It’s round two for three non-profits given a second chance. Tuesday was the deadline for the groups to submit a proposal for the former St. Pat’s-Alexandra school property.
About 30 people attended a meeting last week to hear about the bid. If council votes in favour of the proposal, the building would become a hub for community programs, the non-profits said at the meeting. The groups, now calling themselves the North Central Community Council, have a five-year business plan, and want to build a low-income and market-rate housing development on the property.
Mi’kmaq elder Tom Christmas said at the meeting he didn’t agree with the proposal the first time because the three groups weren’t working together, but now that there was collaboration, he had changed his mind.
Two years ago, the city ranked the groups’ separate bids for the property against for-profit proponents on a scale that gave points according to financial offer. The non-profits lost. But a Supreme Court judge ruled the city didn’t follow its own rules and ordered HRM to re-offer the property to any interested non-profits.
Their second chance is different, for a few reasons. This time the groups held community consultations and organized the bid together. And this time MLA Maureen MacDonald arranged for the previous NDP government to give the groups $50,000 to hire a consultant.
Last time, pastor Rhonda Britton of the Richard Preston Centre for Excellence did not find out about the RFP until after the deadline had passed, so she asked for the deadline to be extended. The North End Community Health Centre meanwhile did not submit a bid, and instead asked the city to subdivide the property and have the winning proponent sell them the school building for $1. At the time the NECHC wrote in their proposal that they had “no fiscally responsible option for submitting a proposal for the site.”
This time it appears they do. “We’re not about to do something we can’t afford,” Mi’kmaq Friendship Centre director Pam Glode-Desrochers said at the meeting.
However, the groups were deliberately vague about their business plan. Britton said the NCCC would not release the plan until HRM sees it. Nothing in HRM’s call for submissions prevents the groups from speaking publicly about any aspect of their proposal.
“We don’t want to transgress in any way in case we are disqualified,” NECHC director Margaret Casey said. Grounds for disqualification include attempting to contact any member of council, staff or the evaluation team in relation to the application.
Another concern is how the proposal will be evaluated. Last time, city staff used the wrong scoring system. This time the NCCC is worried the scoring is too subjective. “It is almost purely subjective,” Britton says. “This has been a concern since the beginning.”
The criteria are content compliance, viability, compensation and benefit to the municipality. “The evaluation will be qualitative in nature and there will be no scores or weighting assigned,” the call for submissions states.
To be successful, two-thirds of council must vote in favour of the proposal.
The proposal could also be derailed by JONO Developments’ appeal of the Supreme Court decision that gave the groups another shot. The appeal goes to court in May.
Joe Metlege of JONO Developments says he offered the groups an acre of land on the nearly four-acre property, including part of the school and the community garden, but they declined. Casey couldn’t recall the details, but said the deal didn’t meet NCCC’s needs.
It would be a shame if the diverse, historic population were to move out due to encroaching development in the neighbourhood, Casey said after the meeting. “This proposal will hopefully prevent that.”
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This article appears in Nov 14-20, 2013.
HRM wants the money for the Savage stadium.
I have been travelling around NS weekly for about seven years and Truro has impressed me the most with their sidewalk clearing.I can only remember twice when there method was not better than HRM,s.They use sweepers instead of plows and with the uneven sidewalks and plows not touching the ground consistently hrm does not come close to comparing in the quality of work done. I have previously mentioned this to an HRM Councillor.
This whole thing has been a terrible waste of time and money for all concerned. The site is HUGE. There is more than enough space to accommodate the non-profits and allow for new development. Allowing for both is in all of our interests. If space was made for both, the non-profits would get to expand on the good work they’re already doing, while allowing for new development in the urban centre is more sustainable and a goal of the Regional Plan. It should have never been an either or, it should have been both.
spaustin – HRSB needs a site for new school in that area and the community needs and deserves a community centre and daycare; combine the needs and a smart government would consider a major renovation of the school and include the community centre – all of which would fulfill the vision of the long ago ‘Imagine your school’ process. The ‘Imagine your school’ documents are available online at HRSB. There are plenty other sites close to downtown for expensive high rises and who believes all the proposed buildings will come to fruition.
On the NCCC website they’re demanding 150 million $ Never going to happen, besides the Appeals Court just voted in favour of Jono