The problem I have with caps on height is that once they are introduced, height restrictions only get worse.

Quinpool should have a few more 15 story residential towers. I don't think Quinpool centre was a failure at all, it actually works great... just that its ugly because it was built 30 years ago isn't a justifiable reason as to why new buildings won't be more attractive, energy efficient, and generally add to density...

Oh right, density is a bad word in Halifax. Let's just make everything 4 stories.

I totally agree. I finally had a chance to go through the recent height mock ups for the Centre Plan. I found Quinpool to be, frankly disappointing. The same with Agricola.

I find the idea of restricting the commercial to only the lots fronting onto Quinpool to be pretty frustrating. By doing that, you guarentee driveways onto Quinpool which is a central artery into the core. I would've pushed the mixed use designation all the way back to Pepperell and Yale Street so that access could've been off the secondary street. But I would've pushed a provision that the nature of any building fronting to those streets must be residential (so dwelling units had to face those streets, in addition to looking onto Quinpool). The heights were a little disappointing as well. The 20 storey designation wasn't enough for me. I think the portion of Quinpool Place that is 43m, should be 71. Also the 43 metre area to the right of Quingate Place (to me) is also a logical location for 71 metres.

With Agricola, I was disappointed with the heights yet again. I was also disappointed that the area of Davison and John Streets weren't included. I also found it strange that the required streetfront commercial didn't go the length of Agricola - instead there is this wide gap where its not required. Agricola to me is a logical place for a new commercial street that is pedestrian friendly. If I had been able to get the John and Davison blocks included, I would've encouraged the block between Agricola and John street to be mixed use while the other block would be primarily residential. As to the maximum heights, I would've gone up into the 12 to 15 storey range myself and made all that was designated 29 metres up to 15 storeys with the exception of the area at North Street and West Street.

Did anyone also notice on the Robie Street designs that there is pretty much a new commercial strip being encouraged? I like that idea for Young Street but I'm not sure if Robie would work for a pedestrian oriented commercial area. I'd get that feeling along Robie Street between North and Almon, but where Robie opens up and gets wide - I don't know if I'd get the same feeling. But the heights in the area are certainly encouraging.

I don't agree. I think Quinpool Centre is a failure. Certainly not because it's tall. It does a horrible job of relating to Quinpool Road. The residential towers actually seem decent in their relationships and I actually admire some of the retro stylng, but the limited interaction between the street and the commercial units is pretty disastrous. Canadian Tire in particular. Set back from and raised above the sidewalk with limited glazed areas. Gross.

I don't mind the Quinpool Centre. Given the era it was built I'm surprised it wasn't oriented the opposite way, as a traditional strip mall with the parking lot fronting Quinpool Road. I understand there was a lot of controversy about the design at the time though so maybe that's why the design is a little more sensitive than others. Though, working there for five years I grew pretty frustrated with some functional aspects related to traveling through the area -- some of those sidewalks could be improved/extended, and the "stop" markings in the parking lot badly need to be repainted.

I agree though that Canadian Tire turns its back on the street. Same with the other end of the block to some extent: I've always wondered about the disused storefront at Quinpool & Quingate Place. Did it ever open up into the grocery store or the former liquor store?

I cannot recall exactly, but I'm pretty sure that was the entrance to the original grocery store space. The shops as they are today bear little relation to what it was originally, which was set up as an enclosed mall with glass facing the street and the stores contained inside that space beside an interior mall walkway. It failed almost immediately in that mode and slowly transformed itself into what you see today.

I agree, however the parking and residential behind make the whole area very vibrant and core to the neighborhood. It essentially creates a meeting point.

The relation to the street is something that could be fixed in a similar design for a centre along any major street.

The problem I have is that anti-development people completely dismiss Quinpool centre because they are afraid of its density and urbanity and will stop at nothing to prevent similar developments in the general. This is a huge mistake.

Absolutely - the problem is not density or height, it's the finer-grained issues of integration with street-life.

When you examine the streetfronts across from Quinpool Center you see the real problem. That is one seriously ugly area along there.

Interesting! I guess that would explain the odd way the second floor hallway looks down into some of the stores below.

Yeah, more of the houses along quinpool should be demo'd and the sites combined into larger developments facing the street that could have underground parking and would have retail at street level vs. up a flight of stairs.

I think that everything from The Atantica down to the newer building with Edward Jones or whatever (i.e. the blockbuster building and a few ugly houses) should be turned into one site with nice groundfloor retail and residential above up to 10 stories as a step down from Altlantica to this idea for a building to the edward jones building.

The problem is with the way the HbD proposal works - if you do exactly what you are suggesting (demo and combine into larger lots) you will still end up with driveways onto Quinpool, which I don't think is a good idea. Quinpool is an arterial road that shouldn't be impeded by driveways. This creates bottlenecks when vehicles attempt to drive out. This is why I was hoping they would extend the commercial all the way to the back onto Pepperell so that you could have commercial on the front and then underground parking access from the rear. I guess you still could, but only residential could face the back and then have shared parking access?

Push on to protect Halifax with huge greenbelt
Group aims to limit urban sprawl


A certain word has been popping up more than usual lately in urban planning circles, but not everyone is sure they like it.

Greenbelt, or a big green swath around a city, is the term in question, and a push is underway for something resembling one surrounding Halifax Regional Municipality in order to stop sprawl.

“It’s getting very expensive to provide services to the outlying areas,” said Coun. Lorelei Nicoll (Cole Harbour).

The municipality didn’t meet its growth targets in the first five years of the regional plan. In 2006, the goal was to limit suburban growth to half the total growth. Instead, the municipality saw 56 per cent suburban growth, 28 per cent rural growth, and 16 per cent urban growth.

Link

At the meeting I was at (second CP meeting at Atlantica) staff said that the plan was to allow full development Quinpool to back street and allow parking happen off of Pepperell or Yukon. In fact one of the questions to Andy Filmore was about how all that traffic from the already proposed Vernon/Quinpool building would ruin Pepperell and he said the TRW wouldn't allow a parking garage to enter off of Quinpool with a building that big....

I get the sense that a significant number of people seriously overestimate the amount of traffic created by urban infill buildings. The numbers in traffic studies for midrise buildings are very small compared to traffic counts along arterial roads.

Another factor is that if you don't put the buildings in urban neighbourhoods, they go out in the suburbs. In the suburban buildings a larger percentage of people drive and many of them drive and park in the urban area as well. It's really easy to "undersell" urban infill by failing to point out the bigger picture.

Yep. I imagine people don't generally buy a condo downtown if they have to drive to the airport to work, and the evidence is that most downtown apartments/condos end up renting out up to 50% of their parking space in Halifax to monthly parkers because the tenants don't bother having cars if they can walk/cab to everything.

More Ecology Action Center nonsense. Rezone people's land to make it undevelopable and worthless, to try and force development into the core where, of course, you cannot build what you want anyway.

Nice Eastern Bloc thinking there, EAC.

"Greenbelting" will hopefully soon go the way of greenwashing as just more environmental sleght-of-hand, only this time as practiced by the eco-terrorists. It is high time HRM rids itself of the EAC trying to make us all live in somewhat stubby commie blocks.

I don't necessarily see a problem with this idea, but I think if this is going to go forward then either the Province or City should begin to expropriate land to achieve it. To simply rezone and take development rights away, I don't agree with for this purpose.

I also don't have an issue with parking garages coming off Pepperell - I would think that there would be a high level of traffic on the street from people attempting to find street parking and then going to the area. Plus, I too, don't believe you'd see as many cars as one would expect for infill development.

Let's play "spot the greenbelt": http://goo.gl/maps/Jtdf

The net effect of the greenbelt shown above is that everybody living in those outer subdivisions has to drive more if they want to get into the city. It is worse than if there had been no greenbelt, because the type of development did not improve (it can go down when it's pushed out to far-flung towns with weak development rules), and simply shuffling development around does not create any net savings of wilderness land or farmland.

Greenbelts like I said seem good for preserving some particular area but they are not a good tool for improving suburban development or limiting overall urban land use because they do not solve any root problems. One root problem is that suburban development's price tag (development fees and taxes) does not reflect its true cost. Another problem is that we are not building enough good development or transit to satisfy demand, so lots of demand is being met by suburban areas.

Quinpool Centre as it was originally envisioned, would have been fantastic, but again the naysayers (yes they existed back then as well) didn't want 4, 40 storey towers which if memory serves me would have been at the 4 corners of the development making for a far better looking development than the tower they ended up with, which in my opinion is extremely ugly.

The Centre Plan process has hit a slight snag caused by the provincial legislature. The 11 corridors that were to be prioritized did not receive the necessary approval from the province before the spring session ended. This report shows the possible solutions to this delay. Staff are recommending switching to a development agreement process for these areas until approval is received at a future date.

There is another REPORT that gives feedback to the points raised at the public meetings last winter. One thing that stuck out at me was the comment on our NIMBY debate; "Climate change, rising energy costs, seal level rise, rising housing costs, declining public health, rising costs of municipal servicing, all point to the acute need to incentivize densification in the urban cores of our cities. Community tolerance for NIMBY-ism is waning rapidly as citizens are becoming more and more aware of the responsibility we each have in creating a sustainable future for current and future generations."

Both of these documents are going before the Community Design Advisory Committee tomorrow.

Thanks to Councilor Watts for the email alerting me to these documents. :)

The DA approach is probably the most reasonable approach considering the delay, but it's disappointing that this wasn't given more priority. It's sad that the Provincial planners can't see the value in the density bonusing tool - but it's a rather new concept for Halifax and they probably need more time to understand it.

So... this isn't good from a legal procedural aspect? Unless we get a super development friendly council, there are no guidelines and this supposed "waning" NIMBYism will run rampant. I prefer standards to opinions... although when standards aren't in play there is the potential for much taller buildings subject to debate.

Please convince Watts that we shouldn't be living in 1 story buildings. ;)

Maybe changes will come after the election.....

I could be wrong but I think the next council will probably be less NIMBY-oriented because the districts will be larger and there will be more competition. It will be harder to get elected just by appealing to one small neighbourhood or demographic.

I hope you are right on this!

Here's one the what is bound to be many issues that will be brought up with the Centre Plan;

Arenas in U-1 Zones

I doubt that anything is going to change here. In fact, if there is a push - something tells me there may be a push to create something that other Provinces have which exempts universities from planning regulations - a University Act.

Here in Alberta, we have one of those and the University of Calgary is completely exempt from the land use bylaw, despite being zoned. We can't touch it. The same is true for the University of Alberta.

Based on the Nimby reaction to the apartment building on Quinpool, I don't quite think that the NIMBY groups are quite finished yet. That said, if there is more of a reason to pass the regional centre plan, I couldn't point it out better than the reaction to that building.

Here's an article on the progress of Bill 83: http://metronews.ca/news/halifax/662...nt-amendments/

Actual bill description and current status shown here: http://nslegislature.ca/index.php/pr...nded_-_bill_83

This makes a lot of sense in terms of economic incentives to developers but I also like how it takes the wind out of the sails of the incoherent "affordable housing vs. developers cashing in" rhetoric that is so common. Developers are the ones who build new housing, and affordability comes from having a robust supply of new construction. Throwing up roadblocks that stop developers from building to serve any segment of the market restricts supply and pushes prices up. The real downsides of development meanwhile come when it is poorly planned and when developers and new residents don't cover their costs, as in most new suburban areas. The Centre Plan addresses this as well.

I think eventually it would also be a good thing for the city to permit density bonuses in exchange for money spent on heritage preservation. Unfortunately I don't think groups like the HT will push for policies because of their NIMBY ties.

HT really do seem prehistoric. I tried to find them on Twitter a while ago and they have no presence there, and apparently no community engagement at all, ioutside of their newsletter. So far behind the times—I think density bonusing would blow their minds.

I think new outlets like Twitter, FB, all the publicly-available plans, construction webcams, etc. have helped in terms of generating broader interest in urban planning in Halifax and in terms of keeping people a little more informed about what's going on. Many people are interested in planning, but there is a lot of misinformation out there (it drives me crazy when I read factually incorrect statements like "there hasn't been a development downtown in 20 years") and up until recently a few voices (like the HT and Phil Pacey) were given a disproportionate weight while many others were excluded. 10 years ago, the approval process in Halifax felt purely like a tug-of-war between developers maximizing profits and BANANA types who had already settled in the South End and wanted to slam the door shut behind them. There was little broad consideration of what needed to be done to make the city more successful and liveable for all.

I like to think that SSP has played at least a small role in this as well.

This is why HRM wants this:

By approving the use of Site Plan Approval and Density Bonusing throughout the Regional Centre, the success achieved under HRMbyDesign can be expanded throughout the urban heart of HRM.

Site Plan Approval provides clear, consistent policies for development. It has been proven to encourage development and economic activity, as seen in the downtown core, and is a useful tool HRM can utilize to promote good design and faster development approval timelines.

HRM will now be able to consider Site Plan Approval and Density Bonusing as part of the Regional Centre Plan public engagement process to be undertaken later this year. Incentive or bonus zoning are strategic planning tools used by municipal governments to secure community benefits from developers.

Are there any differences between these changes for the regional centre and the changes that were brought in under HRM by Design? I am basically thinking of this as "HRM by Design for the rest of the core" -- the height precincts etc. may vary, but the general idea is the same.

It will be really interesting to see how much of an impact this has on proposals in areas like the North End and Dartmouth. I have a feeling the current approval process is (unfortunately) particularly hard on lower budget projects, like midrises in the less expensive neighbourhoods. If you want to build a 20 storey building it might be worth the uncertain approval times (and spending $500k of a $60M budget to deal with the paperwork and appeals), but it may not worth the delay and cost to do a 6 storey apartment instead of 4 floors as-of-right. In some cases if the AOR proposal is not viable (e.g. site needs expensive remediation) and the costs of approval are not worthwhile then a property will simply sit vacant and everybody loses.

I'm under the same understanding: Centre Plan is HRMbyDesign for the rest of us. If I remember correctly, I think that it is really phase II of HRMbyDesign, which wasn't originally intended to result in the changes to downtown's Land Use Bylaw and Municipal Planning Strategy. Partway through the process, the consultants' scope was increased to include developing new rules for downtown, based on the principals of the urban design study. Now, the rest of us have to develop similar rules in our neighbourhoods - an attempt to provide hyper-local voices to guide development.

Essentially - Someone123 is correct. It would be HRM by design, for the regional centre. The only exception to that would be in the low density neighbourhoods, it would be geared towards that type of development and keeping them pretty stable (mostly renovations, some tear down and rebuilds of new houses). My only thought on that would be that we need to rethink the idea of appropriately scaled multi-residential in some low density areas. There is nothing wrong with 3 or 4 storey walk up apartments in some low density areas where you can convert houses to up to 3 units (which is pretty much most of the peninsula).

Change the definition of multi to be a building of 9 or more units and then set out rules to allow certain scales of walk up apartments. So if the homes next to you are 2 stories, you can do 3. If they are 3, you can do the max of 4 stories and start approving something like this or like this with say up to 8 units. These are perfectly acceptable, but we don't encourage building them anymore (when I was in Chicago, I fell in love with these)!

But the HRMbyDesign stuff would mainly be focused in the proposed corridors (Agricola, Quinpool, Wyse Road, etc.) but as I understand the amendment for affordable housing - that would apply to the entire regional centre. So if someone were to get a policy amendment and rezoning of a site not typically in a corridor, the City could still require the affordable housing element as part of the proposal.

Bill 83 passed the House this afternoon. What a lot of work.

Now, RP5 review goes to the public in about 20-30 days, council should pass in September or October, then Centre Plan needs to be completed after that.

Well that was the crucial element - so now that its done, it shouldn't be long for the RCP LUB/MPS. I love acronyms. :)

I'd like to see (down the road) the RP get a new transportation plan that includes visioning for a future LRT. I was sad to see the future high speed ferries were removed in the RP+5 document. They should remain on the books (frankly). If we planned out LRTs now, we could start the ball rolling to get a similar bill passed to extend HbD style rules into future Transit Oriented Development areas.

Since this really has to do with DT but we've been talking about the Regional Centre - I thought I would add this into this thread.


GARRETT: Barrington Street bides its time
Architect offers his vision of a revitalized downtown district
Barrington Street has had more than a “lost decade,” as recently reported in this newspaper. It has been in decline, or at least not at full strength, for nearly three generations, since the early 1960s, when Eaton’s began the trend by moving to the new West End Mall.

Since then, Halifax and, more recently, Halifax Regional Municipality have not responded in a significant way to this retail and demographic shift.

HRM, through it leaders, has continued to avoid the reality that successful cities across North America have recognized and worked hard to address: that healthy cities need healthy downtowns, maybe with a megaproject or two but primarily made up of a dense fabric of small economic activity and a rich environment.

We’ve all experienced this fabric elsewhere. It needs to happen here, but don’t just wait for it to happen on its own. It won’t, as we’ve been finding out in Halifax for the last 50 years.

Halifax has the added inducement of needing to develop a suitable urban environment to help attract business to support the hundreds of millions of dollars being invested in the Nova Centre.

Here is one observer’s short list of what needs to happen:

1. HRM leadership and investment

HRM must get bullish on the downtown. It has been bullish on the suburbs since amalgamation, but the pendulum has shifted. Everyone is saying it: HRM must reinvigorate the downtown, and Barrington Street in particular. Specifically, HRM must make several commitments to do this.

It must commit the much-discussed federal and provincial infrastructure funds to the urban core.

It must correct current taxation policies that are a disincentive to downtown retail and commercial development.

It must control the unabated ongoing development of suburban areas in contravention to the HRM Regional Plan.

It must plan for the redevelopment of the Cogswell Interchange lands in a way that will include the needs of the adjacent areas, in particular Barrington Street.

It needs to renew and expand the Barrington Street Heritage Conservation District Incentive Program, which has been successful in helping to initiate numerous small and large projects and is in the last year of its funding.

Beyond these commitments, it must provide leadership and, where necessary, investment in the following public and private sector initiatives:

(The rest of the story is here)

That is a pretty good article. Thanks for posting. I agree that the downtown needs a mix of things to be successful: streetscapes, transit, parking, heritage funding, private and public support, etc. It is important to move past "silver bullet" type thinking.

I like the point about having a critical mass of retailers on Barrington. A big part of the problem with the street right now isn't so much that there's no demand for retail space or space in the buildings, it's that the availability of good retail space is very patchy. As a result, it's not great as a general shopping destination, even though it does have some specific stores that are interesting. The same phenomenon is at play in the neighbourhood as a whole; there are so many underused sites around Barrington that overall densities are quite low and the number of residents, workers, etc. is much smaller than it could be.

I don't like seeing the ferry expansion disappear from the plan either. A ferry has a couple of key advantages, namely that we build a terminal, buy a boat and away we go. No need to deal with CN or upgrade the rail corridor or, potentially, acquire right of ways. A ferry could also drop people right in Downtown Halifax whereas rail, right now, stops several blocks short. In the debate over the ferry, the discussion failed to take into account a ferry's potential as a development tool. The harbour ferries are fun and are an attractive way to commute. If we put a ferry into Bedford, it would make the surrounding land way more attractive for development, which, being the waterfront, is already valuable land. Allowing growth near a new terminal could contribute significantly to paying for the service. We need to start taking into account the true costs and benefits of our spending decisions instead of fixating on the immediate cost. Rail may have a role in our future, but I often wonder if we're too fixated on the location of the existing tracks. An on-street streetcar system that links the universities, hospitals, Downtown might be a better bet than trying to use tracks that skirt several of the key destinations.

In the stadium thread, I posted this vision of Shannon Park:
I wanted to paint the idea that not only would a stadium be an interesting tool of redevelopment for the area, but so could the ferry and potentially a streetcar. I don't like the idea of taking it out of the plan, but then again it could always be put back in. I'd like to hear their rationale for why it was removed and if anyone knows a mechanism to comment to the City on it; I'll likely submit a comment.

Sometimes we all just need a good laugh:
Letter from Alan Ruffman regarding Density Bonusing in the Regional Centre

Having someone like Ruffman "teaching" planning is bad enough. However, he is also a convicted tax evader, yet his is affiliated with the School of Law at Dal. Something is very wrong here. Reform of the universities cannot happen soon enough.

He talks about the proposed changes being anti-democratic but he's also fighting to keep in place the old system of notifying the public of changes through newspaper ads. This in itself is actually very undemocratic when you ask yourself, who still buys (actual, hard-copy) newspapers? The young? The poor? Those who are interested in change?

The bill would never see daylight in the USA.

Plenty of US cities use density bonusing and a variety of other methods to help achieve a number of goals.

I was referring to the part dealing with no public consultation. US council meeting are quite lively and many places have better ways of allowing the public to speak on issues.
It would be good to see a monthly council meeting where the sole agenda item is where citizens get to ask questions, make a statement or recommendation.

Site plan approval means you do public consultation up front when you set the by-right heights and mass and design criteria, as was done for HRMbD downtown. It doesn't take away rights, it moves them to earlier in the process.

Interesting news out of the Toronto Chief Planner's office today - Ontario building code has been amended to allow 6 storey wood frame construction of multi-residential buildings. Jen Keesmaat is calling this a big win for Toronto's Avenues project - reduced construction costs (while maintaining safety) should help increase the growth of many of the avenues.

Calgary is pushing the same thing for out here...I suspect it would be a good thing for HRM considering that many of the growth areas have some component at six stories. No recent web news about it; but Jen's tweet indicated that the changes for Ontario kick in January 2015.

http://urbantoronto.ca/news/2014/03/...e-construction

I cannot see 6-storey wood frames as being anything but bad - fire hazards, structural nightmare in extreme weather, and poor long-term quality. I understood this was the result of some serious lobbying by the wood supplier interests.