A proposed United Gulf development at the old Halifax West High School site on Dutch Village Road has sparked controversy. The plan includes a mixed residential and commercial complex, featuring two seven-storey towers of 100 multi-family condos set above a commercial/retail ground floor, a six-storey 60,0000 square-foot commercial building with ground floor retail, a three-storey 27,000 square-foot commercial building, a one-storey retail building, 450 parking spaces (375 of them underground) and 72,000 square feet of public parkland.
Tamara Lorincz, a resident and member of the Fairview/Clayton Park Community Action Network, says that the community has long needed a community centre, and that the Halifax West site is the ideal location.
Lorincz adds that the community has not been adequately consulted with. “Residents on streets bordering and near the site didn’t receive notice for an October 2009 public meeting,” she says. She adds that United Gulf is being given a sweetheart deal for prime real estate. “UG is paying $1.2 million for all that land. It’s reportedly worth at least twice that.”
The councillor for the area, Russell Walker, accuses Lorincz of spreading misinformation. “A hundred notices were sent to homes and businesses around the site,” he says. “About 50 residents attended the 2009 meeting. They didn’t like the duplexes so the duplexes came out; they didn’t like it as one big building so they got two smaller buildings.
“We’ve had 15 different proposals and the community didn’t like any of them,” continues Walker. “A community centre could add $200 on people’s tax bill for 10 years; I don’t think the people of Fairview can afford that.”
City planning staff is preparing a report, due to the Chebucto Community Council by end of May. If the report favours the development, it will likely reach Regional Council by summer’s end.
This article appears in May 26 – Jun 1, 2011.
As a former resident of Fairview, it doesn’t need a community centre. It needs a face lift and more people. This development is going to do just that – add more people and really improve the area.
The city has a process to inform people of development and letters would’ve been sent. Plus you can track planning applications on the city’s website. If this group really wanted to be kept informed – they could’ve turned on a computer or picked up a phone and called the staff. This just another nimby group that can’t accept the need to improve the area.
It’s true, the area needs more people living in it to spread some money around. As far as community centres go, when I had the misfortune of living in the area I could bike to the public library up the hill in less than 15 minutes.
As a current, proud resident of Fairview, I would like to state my support for this project. Yes, a community centre would be lovely – and I’d even pay $200/yr in taxes if that number is true – but what we need is more density and less derelict buildings.
This development will go a long way towards revitalizing Dutch Village Rd, along with the upcoming St. Lawrence Place building and the relatively new Shoppers’ building.
Once we have 200 new families on the strip, businesses will be clamouring to fill the vacancies, and that tax money will more than pay for a community centre, should we find an appropriate spot to put it.
Remember – we should planning to pay for things before we build them.
I would also like to call attention to the proposed 72,000 sq feet of public parkland. While I’d like to see more, it’s great to see a developer keep public spaces in mind when planning these developments.
As residents of Fairview, we should support the project, then make sure it gets developed as planned. If we fight this too long, the developer will go elsewhere (Mount Royal, anyone?), and Fairview will once again lose out on an opportunity to grow.
I reside behind the proposed site, and frankly I’m happy to know that condos and decent retail will be revitalizing the area. Listening to firecrackers popping off down there at all hours of the night is getting tiresome-I’d like to see that area being used for more than just a playground for juvenile delinquents and drug dealers. I’d love to see a community center too, but who is paying for it? It is my understanding that the site, which laid vacant for so long because nobody wanted it, needs an environmental clean-up for oil and other toxins left over from the old high school (which UG will have to do before building on there). It seems to me if the city decides to clean that up, to make it worth “twice the price UG is paying for it,” that in itself would cost tens to hundreds of thousands of dollars to do. Seems to me UG has some decent plans for this site and if they pull out, who knows what could end up in that location…Walmart? All-night cabarets? Tacky apartments? No thanks. I’ll take condos and a kid’s park any day. I’m looking forward to having my property value go up because the neighbourhood is getting nicer. And maybe when my parents get too old for a house, they can stay in their neighbourhood by living in a condo.
Sounds like a great idea. As a long-time Dartmouthian I just wish someone would do a few projects like that over here. King’s Landing doesn’t count; the geography of that development militates against it. Something inside the Portland-Canal-Maitland slumland would have been more like it.
Just goes to show the poverty of Lorincz’ imagination. No community centre I’ve seen in Dartmouth has done much to improve a neighbourhood; those buildings go hand-in-hand with neighbourhood improvement but they don’t cause it.
If Tamara Lorincz is against it, I’m all for it.
It looks good to me…fresh faces and new energy would be more of a catalyst for neighbourhood improvement than, say, a Wal-Mart like dragonbabe20 suggested.
Tamara and her crew have just formed a coalition with all kinds of like-minded folks to ‘cut down on urban sprawl’, so ironic.
This looks like a nice development, all the power to the developers!
This area should be welcoming this new development. Seriously, the area has been in decline for years. Can these complainers not see the blight around them? Without new development the area will stagnate further. How did the HRM come to this, where people complain about each and every new development…Tamara, get a life!
We want to stop sprawl in HRM, and this is how we are going to do that. Medium density apartments, condos, etc. Lets hope the proposed development is of high quality, and held to that promise.
I think it looks good. Though I can only imagine how bad traffic will be after the development is filled. DVR onto JH is already backed up (peak hours anyways).
This is exactly the development that Halifax needs. More people in the city then the massive sprawl that has led us to where we are now. This type of development will encourage more transit service to downtown in these areas and will help with traffic congestion. I hope they break ground on this ASAP.
This is why good things take so long to happen in Halifax, People voting it down. Educate yourselves people, learn what the development could do for your unfavorable part of the city.
Sounds like there aren’t really all that many people against it, and plenty of notice went out. Looks like nobody had a problem with it until a worldsaver told them there was a problem.
Selling public land cheap to put a bunch of highrises, traffic, garbage collection and food waste in the middle of a swamp surrounded by houses is a silly idea to revitalize Fairview.
Developers and businesses should be setting up all along Dutch Village Rd, currently full of vacant lots and empty delapidated buildings.
When this development goes through, the same problem will remain with Fairview, despite everyone’s unfounded optimism about this project kickstarting our community: HRM does not care about Fairview, and will not provide any incentives, through planning, infrastructure, property taxes or anything else, to developers and businesses that might consider giving the neighbourhood a facelift.
If we’re lucky we’ll end up with a bunch of empty commercial and condo spaces where the high school used to be.
If we’re unlucky Gulf United won’t even build anything. They’ll sit on the property for 3 years. Meanwhile it will still be full of beer bottles and firecrackers until 2015, and after optimistically holding our breath for 12 years, we’ll be right back where we started.
Here’s hoping someone with some real vision for revitalizing Fairview replaces Russel Walker in 2012.