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What the hell is wrong with you people? The downtown is drying up & blowing away, and the BLIP is so full on a Saturday night at 6:30 that you have to line up for an hour to eat crap food at a chain restaurant. Like we needed Dartmouth Crossing! Get your priorities straight.
—city gal
This article appears in Jan 28 – Feb 3, 2010.
21 Comments
Downtown can blow away for all I care. It’s overpriced crap restaurants suck. Dartmouth Crossing rocks!
Um, what does the BLIP have to do with Dartmouth Crossing? DC is attached to Burnside…
carsand mosher going now too….
downtown is going to be only banks, restaurants, and waterfront pretty soon.
any retail downtown is getting to be a rarity and doesn’t seem to be drumming enough business.
ah well, what can ya do? hire an URBAN PLANNER perhaps?
we’ve got on here to spare…. he’s still looking for something to do.
If the downtown is drying up and blowing away, there’s obviously a reason. I work in one of the office buildings right on the waterfront, and I live just outside BLIP, but I detest coming down here when I don’t have to simply because of the parking alone (I have a car, but bus-it during the week. The buses are only feasible M-F during rush hour- outside of that I have to get three buses to get home from downtown).
I hate having to hunt for a place to park (especially in the winter). And you can’t easily move your car to go to a different area of the downtown (i.e. waterfront vs. upper Spring Garden near the Public Gardens). It’s fine if you have the time to kill walking around – but generally speaking, I don’t.
So, I suspect BLIP might be favoured by some beacuse it’s:
– BLIP has guaranteed parking (and is notably free!);
– No hills/everything is located within a relatively small area (not far to walk once you are parked, or you can easily move and park closer to your chosen destination).
– There are also a varied (albeit generic) relatively more inexpensive store options.
– For anyone who doesn’t have a car and lives any distance off the penninsula, it is not easy to access downtown via transit outside of rush hour.
Maybe if it wasn’t so damn expensive to live near downtown there would be more people about to support the businesses. AND they would have the cash to do so instead of paying to be cool and live downtown…
Excellent bitch
Sprawl is outta control in this town. Fun fact: it’s expensive to live downtown BECAUSE most of the development is happening off the peninsula. We ought to institute an urban growth boundary like many other cities have (Portland, Boulder, Toronto, Ottawa kinda, Vancouver).
Downtown was dying way before Dartmouth Crossing was built. Barrington Street is nothing more then a Bus Corridor and looks like shit.
The Hurricane was the begining of the end for Downtown Halifax. It’s never really recovered after that.
Halifax is doing nothing to promote business downtown.
both downtown areas have been dying for a looooog time.and why is ha,you might ask?look at the parking thing,bus service and of course the shitty bars and the outragious prices on everythng.i think that should give a few clues.
Barrington St smells like piss and there is nothing there except hobos. Renaissance used to be cool, is it still there?
stop tearing down heritage buildings; tax breaks for downtown revitilizing or it will go to rat shit.
Downtown Halifax and Downtown Winnipeg are the best examples of what not to do to a city.
For the rest of Canada their are some great downtowns, Quebec, Montreal, Ottawa, Toronto, Calgary, Vancouver. All these cities are thriving.
I don’t get what the problem is with Halifax.
“hire an URBAN PLANNER perhaps?
we’ve got on here to spare…. he’s still looking for something to do.”
I believe that may be MEEE! Yes, hire me… please. Save me from this never-ending vicious cycle of posting on LTWWB and not finding a proper job. Actually, if I get a job with HRM, I’d probably be on here posting more due to being bored sitting at work twiddling my thumbs.
Anyway, in case anyone’s curious, the HRM planning department already has a wonderful plan that should see downtown Barrington Street swarming with yuppy’s enjoying more designer labels, nice lattes, and everything else that a new revitalized, vibrant, “Heritage District” Barrington Street has to offer over the next couple of years. Read more about it here if you’re interested (no, I haven’t read it all in depth yet, but I assume it’s pretty exciting):
http://www.halifax.ca/planning/documents/planning…
Barrington may be experiencing a low at the moment, but it’s bound to get back on it’s feet again in one way or another some time as new shops take advantage of lower rents and government incentives (anyone else still interested in this strip club idea we were talking about a few months ago?). This is all just part of the “urban cycle” that cities go through. Besides, there are plenty of other cities with worse downtowns than ours. Saint John, New Brunswick, for example.
At the same time, it may never be the same again. Times change, cities change, but it’s not necessarily a bad thing. It’s all subjective, really. Get used to it.
i’m afraid your moral apptitude is a little lacking for this position q; perhaps a little decorum in your personal bitching life would be in order:)
Morals? Ethics? Huh, what’s that?
Thank God this is an anonymous Bitch board! Hey, everyone has their dirty, dirty little secrets.
oh Q….
that’s a 6 year old plan.. and proposed by the Heritage District Steering Committee.
boo-urns.
You could come up with a better plan squatting on a map and spattering shit hard as you can. You can finger-paint in the names later.
If anyone has baan to a successful “downtown” you’d realize that its not all these artsey fartsey hemp made incense infested tree huggin stores that make up the entire tenants but there is a lot of big names with a scattering of independant places. Think queen and john in toronto or sainte catherine in montreal – all the big names then the small restos and pubs come in to take advantage of the crowds and the smaller independant guys who make the cut might be able to have a decet go of it. For those who think a vibrant downtown consists entirely of the aforementioned tree hugging variety of shops needs to get their head out of their hairy leaf-wiped arse and smell the starbucks brewing.
good point ustwess, st caths is all about the le chateau (x 2), oakley factory store, mavi, banana republic, starbucks, second cup, a few tourist traps, benetton, roots, crocs (?!?) etc and then the side streets have awesome cafes and pubs. In Halifax we get people with poles up their ass if a Chickenburger opens on Queen and Spring Garden. Honestly, the city sucks and it isn’t only the fault of city hall.
yeah, what ever came of that? I still don’t see chickenburger ….
though rosa’s relocated to thirsty duck territory.
True ‘ustwest’, look at how crowded Starbucks on Spring Garden Road always is. Meanwhile, Just Us! on Barrington Street is never that busy, but imagine the uproar if it was replaced by Starbucks! People here would have a fit, but then get used to it and be enjoying their Pike Place dark roast frappacinalatte whatevers in no time.
And zZz, don’t worry: HRMbyDesign is also now in place to save not only Barrington Street, but all of Halifax! We’ll get those latte-sipping incense candle loving Yuppies crowding Barrington Street in no time.
Another thing: while Barrington Street may be dead, just go up the street a few blocks to Argyle, which is always quite vibrant. We’re only a city of just about 400,000 people, people! We can’t have every street being “vibrant” and lined with restaurants, sidewalk cafes, bars, fancy shops, etc. Every city in the world has shitty streets, streets in transition, streets which were once nice but are now shitty, etc. Even in Montreal, while Saint Catherines Street downtown is nice overall, just head east and see how sketchy it gets. Some strets come back to life, some don’t. That’s just the way she goes, it’s this whole “urban cycle” thingy (proper planner speak there). At least it hasn’t turned into an East Hastings Street, and probably never will.
DARTMOUT CROSSING ROCKZZZZZ !
You have multiple enterences & exits ! I don’t have to go into the city or anywhere near that horrible traffic nightmare that is Chainlake Drive, shopping area.
Dartmouth Crossing rules, downtown Halifax teeters & drools !
I love those “hybrid or alternate fuel vehicle only” signs they have in front of a certain store in Dartmouth Crossing. One less prime parking spot a disabled/pregnant/elderly person can’t park. Is this supposed to somehow redeem you for setting up shop in a place that caters to car culture? Seeing the GMC Jimmy parked in that spot when I was there made me chuckle.