Construction cranes are swinging above the site, cement tucks line up on Argyle Street to deliver their loads and four floors’ worth of parking garage are materializing in the slowly filling pit, but there’s still no approved plan for the Nova Centre complex, no development agreement, no building permits issued.
That’s because Halifax council has exempted Joe Ramia from the rules that every developer in the city has to follow, and is allowing Ramia to build everything in his proposed project up to the street level. Council says the rest of the project—all the above-ground stuff, the two towers, including the publicly financed and managed but privately owned convention centre—will have to follow the rules. And those rules require that the development first be approved by a group of citizens called the Design Review Committee. If the Design Review Committee rejects the proposed design of the Nova Centre, Ramia could conceivably have to tear out all the below-ground stuff he’s building now, and start again.
That probably won’t happen, however, because at a December council meeting, in a closed-door secret part of the meeting, after the TV cameras were turned off and the reporters kicked out of the room, council appointed two new members to the Design Review Committee. One of the two was Noel Fowler, an architect hired by Ramia to design the Nova Centre. After council made the appointment, it voted to make to make the appointment known publicly, but besides changing the committee membership list on its website, no effort was made to actually notify anyone about the appointment: no press release was issued, and Fowler’s name isn’t in the meeting minutes.
When the Design Review Committee considers Nova Centre—probably in a couple of months—Fowler will be required to abstain from the discussion. But he’ll be sitting at the table for every meeting before and after, working closely with people who will ultimately decide the fate of his own project. Fowler hasn’t returned a call from The Coast, but a city spokesperson insists social relations won’t influence the committee’s work. We’ll see.
This article appears in Jan 30 – Feb 5, 2014.
Design review committee, I.E. A bunch of uncreative dipshits that couldn’t succeed in their own regard, thus feel compelled to push their own agenda into something they should stay the fuck away from. When will people learn DESIGN BY COMMITTEE ALWAYS CHURNS OUT GARBAGE. Fuck these people and let the man do his job.
Well, Bastard Fish, design review committees are par for the course in the world’s biggest and most architecturally ambitious cities. They’ve actually been pretty effective at improving designs and holding developers to higher architectural standards. It’s not design-by-committee–it’s a panel of peers passing judgement.
And the DRC is not composed of “uncreative dipshits”, as should be evident given that Ramia himself is on it. It’s full of city planners, architects and developers who ARE successful in their field.
Let me just say the architect/landscape designer to structural engineer ratio is discerning. Maybe with all those combined efforts, we’ll end up with something as original, unique and striking as their new name “The Halifax Convention Centre”.
What’s this Nova Centre you speak of? Do you mean the Halifax Convention Centre?
Tim, it was patently unfair for you to single out Noel Fowler. Just look at the make up of many city committees. As a former city councillor, the heritage advisory committee was “stacked”with anti development members, the special events advisory committee was filled with the hotel industry, destination Halifax was all industry and the Greater Halifax Partnership all business. Is this wrong….no…every person on every committee is a volunteer who has the vested interest of the region and gives hundreds of hours to these meetings. As you constantly point out, we are a mid size city so the volunteer pool becomes midsize. KUDOS to ANYONE who volunteers their time and effort to promote our region.