Development issues have come front and centre at city hall, with so much construction in the works that there’s a reported crane shortage in Halifax. And the much-celebrated ship building contract may or may not result in more and better paying jobs for the bulk of the population, but the building industry is anticipating high rents whether pay increases or not, and so we can expect still more apartment and condo projects in the months and years ahead.
The immediate effect of this upturn in the building industry is two-fold. First, city council is being asked repeatedly to simply ignore HRM By Design, the five-year process that involved over 5,000 citizens and millions of dollars. The HRM By Design consensus was basically that the regulatory process around development be streamlined, so long as new projects fit into a set of design and height restrictions.
The “streamlining” part of the consensus has been a huge success; city staffer Andy Filmore told council last week that projects now move through the bureaucracy in 60 days, which stands up as among the fastest approvals in the country.
The design and height part of the consensus, however, apparently has been ditched. Last week council allowed a resurrection of the abandoned Twister Sisters project on Hollis Street to move forward to public consultation. Called “Skye Halifax,” the new proposal is, at 48-storeys, more than double the height limit for the site outlined in HRM By Design. City staff recommended against allowing it to proceed, but council rejected that advice. Judging from comments from councillors, it appears they have no desire to adhere to HRM By Design, begging the question why they adopted it in the first place. Perhaps to increase public cynicism.
With Skye moving forward, there’s no logical regulatory reason for the bureaucracy to oppose the joint YMCA-CBC proposal for the corner of Sackville and South Park Streets, which likewise is double the height limits set out in HRM By Design. In this instance, staff supported the proposal, and council happily agreed. A public hearing will be set to hear what will no doubt be ignored opposition to the project, and that will be that. The flood gates have been opened; HRM By Design can be ignored with impunity.
The second effect of the building boom is on the north end. Hydrostone-area residents are resisting what they say is haphazard, unplanned development of mid-rise apartment buildings in the neighbourhood. Some recent projects have been pretty good, but others are among the ugliest in Atlantic Canada. Neighbours want a comprehensive plan for the area, something like HRM By Design was supposed to be for downtown, but if that too is going to be ignored, what’s the point?
The lower north end, too, is reeling from development pressure, as epitomized by the St. Pat’s-Alexander controversy. On June 12, a judge will issue a ruling on the North End Community Health Clinic’s bid to stop developer Joe Metlege from taking over the site.
This article appears in Mar 1-7, 2012.
I would be interested to know how much HRM By Design actually reflects opinion-responsiveness governance. Policy formation and design is in many ways dominated by interest groups and a true reflection of what the public wants is rarely ever gauged properly. I think a dismissal of any project brought before council that does not adhere to what should be no more than a guideline serves no one – unless we truly believe that uniform standards reflect how a public feels on every decision.
You state one benefit of HRM by Design in your article. It allows the council/city to streamline projects that will definitely meet the requirements of the public. HRM by Design is achieving all that it could reasonably be used to achieve. If the consultation process does not remain fluid, considering the pros and cons of individual projects, we’ll end up with a city that possibly ends up reflecting the opinions of citizens at a static period in time. Careful consideration of projects that do not meet those guidelines the path to a city that reflects where we are today.
The YMCA project very much reflects my point. It doesn’t meet the height guidelines, but the YMCA contributes an incredible amount to improving our community. If they need to add a couple of stories of condos to fund the excellent services they do for those less fortunate, then we need to consider the opinions of those who benefit from those services – those who I can almost guarantee were not overly participating in the consultation process for HRM by Design.
This can’t be true Tim.
The perpetual CBC pundit Don Mills keeps telling listeners and viewers that noting is happening and council is to blame. Is he just a liar or does he have an agenda ?
This is a really twisted view of the situation.
The first problem with this view is that it supposes that the plan must be followed 100%. Problem is, the plan was full of errors from day one and no plan is ever going to be 100% correct. The population and employment projections used in the past by the city are now wrong. The open space requirements set for developments had unintended consequences and are being changed. Some of the height limits were also clearly misguided from the beginning — some limits around South Street were amended to discourage redevelopment of heritage buildings (this is a dumb idea but actually is a motivating factor behind some height limits). Some of those buildings burned down and now the limits are being changed.
Clearly there must be room for modifications to the plan.
The next incorrect assumption is that the whole thing will come crashing down if HbD is amended for some developments. That is false. Many developers will still elect to follow the quicker basic procedure, and even for cases like the YMCA proposal there have been procedural changes that came about because of HRM by Design.
Something that is being overlooked in the buzz around these projects is that HRM by Design is not just a set of height limits. It is a comprehensive plan for the downtown area, of which height limits are only one part. As someone who participated in the HRM by Design workshops, I can also say that the height limits imposed on most of the downtown (the Cogswell lands being a notable exception) did not seem to be compatible with many of the plan’s other goals.
The height limits seemed arbitrary at the time, as they do now, and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the general public or make economic sense. One thing that makes me and many others feel as if the numbers were picked out of a hat is that the height limits for many properties downtown are lower than the buildings that are currently on these properties. This means that if these buildings were to be redeveloped (or were damaged by fire or natural disasters), they would have to be rebuilt SHORTER THAN THEY CURRENTLY ARE as-of-right. This was never explained in the reports, and seems like an accident.
Having also attended the planning sessions for Dartmouth Cove, I have to say I like the approach of those sessions a lot more. Basically the planners/facilitators asked participants what kind of features they wanted the community to have (and they wanted a range of housing options/prices, a market, retail, various types of open space, a marina or boat launch, a commuter rail stop, etc.) and then came back with a basic model of the type of scale of construction that would be required to support all of these things. Although some people wanted nothing over 6 storeys, the final presentation acknowledged that some buildings would have to be as tall as 18 storeys to make the developments financially viable for developers and affordable for citizens. Because of this rationale, people didn’t mind the 18 storey buildings, because they saw that the increased density allowed the neighbourhood to be more self-sustaining. The HRM by Design approach, if I remember properly, did not correlate the scale of development with the types of services that could be supported. I think that if a review were done, and there were a better understanding of this relationship, people would be much more accepting of taller buildings and increased density.
There are also provisions in HRM by Design that allow projects to go to public hearing and potentially be approved if they do not conform to the plan but offer significant benefits to the citizens of HRM – the YMCA is a prime example of this; Skye perhaps less so, and certainly in a less obvious way.
So to say that HRM by Design is “being ignored” is not true. One aspect of HRM by Design – the height limits – is being downplayed because of a clause built in to the plan that says we can do this if the circumstances warrant it. It would be nice if the local media would report accurately on this instead of stirring up controversy.
This doesn’t invalidate HRMByDesign at all; the author is way too eager to call this plan dead. It would actually be nice to have some pragmatic, professional conversation instead of the hyper-dramatic ‘the sky is falling! we’re failing again’ panic whenever something happens.
We can move forward with Skye and the YMCA; and that doesn’t mean the plan needs to be thrown out. Move forward Halifax!
I like the new progressive attitude that I see in the Halifax area. It seems as though a more progressively minded, forward thinking generation is making their voices heard. That includes support for proposals such as the Skye.
Hopefully Halifax will see many more exciting proposals in the future while still being able to maintain its heritage. Old and new can exist side by side. Halifax doesn’t have to be mired in the past.
HRM by Design is fatally flawed. It pandered to the heritage and anti-development groups by establishing unrealistically low building heights and by getting far too specific around design details and materials. Then it was oversold by Council and the proponents as a panacea to all our development debate problems. Nothing ever is that, unless you live in a country with central planning like Tim seems to prefer. When you have people investing their own money into projects, no planning document can be expected to anticipate their desires. Stop trying to dramatize what is simply a normal process of give and take.
HRM by Design being intended to get projects through more quickly is great, but the mere existence of a set of regulations such as by Design shouldn’t prevent the development of other projects that don’t fit into the mold.
Moving projects quickly through the cue so long as they meet previously agreed upon requirements frees up time to look at projects that don’t.
A set of standards intended to make things go quickly shouldn’t mean that nothing that doesn’t meet those standards is approved, it should simply mean that if the standards are met than council doesn’t have to be bothered with it. They can deal with other matters, and look into issues relating to heights and designs of buildings only when they don’t meet the criteria.
Wow… have to say I am pretty impressed with the thoughtfulness of the responses, which to me are far better articulated than the article itself!
This “sky is falling” attitude is simply tiring, and in no way reflects reality. Developers can and often will choose to submit development proposals that match HRMbD, knowing that by doing so the process will be streamlined. However, it is well within a developer’s rights to propose a development opportunity that does not match HRMbD, with the knowledge that by doing so the process is longer, and more costly/difficult. For Tim and others to somehow purport that the HRMvD policy is without flaws, must not be questioned, and clearly is the word of God himself, is nothing but snobbish and self-serving.
The fact is, we need to stop focussing on height alone, and begin to look at developments holistically. Does this development improve the quality of life for the city, for example by providing services of public benefit? Does it add to the vibrancy of downtown by increasing population density? Does it provide environmental benefit by reducing the need for new infrastructure, providing walking distance access to amenities, and exist along transit routes? I find it more than a little ironic that many who purport to be environmentally friendly actively support views that work to decrease urban density.
In some cases, the above criteria may mean significant height, either for reasons of density, or for reasons of decreasing the cost per unit and allowing for the money saved to either improve the quality of the building or provide public benefit. In other cases it may mean a building that does not need significant height. A great example of the latter is the Vic Suites, which has become a new landmark in the city for attractive well integrated architecture, without needing to be a “skyscraper”. Both are needed in different contexts within Halifax, and both can co-exist.
Colinjmac hit the nail on the head in his first few sentences. Tim says that HRMbD involved about 5 thousand people. That’s not a high percentage of citizens, not even of citizens who might have some level of an opinion on development. Is there any reason to believe that the huge majority of people who self-involved themselves with HRMbD simply didn’t have particularly strong opinions on the subject, maybe an axe to grind? On any of many sides of the questions?
Common sense pretty much says that HRMbD did *not* accurately gauge true public opinion, not then and not now.
Folks are mostly saying here that we should deal case by case. That’s what I’m thinking. And although this might seem like a stunning, radical suggestion, I’m also thinking that it’s the city councillors who have got the job of making the decisions. Last I checked – and I know this is hopelessly naive – the councillors actually were supposed to represent the opinions of their constituents. If we are looking for a mechanism that – in theory – should tell us what folks are thinking about certain things at any given time, why, aren’t we paying a bunch of elected people to do just that?
HRM By Design seems like a broadly well-designed plan that progressives would support, so when I clicked this story, I figured it would be about the the plan being ignored in favour of sprawling suburban development.
Instead, the beef seems to be that new development is TOO dense. Look, we can’t just hand developers the keys to the city. But as long as development is heritage-sensitive and, in neighbourhoods like the lower North End, involves housing and social assistance for lower income people, why oppose it? Haligonians might treasure the North End, but to out-of-towners, a big swath of it looks like a bunch of run-down shacks bisected by Gottingen, one of Canada’s grottiest main streets. The future of the neighbourhood should lie in attracting more residents and prosperity, while maintaining the best of what makes the place special right now. (As an aside, Halifax is blessed in that its growth is slow and predictable, so the sort of ultra-rapid gentrification that we see in Toronto and Vancouver isn’t happening here. But development must occur; the solution to gentrification isn’t stagnation.)
The biggest problem with many of Halifax’s new developments has nothing to do with density, but simply that they’re ugly. Case in point: That horrendous Westwood apartment building on Gladstone. What a piece of junk…
It is so refreshing to hear that development in Halifax may finally get going on the bigger scale projects. I do understand the sensitiity to Heritage buildings and to a point to view planes, but hell I personally would love to sit in a rooftop restaurant at The Sky 48 stories above the street and have that incredible view inside the Citadel Fortress. There I have said it, sue me, but I think Haligonians sometimes miss out on what this city “can be” not just what it has been.
Density is what it is all about if we are ever to have that dynamic downtown that we so much crave, a place where TAGNS, Nova Scotia Art Museum and everything else that is urban can be utilized to it’s fullest and downtown can be a 24 hour spot for those that wish to have that experience.
Halifax is on the verge of a potential boom probably like we have never witnessed. Would it not be fabulous for those Maritimers who have gone west to have the chance to come home and help build up this great city and for those folks from small towns all over the East Coast that need to find work, that Halifax can be that logical choice. Keep our young people here and create an incredible city, it’s not so unrealistic.
If anyone thought that this “HRM by design” was going to be chipped in stone, you really had your heads up your asses. This is a growing city, with a growing population and constantly changing needs. I remember my grandmother (who grew up on Isville street) telling us stories about how the airport was on Chebucto Rd, and that fairview and Clayton park used to be farmland. Guess what people, Halifax grew up!! You can’t get the tax base you need to support a vibrant downtown with short stubby little 7 story buildings, and you can’t attract the customer base needed to support local businesses when your target demographic lives a half hour away, lost in urban sprawl with places like Bayers Lake and Dartmoth crossing as competition. Cities all over the globe are being built “up”, not out. You can’t push your customers and tax base out, at the same time expecting your city and businesses to flourish.
HRM by design is a short sighted waste of time and money, and just another example of this incompetent city councils favoring of special interest groups. Wake up council, progress will happen here, now, or in 20 years when the Heritage Committee is long deceased. Stop wasting everyones time with non progressive policies, and for the love of dog, please stop with the rediculous plans to build a stadium to “attract a CFL team”. It’s just sad to watch.
Not everything is about height, or protecting a view from the inside of a fort. Developments like these get a lot of investment into them, and really help bring up the areas and bring a lot into the community. The YMCA proposal is great at what it does, it address the street properly, it has nice set backs and will give back to the community in providing a new YMCA center. You really cannot ask for anything more.
Just because it doesn’t agree with HRMBD doesn’t mean it shouldn’t go through or people are ignoring HRMBD, it’s a great proposal that will HELP the city instead of going against it. After all it’s DOWNTOWN it’s the place for height and density, the place for high quality developments. As pointed out by other commenters, 5000 people doesn’t represent a large majority of people in HRM and it sure doesn’t sit well with me.
I’m not saying that we should destroy everything that was, and replace it. But I am saying that it is time to embrace positive change, Halifax has a massive chance here to better itself with all the private and public investment we are getting. And someones view of an oil refinery shouldn’t take over the greater good in developing our city. Halifax has enough spawl more high quality development downtown can only be a good thing! And people like Tim who are against change, or against losing part of the view of an oil refinery are hindering Halifaxs’ progress towards being a better city for everyone living here.
I kinda liked a few things Tim said, “The flood gates have been opened;…”, and “…the building boom is on…”. Excellent, it would appear that population of Halifax is standing up to development and saying, Yes Sir! Lets hope that council continues to hear the people, we want a city, if you don’t like it Tim… move to Truro. Sorry Truro, not picking on you but you have a very beautiful downtown and nothing higher than a steeple, the way towns should look… not cities.
What I find most interesting about this article is that Tim has not commented on the various postings. The over whelming opinion here is in total opposition to your thoughts Tim. Perhaps the tide has shifted?
The YMCA proposal shows the flaw in HbD. To not even have the post bonus height maps be the same as existing, lawfully approved development, frankly is wrong. If martime centre was destroyed by fire – to not be able to put the building back up at the same height is wrong.
One of the things Tim’s logic fails to take into account is existing context. The YMCA proposal is a great example of this. Look at the development around it – now look at the proposal. There is no way that building wouldn’t fit into that context. But yet, the height for that site is lower. It shouldn’t have been.
Plus, there has been no direct relationship ever established that with more development and tall buildings in the city; the impact on the citadell would be negative and I’d challenge anyway to prove it since the attendance numbers have been going up for years.
The new regional centre plan is a good process and will help clear up a lot of inconsistencies in planning policy and regulation. Just don’t give into those who fear progress, because like it or not, progress is at our door, has knocked and is walking in.
I take issue with Tim’s use of the word “consensus” (as in “the HRM by Design consensus”). The term “consensus” implies that everyone agrees. To refer to the “design and height part of the consensus” implies that everyone agreed on the height limits. This is false. The fact is that there was NO consensus on height limits, which is probably why many of the height limits seem so arbitrary. Do you really think everyone got together at the meetings and said “wow, we ALL agree, the maximum height for any building on the corner of Bell and South Park SHOULD be 23m! High Five!” ..? I don’t think it was even a case of “most people” agreeing, if I recall, it was a case of widespread disagreement.
HRM by Design is not the pinnacle of participatory democracy, though many people will present it as such.
Skye Halifax Cannot delete my comments here…
First off, theres a huge bubble, why buy a tiny apartment aka a condo… then pay fees monthly and taxes yearly for an asset thats about to go down the hole
For more info:
http://www.greaterfool.ca
http://www.ted.com/talks/majora_carter_s_t…
I am very concerned by a Council that so blithely sets aside its own policies, seemingly whenever a developer comes calling. That doesn’t make me anti-development. I love good modern architecture. However, I also think we need to shed our chronically failing propensity to embrace big, top-down driven projects, such as the convention centre, that will somehow “save” our economy, or our languishing downtown. We’ll only build the city we can all live in by working together; communities, government, and private interests.
I’ve embedded a link to South Bronx neighbourhood/environmental activist (literally grass roots!), Majora Carter, on Ted Talks. She spoke in Halifax last night (March 8), courtesy of those crazy leftists at the Downtown Halifax Business Commission. I was at another community meeting and couldn’t attend, so I googled her videos. For those of you who have supported Council’s suspension of HRM by Design, the propsed convention centre, and Jono Developments purchase of St. Pat’s Alexandra School, I hope you can find the time (less than 20 minutes) to listen to her. She is dedicated, articulate, funny, and extraordinarily inspiring.
For those of you who don’t have the time, let me quote some of her speech, it couldn’t be more apt “I am interested in what I like to call ‘the triple-bottom line’ that sustainable development can produce; developments that have the potential to create positive returns for all concerned, the developers, the government, and the communities where these developments go up. … I am not anti-development. Ours is a city, not a nature preserve. I don’t have a problem with developers making money; there is enough precedent to show that a sustainable, community-friendly development can still make a fortune. … I do have a problem with developments that hyper-exploit politically vulnerable communities for profit.” (Majora Carter)