What to do with the Cogswell Interchange?

Over 200 people joined together at the Marriott Harbourfront Hotel last night to eat tzatziki, drink coffee and discuss whatever to do with that Cogswell Interchange.

It was the Strategic Urban Partnership’s Cogswell Shakeup event, which brought in a crowd of private citizens and public officials to hear Cogswell redevelopment ideas from over a dozen groups.

Perhaps symbolically, the crowd ended up jammed together while moving along the winding paths between displays—creating a bottleneck of traffic not unlike what one might see on the Interchange.

There were plenty of nifty concepts on display, including an edible garden, new ferry terminal and open air theatre spaces. Everyone from Dalhousie, to the Shambhala school and even Hal-Con offered up ideas, while large posters featured spaces from other cities meant to inspire Haligonians. Developments like the Kamppi Centre in Helsinki, Place Jean Paul Riopelle in Montreal, and the High Line in New York were all represented.

Whether any of this will lead to tangible plans when the input is taken back to council in the fall remains to be seen, but mayor Mike Savage says he’s still excited by the whole process.

“We have to start thinking about what’s possible before we say what can’t be,” says Savage. “I’m not anybody particularly important in the process. I’m just the mayor. I’m not a planner, an architect, a developer, an artist or any of that sort of stuff. So, it all excites me, and we’ll have smart people take the ideas and turn them into what’s possible.”

Savage, along with CAO Richard Butts and councillors Waye Mason, Steve Craig and Matt Whitman, took in the fun, flirty atmosphere of Shakeup Cogswell. It was a land development consultation that featured slam poetry, celtic fiddlers and a kids corner where tots could doodle with crayons.

Despite the intense public interest, Peninsula South Downtown councillor Waye Mason says there isn’t any additional pressure on the city to get things right in this rare do-over.

“I don’t spend a lot of time thinking about the mistakes of the past,” he says. “All we can do as councillors and as citizens is we can look at where are we today, what works and what doesn’t work, and what are the best choices to fix what doesn’t work?”

The dismantling of the latticed concrete Interchange has been talked about nearly since it went up in 1968. Should Cogswell come down in the next few years, and it certainly seems like the city is committed to that course of action now, 6.5 hectares of public land at the entrance to downtown will suddenly become available.

“I think it’s safe to say that now matter what we do at Cogswell, it’ll be better than the overpass,” says Mason. “If it was a boring financial sector of 16 towers and no life at night, that’s still better than concrete that no one can walk or bike on.”

This article appears in May 23-29, 2013.