Welcome to Halifax, land of opportunity.
This week, the year-old HRM by Design forums shifted into phase four of seven, and focused on four major opportunity sites in the downtown Halifax and Dartmouth areas: Quinpool, Gottingen, Dartmouth Cove and the Dartmouth Shopping Centre (roughly, downtown Dartmouth).
If you happen to live in an “opportunity site,” don’t be offended. It’s nothing personal. It’s also not a condemnation of your community. But the four sites in question have been identified as not living up to their potential; not as friendly or accessible or beautiful or attractive as they could be.
It’s the first time that the HRM by Design has zoned in on specific Halifax neighbourhoods—as the massive urban design project has progressed, its focus has become more and more specific. On Wednesday evening at the Bus Stop Theatre on Gottingen, the planning team presented visual examples of new buildings that would be possible—and, theoretically, desirable—at the four sites around the city.
“Basically, this project is going from a sponge to pump,” says Andy Fillmore. As the city’s urban design project manager, Fillmore has been in attendance at almost every design meeting, public information session and workshop over the past 12 months. “We’ve taken in all this information, and now we’re putting out ideas that the public can latch on to, and see.”
Jennifer Keesmaat, a partner with the Toronto firm Office for Urbanism, holds a special affection for Quinpool Road—it’s been one of her focus areas throughout the project. It’s also an area with some of the greatest potential for change—think, the area surrounding the soon-to-be-demolished St. Pat’s.
“Halifax has a series of places that are significant barriers and they typically have to do with the transportation network,” she says. When she first arrived in Halifax, Keesmaat cycled the city to get a feel of how neighbourhoods connect. Quinpool presented a problem. “I’m thinking of Robie and Quinpool, the street that goes through the Commons—it’s a five-point intersection. Try crossing that intersection as a pedestrian! If it were a great pedestrian crossing, it would make a great connection to the downtown. But, as it is, it’s a barrier.”
Get past that barrier, continue towards downtown, and you run into another problem area: the “Staples block” on Gottingen Street, which includes the big-box store and a United Church living side-by-side—from a design standpoint, two completely mismatched neighbours that make a pretty unfriendly space.
“That Staples building, it’s not the kind of building we’d like to populate the majority of our downtown sites,” says Fillmore. “That’s part of the reason we’re here, in the BusStop on Gottingen. We wanted this forum in the north end.”
Keesmaat points out another contributing factor to Gottingen (one that Haligonians should all know and abhor by now).
“The Cogswell Interchange is not something to be understated,” she says, “but it messes up a whole series of urban design imperatives—like providing a great gateway into the city. It’s a mess of infrastructure that needs to be taken out.”
Although the latest forum has officially ended, HRM by Design still wants your input. The next forum will be focused on downtown districts, and will get underway in June. Between now and then, drop by HRMbydesign.ca and fire off an email about your ideal city. Think of it as an opportunity.
Here’s another opportunity: mikef@thecoast.ca
This article appears in Apr 19-25, 2007.
