Thanks to a 158-page court decision released yesterday, people who want to see a couple new skyscrapers in downtown Halifax can sleep a bit easier. Supreme Court justice Suzanne Hood heard arguments in December that the public hearings for United Gulf’s notorious Twisted Towers development were screwed up, and thus city council shouldn’t have approved the towers. The Heritage Trust and Howard Epstein wanted Hood to rule that council has to start its decision-making process from scratch, a move that would delay construction while council went through the hoops of giving approval again. (For more background, check out this column.)
In her decision, Hood agreed there were problems with the public hearings, but they weren’t so big that council needs a do-over. As far as she’s concerned, the towers can go ahead. However, that Supreme Court case is only the first of two hurdle United Gulf’s been dealing with lately. The other is still in front of Nova Scotia’s Utility and Review Board.
The Heritage Trust (surprise, surprise) is among the parties asking the URB to over-rule council’s approval of the towers, claiming the proposed development doesn’t fit within the letter of the authoritative Municipal Planning Strategy. (You follow all this, right? The Supreme Court was about how council made its decision. The URB is about the decision itself, the argument being council should have said no because the towers don’t follow the MPS.)
It was the URB’s reading of the MPS that quashed the Midtown towers. And it’s the URB that was always going to be the bigger of United Gulf’s two hurdles. That hearing already went for two weeks in early February, and will continue over a few days the middle of March.
This article appears in Mar 1-7, 2007.
