[Halifax] The Marlstone (1871 Albemarle) | 19 FL | U/C
 

Residential tower proposed for the corner of Duke and Albemarle, part of Scotia Square.

Report: http://www.halifax.ca/boardscom/drc/documents/821.pdf

http://imageshack.com/a/img923/5629/kYZ3tJ.jpg

I took a look at some of the plans. Modern enough to excited about and fits the zone well.

Nice addition to the area, I think. That has been a dead zone for so long it will be nice to finally have something more interesting from street level.

https://www.google.ca/maps/place/Alb...!4d-63.5776776

Good point, with this and the other 3 apartments already there maybe Albemarle Street can support some street level retail.

Really happy they're doing something more ambitious here. With all the density, hopefully this area will soon see an urban format Sobey's or similar.

I wish they weren't retaining such a long blank wall along Albemarle though.

Funny because my wife made the exact same comment the other day. We had family visiting from Ontario who were staying downtown, and so while we were down visiting and seeing all the residential construction my wife said "The next thing they need is an urban grocery store other than Pete's".

The curious thing, now that Sobey's owns Pete's, is whether they would see that as competing against themselves or not. I think there is ample opportunity based on both location and leaving Pete's to be more "high end" to justify that it could be independently successful. Given the Sobey's/Crombie thing, it would make sense to me to do an urban Sobey's in Scotia Square, if they could have it with visible frontage.

I've heard that Scotia Square used to have a Sobeys in it. I think it had a theatre as well?

Downtown Halifax is actually already pretty well-served by grocery stores. There's Pete's, the Sobeys on Queen, and the Superstore on Barrington. I don't know of any other North American cities of similar size that have that many so close to downtown. A lot of American cities have nothing to speak of. Of course, the suburban-style stores are a little unsatisfying. I think they might make it less likely for an urban format store to pop up though.

I've read different estimates for how much business a full store needs. Maybe 5,000-10,000 people? That is about how much the downtown population has been growing every 10-15 years since it bottomed out in the 1980's.

Regardless of what happens on the urban format grocery store front there's going to be a much greater density of residents in what up until recently was just an office district downtown. As a result I think it'll work a lot better as far as supporting diverse retail with longer hours and being more lively.

Yes, Scotia Square Cinema was accessed from Duke St and was across from the entry to Woolco. Technically it was in the Upper Mall although the size of those two places tended to move them away from the other stores on the upper level.

The cinema was of modern design and to my mind a bit plain, although pleasant enough. I remember when I first visited it in 1969 or 1970 that it was the first movie theater I had been in around here that did not have the old mohair or velour upholstered seats - theirs were a textured vinyl or nylon material. It was quite large, and it had a very gradual slope to the floor compared to most other movie theaters here. I think it closed in the late '80s or early '90s. The last movie I saw there was Good Morning Vietnam.

There was indeed a Sobeys when SS first opened , in the Lower Mall, roughly where the food court is now. My memory was that it did not last long, although there may have been a transitional arrangement from a full supermarket to a smaller "Express" type of outlet before it went away completely.

Yeah, it's interesting that as maligned as Scotia Square is, it actually once contained a lot of the services right in the middle of the downtown that a lot of people are wanting today, as if it's some kind of new "urban format" philosophy.

The "old timers" could probably say this better than me, but at that time the downtown as a shopping destination was still very vibrant. However, I suspect that Scotia Square drew enough customers away from the older mom and pop shops (and larger ones, like Zellers - in the The Discovery Centre building for you young folk) to cause a lot of them to close down, which led to the area becoming a little more desolate and run-down during the eighties and nineties.

As for movie theatres, remember there also were a couple on Barrington and Gottingen in addition, so one did not have to go very far to see a movie in the downtown (this is in the early days of cable TV, and before the time of VCRs, DVD players, or "streaming movies"....

http://cinematreasures.org/theaters/37768

When Scotia Square was built, it was built with no windows so that shoppers would not be distracted by the dreary outside.

The Vintage Halifax page on Facebook offers this pic. Sadly, no interior pic of the theater itself. I'd love to see one.

http://i289.photobucket.com/albums/l...ps9ri3trm4.jpg

I quite enjoyed the stand alone theatres, The Hyland was another good theatre.

Great photo. I'd also love to see an interior view. I remember Cinema Scotia Square as a very comfortable, classy theatre, with fine acoustics. Of course when built it was to replace the late, lamented Capitol, a reduction from 2000 seats to almost 800. Still a large auditorium by today's standards. (The Oxford has 340 seats; the largest auditorium at Bayers Lake has 336.)

For its first couple of decades Scotia Square had two levels with quite diverse retail and entertainment choices. As a kid I loved shopping for models and trains at the large Maritime Hobbies store on the upper mall.

One unique design feature was that the standard store front had generic text-based signs to identify the tenant: no logos or designer fonts were allowed. I guess it was meant to convey an elegant, homogeneous appearance but it may ultimately have helped to discourage traffic.

I'm still somewhat surprised that the downtown retail environment could fail so dramatically over the span of a few decades.

This aerial photo shows where the new tower will fit in:

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CjFYZbUUUAAJUmn.jpg:large
Source

Scotia Square, c. 1970.

Here is the Nova Scotia Light and Power appliance store, with example of standard text-only sign:

https://c4.staticflickr.com/9/8777/2...bc79d7ed_z.jpg

Inside the store, some lovely 70's-era ranges in white, chocolate brown and avocado.
Also a back wall with a wide selection of electric kettles and irons:

https://c4.staticflickr.com/8/7584/2...04837346_z.jpg

The NSLP store was located in the lower mall, roughly where the medical clinic is today.

That text only design is copied from Place Ville Marie in mtl. Also, the TD centre picked up on it and gave it a Mies feel. Scotia sq was only a couple of years younger than that. Underground malls were the rage so they gave SS an underground feel even tho it was high above Barrington St.

I recall that signage. I recall that most of it was in all-caps and the only variation was it being either in white or yellow/gold. The NSL&P pic you posted shows a mixed-case sign, which I don't remember seeing elsewhere in the mall. I had mixed feelings about it at the time - while it gave the place a certain feel that I liked, it did take away from those retailers who had well-designed or easily identifiable logos. Also in the pic of SS Cinema I posted you can see the reflection of the "WOOLCO DEPARTMENT STORE" sign across the mall, which IIRC was in a larger size than most other mall signage but otherwise reflected the sign standards. I don't know how the Cinema got away with using their logos and unique font.

Also from Vintage Halifax on FB, these 3 pics show the interior of the mall in its early years. The Village Square was the Upper Mall area roughly above the center court. Evidently, stores located there did not need to follow the signage standards used elsewhere in the mall.

http://i289.photobucket.com/albums/l...psgj6b0m6l.jpg

http://i289.photobucket.com/albums/l...ps5clmsxj1.jpg

http://i289.photobucket.com/albums/l...psgljx3dxg.jpg

I think The Doll House as shown here was across Barrington in The Barrington Place Shops above the lobby of Delta Barrington.

Those Village Place Shops look like they were intended to be more aimed at tourists than the rest of SS. Looks and feels like Historic Properties.

Possibly so. I have no recollection of the place. I wonder if they ever sold the giraffe?