[Halifax] Battle of the Atlantic Place | -- | -- | Proposed
 

It appears the commemoration of the HMCS Sackville will be going ahead with or without the Queen's Landing proposal. And being a $90-100 Million project on the waterfront this is a major investment into downtown.

HMCS Sackville memorial project buoyed by $250,000 from Ottawa
March 2, 2013 - 10:45pm BY PAUL MCLEOD OTTAWA BUREAU

Quote:

http://thechronicleherald.ca/sites/d...les/battle.jpg The proposed redevelopment around HMCS Sackville, dubbed Battle of the Atlantic Place. OTTAWA — The federal government is giving $250,000 toward the commemoration and preservation of HMCS Sackville. Defence Minister Peter MacKay will be in Halifax Sunday to announce the donation to the Canadian Naval Memorial Trust. The Sackville is the last of Canada’s 123 Second World War-era corvettes. It spends its summers docked along the Halifax waterfront. The trust has plans to raise tens of millions of dollars from governments and private donors to establish a new memorial on the waterfront that has the 71-year-old ship as its centrepiece. The plan calls on constructing a building, covering 1.8 hectares, that houses an interpretive centre and interactive displays on the Battle of the Atlantic. The plan is to have the memorial ready for Canada’s 150th birthday in 2017. ...

(pmcleod@herald.ca)

The original Queen's Landing proposal always seemed very complicated and difficult to implement. Maybe it makes more sense to do the pieces separately.

I think this is an interesting, unique project.

2017 is gearing up to be Halifax's year to shine!

The HMCS Sackville preserved in the Battle of the Atlantic Place will be a national media highlight while celebrating Canada's 150th birthday. In the same year, Canada will also be commemorating 100 years since the Halifax Explosion.

The Halifax Central Library will be complete.
The Nova Centre will be up and running.
King's Wharf will hopefully see completion by this time.

Much more of the downtown will be developed. Surface parking lots will be a thing of scarcity! :tup: 2017 is going to be a big year for this city.

That $250K will take them to great heights. Now they only have to fund-raise $99,750,000. Should be a piece of cake.

:takemymoney:

Wow, Sackville St. (incl. Sackville Landing) continues to have significant development coming down the pipes.

I've said this before but $100 million is pretty ambitious! I wonder where they are with fundraising. I'm guessing they would want to start construction within a year or two to have it fully operational by 2017.

I will be interested to see if the proposed designs will include some sort of interaction with the water, what with this being a ship memorial built directly over the harbour.

The story indicated that the $250K was for the initial design phase: story link - http://thechronicleherald.ca/novasco...00-from-ottawa
I think that the federal government was the first to make a significant contribution to the design phase is a very good sign. Not only does it indicate that they are are aware of the proposal, it is also a good indication that they will make a more substantial contribution in the future.

It is a shabby street now but it will have a completely different feel in a few years, particularly if the Southwest apartment building goes up.

$90 million to $100 milliion? That's a lot of money to glorify a war that happened quite some time ago.

Wouldn't that pay for a reasonable stadium?

Yes.

Or, it would pay for a significant contribution of transit upgrades.

Yes it would be enough for a stadium but the federal government has in the past been willing to fund museums and libraries but not sports venues (unless there is a special sports event as a reason to contribute).

I would consider this as an opportunity to remember the Canadian Navy and merchant seamen who made a strong contribution to winning a war that had to be fought to preserve democracy and freedom in Europe. That threat to democracy and freedom could have extended to North America if Hitler had enough time to build a nuclear bomb (they had already developed jets so they were ahead of the Allies in some areas of technology).

In any case (as is the case with the Library), I don't think it should be an "either or" situation. Both are worthy projects. I think the stadium will the most difficult to achieve.

This seems like more of a national project and some of the money will come from donors who would not be interested in funding a stadium.

It's not correct to look at public projects as a zero-sum game where the amount of total funding is fixed and can be diverted to arbitrary projects. The total amount of money available varies depending on what's proposed and some funds are available for certain types of projects but not others. This is part of the reason why it's good for the city to have different types of capital projects on the go at any given point in time.

But in the end, it is a zero-sum game. There is only one taxpayer and taxpayers are the only source of public funds. Capital is by definition limited nd wasting it on things like this or oversized libraries means that there is less capital available for other things that most people would consider a higher priority.

The reality is that someone in the Sackville Landing organization is likely a political crony of MacKay or the Tory party who was owed a favor, hence the funding. There is certainly minimal demand from the public for this project. It strikes me as a very small group of very special interests.

I disagree. Spending on projects can grow the economy, increasing the amount of money available in the future. This is definitely true of infrastructure like highways or transit but it can also be true of tourist attractions or projects that promote education. Pro sports funding is a little more questionable.

From a local perspective there isn't a single taxpayer, there are local taxpayers and then there is the province and Ottawa. For years, Halifax received below-average spending. The result wasn't savings for Halifax taxpayers on, say, their federal income tax, it was increased spending in other parts of Canada. Here in Vancouver we have a huge amount of new infrastructure funded in part by the federal government. The total federal spending per capita on projects like the Canada Line, gateway road building, etc. is far beyond what you see for HRM (the town where a bus terminal is considered a huge deal). HRM also left a huge amount of federal and provincial Commonwealth Games funding on the table.

Yes, it could be a significant contribution toward transit upgrades but in the end all we will have is people looking for more transit upgrades.
Seems to me no matter how much we spend on transit upgrades we will always need more.
We do not have a stadium so lets spend on that and then we can get back to transit upgrades.

I agree that most Haligonians aren't outright "demanding" this project but as someone else mentioned, from a national perspective, this is a pretty big deal. I will fully admit that I knew NOTHING about the Battle of the Atlantic until this thread came up and I checked it out on Wikipedia out of curiosity. I consider myself pretty knowledgeable about Canadian history yet I couldn't have named one fact about the BotA, other than perhaps that U-Boats were involved. The point being, these people who sacrificed their lives protecting the convoys and the Atlantic coast deserve to be remembered, and aren't. They deserve a tribute, and I would imagine that most other countries would have built one by now. It's good for the Canadian identity for things like this to exist. Is this a bigger waste of money than say, Pier 21 or the Museum of Human Rights? Are museums just a waste of money in general?

I would like to go on record here as saying that I think that establishing a basic, primarily urban rapid transit system (aka, transit upgrades) should DEFINITELY be prioritized over a stadium. As mentioned, though, they're very different types of projects so it's not necessarily an "either or" thing. But although I do support a stadium, we don't "need" one the same way that we "need" people to be able to get around the city.

I disagree that public transit is a bottomless pit. As any growing city that desires to grow sustainably, periodic investments in transit will be needed.

Halifax needs transit oriented development. It would do wonders for bringing density.

I understand that people are hungry for a stadium. Perhaps the city can invest in a stadium and transit concurrently, although I don't see that as likely. At the very least, we need to be having a transit discussion. It is the most vitally needed for the city's growth.

With more growth...comes an eventual stadium.

I have no problem with money being spent on transit. However, it seems frequently when it is suggested that we spend on a stadium there are those who prefer the money be spent on transit. We already have transit and people are moving about the city. Maybe with billions of dollars they could move a little faster. We are a relatively small city and as we grow transit will happen. We do not have a stadium like many cities our size and maybe we should consider giving it a priority.

I think most people want an investment in both transit and a stadium, but people are trying to be realistic in expecting an investment in one at a time.

Even though we lack the stadiums of Toronto, Halifax is unfortunately beginning to experience Toronto-style traffic congestion. Yes, Halifax has public transit, but it is absolutely pathetic and not at all adequate, even for our relatively small city.

Hence, I would place investments in transit at a higher priority because transit has a much greater impact on a municipality's economic growth than a stadium does.

A stadium will come at some point for Halifax -- maybe even quite soon? Upgraded transit, however, must come much sooner, if not concurrently.

I agree. I don't know why people would bring transit or stadium funding into this thread as this is a whole different deal.

From the Canadian Naval Memorial Trust's information page, funding is coming from all levels of government as well as corporate sponsors and private donors.

http://canadasnavalmemorial.ca/wp-co...ct-Sheet-1.pdf

So this has nothing to do with taking money away from potential transit or stadium projects.

Anybody who thinks that this in a non-important project might just want to brush up on their Canadian history a little. The Second World War wasn't "just another war" such as one might read about in today's context, it was an aggressive attempt by Germany and its allies to conquer and change the world (eventually). We did not want the war, but we did have to defend our way of life, and many Canadians did that without hesitation, often giving theirs in the process.

What if we had done nothing? Google "The Holocaust" and learn about the kind of actions that could have easily happened in Canada had the German military advancement been allowed to continue without resistance.

Not trying to sound preachy, just trying to add a little perspective here. I applaud the project and think it will be a valuable addition to our waterfront.