[Image-1]
Spoke too soon, it seems.
Yesterday’s announcement that Market Street would close for two weeks to accommodate Nova Centre construction caught the public, and the street’s businesses, by surprise. But it appeared a compromise had been reached late yesterday that would allow pedestrian access to Inkwell Boutique and Applehead Studios.
Then EllisDon Construction had to go frig shit up all over again.
Inkwell owner Andrea Rahal found the street already shut down today, despite permits only allowing Argyle Developments and EllisDon to move in their gargantuan construction crane starting Tuesday morning.
City officials say the closure today was only planned for “ten minutes” or so, but the length of the shutdown doesn’t change its legality.
“That doesn’t matter,” says Halifax spokesperson Jennifer Stairs. “You can’t close it without our permission.”
Argyle Developments has already failed to give proper notice to the affected businesses about next week’s street-takeover, which they are legally required to do. Yesterday, Rahal told The Coast that agents for the developer had apologized and blamed the mix-up on construction moving “too quickly.”
Jennifer Stairs rightfully praised Rahal for getting photos and alerting everyone to these infractions, but that’s not much comfort to the business owner who’s been left frazzled by the lack of communication.
“I don’t believe anything anyone says anymore,” she says. “I’m starting to think nobody knows how to pick up the phone anymore.”
Calls to the Halifax office of EllisDon went unanswered.
Inkwell will be open regular hours this Saturday and Sunday if you want to show them some love before Rahal takes a much-deserved day off on Monday.
Related Stories
Market Street shut-down
The Magic is gone on Barrington Street
This article appears in Aug 28 – Sep 3, 2014.
Oh for fuck sakes…this is barely a tweet let alone an actual story. If your business can’t handle being inconvenienced for a couple of hours while they move a crane, you should shut the doors.
Considering that this construction project has been going on forever, and will continue for even longer, I think it is perfectly reasonable for the local businesses to be concerned about this sort of thing. Unplanned or prolonged street closures have a ripple effect in general traffic flow around the area as well. Hopefully EllisDon and the city can start communicating more effectively with each other as well as the affected businesses.
LOL – B**n reads my comments, and considers them worthy of mockery.
Properly chuffed, I am.
Ohhhh, you mean it doesn’t directly affect you so who gives a fuck…accept you need to run your mouth about how insignificant it is just to voice your negative opinion. Was that what you were going for there?
The headline and the “frig shit up all over again” do very little to improve The Coast’s reputation as a reliable and responsible media outlet. Is this a real link or did someone hack the site? Or is Frank Mag the new competition for The Coast?