Old Halifax

[ILoveHalifax]

10 years ago when I moved to Halifax, friends dragged me to Parade Square to see the New Year's fireworks. I nearly froze to death. However, I was very impressed with the display as it was reflecting in the glass of the TD building.
So I vote for another glass mirror highrise. Come to think of it what a great place for residential with a view over the Square. Granville side office and Barrington side residential. How high can we go?

[ILoveHalifax]

Originally Posted by Drybrain

Oh, no the ceilings are too low! Guess it's useless then! (Sarcasm.)

It can be gutted and rebuilt inside in a contemporary fashion—which, as I have tried to point out exhaustively on here, is called "adaptive reuse", and has been done many, many, many times, around the world, successfully. Whether you think it's worth the effort on a small building is one thing, but this is one of the grandest, largest, most visible old structures in the city/province/Maritimes. Tearing down should not even be on the table. It would be an act of civic vandalism on par with removing Keith Hall or something like that.

What I read is if they were to try to save it (the facade0 they would have to add a few feet per floor to get proper ceiling height and that would most likely destroy the appearance of the building.

[Drybrain]

Originally Posted by ILoveHalifax

What I read is if they were to try to save it (the facade0 they would have to add a few feet per floor to get proper ceiling height and that would most likely destroy the appearance of the building.

There is no "proper" ceiling height, just preferred. I encourage you to take a walk through NYC sometime and marvel at the streets full of buildings with obsolete ceiling heights. As to how high can be built here, 28 metres under HRMbD.

Here's what I don't understand: Rather than try and preserve what is clearly one of the very best buildings of its era in the city, the province, and in fact the country, people just immediately go, "well, it's old and there are certain challenges with reusing it. So rather than try and solve those problems, knock 'er down."

We need to exercise more imagination with building out city. There are lots of other places to put new glass towers.

[ILoveHalifax]

Originally Posted by Drybrain

There are lots of other places to put new glass towers.

I don't think so! Every site with every old slum seems somebody wants to save it.

[Keith P.]

BTW, that report from 2006 gave estimates for 5 options regarding the Dennis. The cheapest was demolition and new construction. Just to be accurate and all.

[Drybrain]

Originally Posted by Keith P.

BTW, that report from 2006 gave estimates for 5 options regarding the Dennis. The cheapest was demolition and new construction. Just to be accurate and all.

I think you misread: Under "total cost" it said the cheapest were options 1 and 4--preserve with minimal changes to the structure, or preserve and remove every other floor to create higher (I guess way higher) ceilings.

Low ceiling heights make it untenable as Class A office space. No problem: make it residential or Class B. So many choices.

[someone123]

The biggest challenge when it comes to running a government or running a city like Halifax is that you have to balance the disparate needs and desires of many different groups. Some people don't care about heritage buildings, but they are inherently valuable to others, so a balanced solution is for the government to put some amount of effort into saving them. The province can't afford to spend tons of money, but a creative solution might not cost much at all, and it could be a big win when you consider how unique the Dennis Building is. It's not true that Halifax has tons of buildings like this -- it really only has a few blocks of nice stone buildings centred around Province House. This area should be considered a very special heritage district. There is nothing else quite like it anywhere else in Canada.

The ceiling height issue seems like it would be less of a problem if the building were converted to residential, or maybe it could just become some sort of lower cost incubator space for new businesses downtown. There are lots of empty sites nearby for the province to build on, like the surrounding parking lot, the empty lot by the AGNS, the Queen's Landing lot, etc., and there is vacant space in some existing office buildings downtown.

[Keith P.]

Originally Posted by Drybrain

I think you misread: Under "total cost" it said the cheapest were options 1 and 4--preserve with minimal changes to the structure, or preserve and remove every other floor to create higher (I guess way higher) ceilings.

Last page of the report summarizes the options. Cheapest per sq ft is demo & build new. They buried that nicely.

Low ceiling heights make it untenable as Class A office space. No problem: make it residential or Class B. So many choices.

Brilliant. Let's turn it into MLA apartments to appease the public who seem to want out-of-town MLAs to sleep in the back seat of their cars in the Province House parking lot rather than pay them a housing allowance. I can see it now: a penthouse on top for the Premier; the top floors for govt members; the middle floors for the official opposition; ground floors for the other parties. Perhaps they can construct a gaol in the basement for those MLAs who are convicted of expense fraud or other misdeeds. We would need to construct underground parking below the gaol to allow cars to be removed from Province House, but that should only be a few dozen million, unless they find historic artifacts, in which case the cost could cause the province to go bankrupt in the name of some 18th century broken bottles.

This is a fine adaptive reuse of an otherwise unusable heritage building and will have a payback of 200 years or so, which seems appropriate.

[Antigonish]

Check out this video from 1989. Driving tour through downtown from Gottingen all the way to Spring Garden Road. Lots of changes since then!!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BQ4hUuArFbs

[HaliStreaks]

Originally Posted by Antigonish

Check out this video from 1989. Driving tour through downtown from Gottingen all the way to Spring Garden Road. Lots of changes since then!!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BQ4hUuArFbs

Lot's of changes for sure, however, there are lots of spots where other than the models of the cars driving around, everything is still pretty much the same.. and several of those are places where things should've progressed at least SOME in 25 years.. lol

[Drybrain]

Was hoping to see the pre-fire NFB site, and the buildings on Barrington across from the Grand Parade that were demolished in 89, but the guy behind the camera pans away from them.

Music is amusingly bizarre though, especially with all the fast zooms into the harbour at the beginning.

[someone123]

Originally Posted by Drybrain

Was hoping to see the pre-fire NFB site, and the buildings on Barrington across from the Grand Parade that were demolished in 89, but the guy behind the camera pans away from them.

It is frustrating -- like they were trying to avoid showing all the stuff that would be interesting in retrospect. One interesting corner they did show is Spring Garden and Queen (this video was posted here a while ago and some bigger pictures of the white corner Radio Shack building were posted back then).

It's actually pretty hard to find pictures of many sections of the downtown, particularly from the 1940-2000 period. 90% of the photos are of the same old landmarks that are mostly still there today.