I saw some more renderings for this today. I was told they would put up the drawings on the website by month end.

The CBC tower has been pushed to the back corner away from both Sackville and South Park Street. The atrium is gone and has been replaced with an open air connection to the half a street in behind creating a nice pedestrian thoroughfare. So there are now two distinct buildings. And there is a new atrium located within the new YMCA on the old CBC site that will run north south through the centre of the building.

Thanks for the update and description. It will hopefully look great from the Citadel.

CBC Sackville Street building to be sold
Move allows CBC to keep production capabilities

CBC News
This iconic building across from the Halifax Citadel has been home to the CBC since the 1930s. (CBC) CBC will sell its landmark building on Sackville Street in downtown Halifax and house all of its radio and television operations under one roof on Bell Road.

Andrew Cochran, managing director for the Maritimes, announced the plan on Wednesday, a day after the CBC board signed off on it.

The building on Bell Road will be upgraded and expanded to include an extra 35,000 square feet. The work is expected to be done by December 2013.

Cochran said this means that all staff will be in one building and CBC can do more TV and radio productions.

"I hope that Haligonians see this as CBC is renewing its commitment to Nova Scotia and remaining an important part of the downtown fabric," he said.

Cochran said it didn't make sense to move everyone into the Sackville Street building — home to the CBC since the 1940s.Besides being too expensive, CBC would have had to give up its production operations, he said.

"We want to build for what we need," he said.

The YMCA has included the Sackville Street building next door in its redevelopment plans.

Cochran won't say how much the move is expected to cost. But he said the money from the sale of one building won't cover all of the costs to expand the other.

Request for proposals will go out immediately. Employees from the Sackville Street building will move over to Bell Road over the next three years.


Read more: http://www.cbc.ca/canada/nova-scotia...#ixzz10HcZ3sVI

Jeesus the comments on that article are pissing me off.
Mind boggling the # of people who think that people living downtown is apparently a bad thing. Not to mention the apparent hatred by some of developers making money... quite sure those same people don't work for zero profit either. Jackasses.

Yup, serious backward thinking.

The ONLY thing at this point that will save our downtown, and no it won't be a trade centre, is residential.

There are three reasons offices are moving from the core;

1 Parking
2 Cost
3 Everyone is living outside the core.

So if you get people living in or nearby the core you can significantly reduce the effects of items 1 & 3.

People need to get some common sense.

And developers making money? why not, they are taking the risk with their money, should they not expect a reasonable return? If not they will just invest in other centres, and or invest in the equity markets and make their returns.

I just took a swipe at a few of the negative nancy's (as a former coworker called them) posting on the article.

I for one am glad that I'm hearing some of the office proposals are going to residential - I'd rather bulk up the population downtown than build empty office towers that may fill up. Frankly, I'd rather apartments for the Roy Building and Discovery Centre and then if the convention centre goes up leave the office space to be covered by International Centre, Twisted Sisters and the potential convention centre.

Roy and Discovery are pretty much in the centre of downtown, in my mind more appropriate for condos since they can have some height to them. But that's just me.

Every city should focus their prime office space in downtown - but it should also build additional employment centres as a mechanism to balance traffic. The catch with that is that those employment centres need to be well serviced with transit. The solution to the suburban office problem may be to not allow as much parking and turn the whole zoning situation on it's head and say instead of a minimum 500 stalls be allowed, that a maximum of 200 stalls be allowed (or less - as an example). Once you start getting less parking in the burbs, it might turn the situation around.

That would be an interesting study...

This is good news in that it appears as though this proposal will definitely go ahead. But if the CBC workers will be moving out over 3 years then I assume that is the earliest that construction can begin.

I'm troubled by this, people. It's my understanding that the art deco building on Sackville Street was originally a car dealership of some sort. (1930's-40's era) This history which I knew little about was recently broadcast, on the CBC nonetheless, during one of their anniversary shows. But when I google to verify the history of the site, there is nary a breath about it.

Is it not true? Admittedly, CBC radio has a track record of airing comically false news-articles, maybe I fell victim. Or is it a case of the CBC and heritage lefties not interested in highlighting anything that may detract from their case that this building is some sort of "landmark" that should not be meddled with in any way? I'm just waiting for Phil Pacey to suggest it be converted into the "Canadian Broadcast Museum".

Yes, it was a car dealership until the mid-60s. It was the home of Scotia Chev-Olds which later moved onto Robie St and became O'Regans. Even after that the interior garage area was used as an Avis rental car agency into the 90s.

I think it is an interesting building, more so than any number of untouchable but nondescript old buildings in this town, but calling it "heritage" is a bit of a stretch.

Edited... thought the CBC TV site was being discussed.


The current CBC Radio corner building has a terrible entrance... I would rather a new building with a similar form... entrance on the very corner, not a bball court window!

KeithP you are totally right!! I remember the AVIS there too; I can't believe I forgot that - because when I was a kid some nut bar came flying out of the garage and nearly took out my mom and I on the sidewalk.

I remember reading that the building was originally constructed for an insurance company (Acadian Insurance?) but soon became home to the CBC.

Residential development is about 80% of what is missing from the downtown right now. Conveniently, there's also solid demand for new housing so these projects get built while the office proposals gather dust. I believe that the downtown would be doing great if it had another 10,000 people or so and the city spent a moderate amount of generally cleaning up the area. Public projects like a new library are also a good way to improve the area and encourage more people to move there.

One hundred percent agree someone123. Calgary downtown's population (as of 2009) was 12,455 and I can tell you that even here on nights and weekends, downtown is dead. But, downtown Calgary is much bigger than Halifax and has significantly building up areas on the borders.

So if you actually factor in the Beltine (which includes the 'red mile' 17th avenue - which is SGR on roids), Eau Claire (which is high rise residential next to the river) and China town - you actually get 33, 455 and that also doesn't take into account the upcoming redevelopment of the east and west villages.

I think Halifax downtown if it hit over 10k, because of the fact it's much smaller than cities like Calgary and Edmonton - would see a huge boost in foot traffic and downtown shopping. I suspect you would see SGR be hugely busy and the same with Barrington Street. If you densify places like Quinpool and Agricola; I suspect that many would check out SGR in addition to those major streets and the same would be true for downtown Dartmouth.

The only thing I'll say about the building and the heritage 'element' is that the design is great and if I could keep the facade, I would - I like it. That being said; it's not a registered heritage building. So the HT can scream all they want; but if it wasn't registered - you can't force property owners to do it.

http://www.newhalifaxymca.ca/the-new...enderings.html

I think these are the new renderings... a vast improvement!

I am not 100% sure but I think these are the old ones. I think Jonovision said that the atrium had been removed(?). It is too bad that this won't be starting until 2013 at the earliest once all the CBC crew have moved out.

I think the one in the dark is new.

Nope those are all old.

Hmm... I don't remember the corner tower having the metal section at the back before, but may be I'm just remembering incorrectly.

See page 2 of this thread!

They are different!

Worldyhaligonian, you are very observant - the renderings are different. But they don't look like the ones described by Jonovision above - maybe he can clear this up. I was expecting a significant change.

Some are different, some are the same (the night rendering hasn't changed, for example).

Biggest difference I can see is a fairly extensive redesign of the CBC tower? Particularly the upper levels and step back. Honestly, aside from still thinking the original was too narrow, I kind of prefer the original - it incorporated more deco design elements (vs the modern styling of the re-design). ...And both still seem to waste the corner (to me, at least).

Ahh well, may be moot, since apparently this may not be the final design, either?