OldDartmouthMark OldDartmouthMark is offline
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Originally Posted by Drybrain View Post
The west side was rebuilt, but the east side is original.

Re: lack of parking—I agree, we can't go ignore the needs of drivers. But those garages take up loads of prime land, and I suspect (though I don't know) that they were built at a time when we over-estimated the need for parking. There are two—maybe we only need one? If the Cogswell goes and a new community is constructed here, Upper Water Street will become a neighbourhood street again. Nobody wants seven-storey parking garages occupying an entire block of their neighbourhood.
Good points. I wonder what the actual usage level of the parkades are. I know the casino's parkade can be pretty much full in the evening when there is an event going on (from personal experience) whereas the parkade next door is somewhat empty at night (again, from personal experience). However, I imagine the opposite is true during the day, when the casino's business is slow and the other parkade would be full from Purdy's wharf workers.

Unless there was some kind of business arrangement between the owners of the two parkades, I can't see doing without either (just speculation on my part).

That being said, look at all the "free" parking areas on the streets on any given night or weekend - you can drive around for quite awhile before you find a spot (the reason I tend to go to the parkades - I'd rather spend $6 on parking than drive around for a half hour looking for a spot. Also, the pedways are a nice way to get further up into the downtown in bad weather.

There is definitely a need for some kind of parking structure downtown (and as mentioned, underground isn't practical close to the water - maybe further up the hill? Would be expensive, though...).
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  #97  
Old Posted Dec 11, 2012, 6:28 PM
OldDartmouthMark OldDartmouthMark is offline
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Actually happen in 1972, and the section of which the Delta Barrington and Boston Pizza are located were essentially tore down and additional floors added.
Thanks for the information - for some reason I thought it was done later than that.
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  #98  
Old Posted Dec 11, 2012, 9:38 PM
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The parking issue seems to highlight one of the biggest issues in planning: the need to satisfy a bunch of people who all have different needs and desires. Some trips will be made by students on bikes, some will be made by 88 year olds who pretty much need to be driven to their destination. Some people just need to commute to one location per day and others need a car all day. Good planning implies balancing these concerns and making rational trade-offs to support different modes of transportation. Unfortunately, a lot of comments you see in the Herald or so on come from a single perspective (e.g. middle aged South End homeowner perspective) and do not reflect the needs of the city as a whole.

I think the question of whether or not to keep the garages is highly artificial. In practice, if they were to be demolished there would be some replacement plan (as with the TexPark) or larger redevelopment plan. It would be bad to tear down the garages with no plan, but it's easy to imagine a new development that includes a few different residential buildings, each of which also have some parking, for example. The parking "problem" has more to do with availability in key locations close to where people want to go rather than the overall number of stalls downtown. Similarly a lot of the downsides are more a result of bad design than the parking itself. It makes a lot of sense for the city to try to incorporate moderate amounts of underground parking in new developments. The giant Purdy's-style garages were never that great.

This whole debate is reminiscent of Clyde Street, where some surface lots are disappearing but where the number of parking spaces is going to increase as a result of development. The Nova Centre will also have underground parking. In the future it might be the most convenient spot to park if you want to be in that neighbourhood. There's no reason why a Cogswell redevelopment plan can't be the same.
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  #99  
Old Posted Dec 12, 2012, 9:56 PM
OldDartmouthMark OldDartmouthMark is offline
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The parking issue seems to highlight one of the biggest issues in planning: the need to satisfy a bunch of people who all have different needs and desires. Some trips will be made by students on bikes, some will be made by 88 year olds who pretty much need to be driven to their destination. Some people just need to commute to one location per day and others need a car all day. Good planning implies balancing these concerns and making rational trade-offs to support different modes of transportation. Unfortunately, a lot of comments you see in the Herald or so on come from a single perspective (e.g. middle aged South End homeowner perspective) and do not reflect the needs of the city as a whole.

I think the question of whether or not to keep the garages is highly artificial. In practice, if they were to be demolished there would be some replacement plan (as with the TexPark) or larger redevelopment plan. It would be bad to tear down the garages with no plan, but it's easy to imagine a new development that includes a few different residential buildings, each of which also have some parking, for example. The parking "problem" has more to do with availability in key locations close to where people want to go rather than the overall number of stalls downtown. Similarly a lot of the downsides are more a result of bad design than the parking itself. It makes a lot of sense for the city to try to incorporate moderate amounts of underground parking in new developments. The giant Purdy's-style garages were never that great.

This whole debate is reminiscent of Clyde Street, where some surface lots are disappearing but where the number of parking spaces is going to increase as a result of development. The Nova Centre will also have underground parking. In the future it might be the most convenient spot to park if you want to be in that neighbourhood. There's no reason why a Cogswell redevelopment plan can't be the same.
That's pretty much the point I wanted to make... that eliminating the structures without a plan to compensate for the reduced number of parking spaces would not be a good idea.

Personally I think that parking structures such as this are somewhat unsightly, but... very functional. I wouldn't shed a tear if the structures were replaced with some other type of building (i.e. mixed office/retail/parking, etc.) as long as it didn't reduce the number of available parking spaces in the downtown area.
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  #100  
Old Posted Mar 20, 2013, 11:59 AM
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There is a feature on the Cogswell Interchange in the CBC. Lots of information around its history and what the vision is for the future.

http://www.cbc.ca/ns/features/cogswe...?section=intro
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