[Wellington] Aerotech Connector Lands | Proposed

[Dmajackson]

Clayton Developments' next master planned community will be off of the, still under construction, Wellington-Aerotech Connector (Highway 102 Exit 5A). There aren't many details right now but some key facts;

- Roughly 1'000 acres of land located south mostly of the connector adjacent Highway 102.
- 7'000-8'000 residential units possible depending on municipal service levels available.
- Proposed connection of Sky Boulevard to Aerotech and south into development lands. Multiple accesses from Aerotech for the residential areas.
- A mix of units with roughly half being in multi-unit buildings.
- Highway commercial located near the existing highway interchange.

The concept map can be viewed on the Regional Plan Phase 4 Feedback Report. Warning though the document is 1'100 pages long. This specific project is pages 748-751.

[HarbingerDe]

Originally Posted by Dmajackson

Clayton Developments' next master planned community will be off of the, still under construction, Wellington-Aerotech Connector (Highway 102 Exit 5A). There aren't many details right now but some key facts;

- Roughly 1'000 acres of land located south mostly of the connector adjacent Highway 102.
- 7'000-8'000 residential units possible depending on municipal service levels available.
- Proposed connection of Sky Boulevard to Aerotech and south into development lands. Multiple accesses from Aerotech for the residential areas.
- A mix of units with roughly half being in multi-unit buildings.
- Highway commercial located near the existing highway interchange.

The concept map can be viewed on the Regional Plan Phase 4 Feedback Report. Warning though the document is 1'100 pages long. This specific project is pages 748-751.

Interesting but unrelated note: they included an entire Reddit AMA from r/Halifax in the feedback report (pages 126 - 149 of the PDF)

[Keith P.]

Jeebus. They circulated an 1100 page document to the entire Council? What a waste. Hopefully nobody printed it off. What would be the over/under on how many members actually read at least 10% of it? I don’t think we need to set odds on any more than that percentage since we know it is likely zero.

Seeing stuff like this it is no wonder that the planning dept is so slow and that they are always complaining that they don’t have enough people. The process they devised is impossible. They opened it up to every interest group and gadfly, every wingnut and whack job, everybody with an issue-specific axe to grind, and of course with the cesspool that is r/halifax, every junior planning student, every young Marxist, every wannabe revolutionary, and every disaffected young person working a minimum-wage job who doesn’t understand why nobody will pay them six figures. For every potential nugget that might be buried within that tome, it is buried under tons of garbage.

What is the scariest part of all of this is that apparently nobody within the upper echelons of HRM management at some point never saw the process as unmanageable, hugely wasteful, and unlikely to satisfy either the goals of the process as originally set (assuming any actually were) or likely to result in a significantly better-quality outcome than would otherwise be the case.

[Spitfire75]

Great, now extend the Aerotech connector all the way to Beaverbank Road please. Another connection is desperately needed there. While we're at it, extend Margeson Drive up to Beaverbank Road too.

[IanWatson]

For context, if those units get filled at the average NS household size it will have a population of around 16,000 people. If the community was its own municipality it would be the largest Town (Truro is population 13,000) and 11th largest municipality overall, slotting between Annapolis (19,000) and Antigonish (15,000).

We absolutely need the housing, but if this is not seriously planned in conjunction with higher order transit then those two-hour trips to the airport projected in the JRTA report really do start looking like a reality...

[someone123]

Originally Posted by IanWatson

We absolutely need the housing, but if this is not seriously planned in conjunction with higher order transit then those two-hour trips to the airport projected in the JRTA report really do start looking like a reality...

Agreed but I wonder if a lot of the activities happening as a part of the planning are a net win or net loss. I'd expect that a lot of resource requirements for these developments (power, water, transport) are basically technical questions that planners and engineers should have a good handle on. I'd also say that the outcomes from suburban planning are often bad anyway even if a lot of time is spent in planning and political limbo. I'm skeptical this area will be transit oriented and walkable regardless of how long it's held up.

Some of the best areas which sustain high densities are quite old and would have had minimal planning and community consultation originally. They often developed organically in phases and followed planning norms from their era.