[Halifax] The Keep | 27 m | 8 fl | Completed
 

This thread is for an 8-storey building proposed for the corner of Quinpool Road and Vernon Street.

Initiation report: http://www.halifax.ca/council/agenda...0110ca1115.pdf

The information page has been created;

Case 17195 Details

Considering the taller building immediately north of the site, the setback, and the traffic benefit to Quinpool Road I cannot see why this won't be approved sometime in 2013. The renderings don't show the colour really but assuming a normal approach this should be attractive but not at a stand-out level which is good for a corner like this (busy but not important).

I like it... the form is good, so materials will be make or break.

Everything is going to look bombed out in comparison to this... they should really consolidate alot of the houses on Quinpool.

The elevations suggest that the siding will be brick or stone-like material. The renderings are fine for showing the massing but I hope these aren't shown to the neighbourhood; they make it look like the building will have blank walls and an unfriendly exterior.

I think this building will be great for Quinpool Road if it's built. Quinpool has an interesting mix of shops but it doesn't have very good buildings aside from a couple of small stretches. My guess is that St. Pat's is still sitting empty.

The bottom of this page has some of the things going on at the old St. Pat's. Not empty, but might as well be.

Offices in the HRSB

Interesting article about public reaction. These people really don't get it...

:no: Will these people ever shut up and learn things aren't going to be in the same state forever?

NIMBY time!

... the traffic concerns imply that everybody owns a car once again. Aren't these often the same folks who want us to bike everywhere? How is it going to mean more traffic?

I'm not actually surprised. If there was an area I'd expect there to be a reaction, but it be a 'strong/vocal minority' it would be in this area. The said, the whole of HRM is going to brace for change because it's not just the major corridors where development will happen. I can't agree more that the City isn't going to be the same forever. A city is never finished and god willing grow. If that's the case - we have to find places for everyone.

Oh well - I highly doubt that this isn't going to go forward. It's not a huge thing, but I can't see the new council saying no to it.

That said, if my vision of HRM was ever to occur (which would have included an LRT down Quinpool) - these few people would've lost it if they knew how high I would've set the height limits. :P

The Halifax and West Community Council gave first reading to this application to proceed with a public hearing on May 13. Here is the report. I would add that some of the public comments from the public meeting are quite interesting. The 'usual suspects' came out in force.

My god, you got that right. Phil Pacey, Kommissar Howard Epstein, Dulcie Conrad... all the usual tired old voices that hold Halifax back. To hear the comments of these people it was like an 8-storey set-back structure would be The End Of The World As We Know It. It is ridiculous to think that these people would argue that either the existing mess on that lot should be preserved, or that another 4-storey sawed-off wonder should be there.

I don't think they'll have much sway though. The same crowd every time. City council will put more stock in what staff have to say.

(Pacey said the area south of Quinpool has a population density of 5,000 per sq. km. That sounds probable to me, but he also said it compared with the densest cities in North America, which is absurd. Our own south end is denser.)

Here's a classic quote:

"Mr. Pacey asked if there was any point to the various rules that are in place? He stated that he thinks there is and advised that he was involved when the Quinpool Road commercial planning was done 20 years ago."

They already asked Phil and friends what they wanted 20 years ago (back when the economy was terrible and there was practically zero development pressure), so that should settle planning questions in Halifax for all time.

Yeah because a city doesn't change?! It's like the old saying about airports - they are never finished. Same holds true with cities...but they appear they would rather have a city that doesn't change or grow. Let's ask how that's working out for CBRM?

I blame a lot of our dysfunction on our press/media. Has anybody on here ever been approached for a comment? There are many pro development people right here, yet the media keeps giving voice to the same old minority. Obviously media has not bothered to check any other opinions, and it would be so easy to find it.

Remember, it's only a story if you make it a story...so they only sell papers or get things on air if someone can help them make it an issue.

The press is the primary guarantee that neither side of the debate will ever believe we live in a society that's 'good enough'.

However, without them if we lived in a society that wasn't good enough, we'd never know it.


Well, that is, if you've got a properly functioning media; all respect due to David Simon.

This was moved and passed today at Council for a joint Regional Council/Halifax & West Community council public hearing in June.

Joint public hearing by HWCC and RC will be on June 25th

Case 17195 Details

Council apparently approved this one last night - creating lots of anger for the local NIMBYs.

Article link: http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/nova-s...-building.html

I don't think these people realize that Quinpool Tower is right across the street...

Good first step. Lets get the DA approved and repeat this about 20 times down the street. Alan Ruffman's comment in the CBC article is just precious. He wants the right to appeal plan amendments. What's next? Appeal Hiring of planners? He and these nimbys will end up being the ones who buy these units. There is the irony...

My question is why on earth would you buy property next to Quinpool road and not expect buildings of at least this height to go up? Hell, if I were buying in that area I would have the expectation of proposals 3x this high to be possible. I personally think this building is quite a bit shorter than what we should be aiming for for this street.

No surprise here. Not the NIMBYs so much, you get them everywhere. What is no surprise is that the Mother-Ship, CBC, jumps straight to Public Outcry (which is probably between 2 and a dozen neighbours) and zero mention of the potential benefits of this development especially regarding recent news on the future costs of sprawl to the municipality.

I'm lefty as anyone on this board, and love the Mother-Ship, it has great programming and beats the hell out of local commercial radio, but come-on! Their newsroom is sounding like the Editorial department of The Coast.

As for the development, it is reasonable mid-rise infill on a transit corridor, and will add only up to 70 residents to the area, most, if I'd hazard a guess, without cars. The parking lot west of the current plaza opens straight through to Pepperell and is full everyday, with cars entering and exiting onto Pepperell frequently. This will be no worse, and depending on what becomes of the surface parking present now, may actually represent an improvement to the traffic volumes on Pepperell.

To me, it seems that an entrance to an underground parking garage for an apartment building would be LESS busy than the entrance to a parking lot with a Tim Hortons and several other retail businesses. Obviously, I'm not thinking straight.

They should be grateful that 30-storeys isn't getting developed next to them. 8-storeys is tame.

It's time these people accepted the fact that Halifax is a city, and not their personal museum.

Just imagine 30 plus stories, a great view and a prized address to attract residents to the peninsula.

The NIMBYs will always be with us. If people in downtown Toronto are vehemently opposing six storey infill projects (which they are) and Vancouverites have a sky-is-falling meeting every time a condo is proposed outside of the downtown (and sometimes even then), Halifax will always have to deal with this too.

I think the best thing to do is sort through all the panic and hyperbole people spout and see if there are actually any genuinely good points being made in opposition to projects. If not, ignore them--city staff and council probably will, so no harm done.

We always hear about the same old people are upset about the same old developments that have been going up without incident all around the peninsula for decades.

It would be interesting if one of the papers ran a story on aftermath of some of these devastating mid-sized residential buildings. I live in a lowrise condo next to some 25-30 storey apartment buildings. Most of the time I forget they're even there, and it took me a while to notice how close they are.

All of that aside, Quinpool needs new buildings exactly like this one to bring in new people and businesses and improve the feel of the area. Traditionally it has struggled a bit because of a lack of density and investment.

Yes. Look at how Bishop's Landing has destroyed that part of the waterfront! That development should never have been allowed!!!!

The staff report regarding the Development Agreement will go before Halifax & West Community Council on Monday October 28th. This is the final step in the approval process.

Staff Report

This project was APPROVED last night. :)

Awesome! I think this is the perfect scale of development for Quinpool. Just keep marching things like these all down the Road and you'll soon have a really great corridor.

The Coast is reporting that Cyclesmith is moving to the retail space in the new NSLC building on Agricola. Seems like a pretty good place for them.

I think Quinpool needs far higher densities than developments of this scale bring. 25-30 stories would be great to see there someday.

I agree.

It would be great to see highrises become acceptable for this area; although, I think 30-storey buildings might be a challenge because Quinpool is sandwiched between two low-density residential neighbourhoods, filled by many residents who want to save as much of their sun exposure as possible and believe that Quinpool is 'developed enough'.

For now, 8-storey projects are consistent with what we're seeing throughout the North End as well. All of these low and midrise buildings that will be popping up over the next few years will gradually ease these residential communities into permitting higher densities, which will allow more amenities to flourish.

Mid-rise is idea along Quinpool to add density while maintaining the main-street charater--lining it with a good number of 6 to 12 storey buildings could add a huge amount of additional density.

Part of the reason developers aren't proposing loads of skyscrapers isn't just due to neighbourhood opposition. Halifax gets about 4,000 new residents a year, in half that many new households. There just isn't a market for more than a handful of tall projects at a time. I think if we're waiting to see any Halifax neighbourhoods turn into a mini version of Vancouver's west end or something, it's going to be a long, long time.

I hope that Noble Grape are able to find a nearby location! My brewing will suffer otherwise :D

^What about Tim Horton's! People will have to walk another block to find one (or however many the hospital has now) :P

But seriously I am very pleased to see this project get approved. A nice new urban pedestrian-oriented building like this will be a welcome addition to the bike route that is getting built on the Windsor-Vernon corridor.

And if that IS what we're waiting for, I think we have to ask ourselves: why?

Don't get me wrong, I like Vancouver. But we also have to keep in mind that Vancouver was really only built out in the last century or so. As a result, its blocks are larger and its roads wider. What's appropriate there is not necessarily the best fit for Halifax.

You could probably line the business area of Quinpool with another 20 or so similar sized buildings. At only one person per unit you'd still be gaining over a thousand new residents to that area. Quinpool is already very quirky, interesting, and successful as it is. A thousand extra people would be more than enough to really make that area alive.

I understand what you are getting at but it is easy to overdo the smalltown-Halifax angle. If you were to transport Fenwick or Park Vic to Vancouver's West End they would still be prominent buildings. The Empire Landmark Hotel towers over the western end of Robson Street and it is less than 10 metres taller than what Fenwick will be once it is redeveloped.

In a similar vein, the Maritime Centre has about 500,000 square feet and some of the big office towers here are maybe 800,000 square feet. There are a lot more big office towers here but the difference is smaller than a lot of people would expect.

Spring Garden Road is already like a mini West End, and it is worth pointing that out because the city needs to have a reasonable perspective on what sort of buildings will be proposed and what kind of infrastructure will be needed to support the development.

The same thing goes with the city's growth rate. A lot of people in Halifax are under the impression that the city is not really growing and that there's no pressing need for new infrastructure like transit. Meanwhile, the reality is that the city's infrastructure today has to support about 20,000 more people than it did 5 years ago.

The original plan for what is now Quinpool Towers was to have 4, 40 storey towers in the corners on top of a huge pad. This of course was shot down. It would have been FAR better than the ugly tower that was eventually built.

I know what you're saying—there's just a certain segment of people who have a real high-rise hunger, and say things like “Let's pack the Cogswell site with 40-storey towers” and I have to wonder if they have an understanding of real-estate economics. (Skye was a great example—people decried the city for not approving it, but it would've been market oversaturation anyway.) Towers are good, but I don't subscribe to the idea that putting in six storey buildings is a way to get people warmed up to the idea of taller buildings to come. Six to eight storey buildings are good in and of themselves.

Is that really true? And if so why isn't the BOC combined with the Roy the same kind of oversaturation? I'm quite sure just the BOC redevelopment has more units planned than the Skye towers would have had. And the Cunard block is coming up as well.

Wow! I never knew this. This could have been really cool or we might have hated it today.

From what I understand Skye was supposed to be a little smaller and at a lower price point than our usual condos/apartments. I suspect it would have filled up quite fast if the price was right.

How could BoC, at 21 storeys, have more units than Skye, at a total of 96 storeys in two towers?

BoC will have about 300 units, and Roy probably less, since it's "ultra luxury" and the units will presumably be bigger. They'll also be coming on to the market at different times. Skye would've been 600 unit all at once. Estimates are that the entire HRM needs 750-800 new housing units a year. Skye would've put almost all those in one place at the same time. It would've been bad planning to let it happen.

And as a who's who of the local planning and development community argued, Skye would've set a crazy precedent and rendered the new planning regime meaningless, and, indeed, overcrowded the market for at least a while. It's good that it's dead--we're certainly not hurting for development, anyway!

750-800 is off by a factor of 2 or more. The city has been growing by around 4,000 people per year lately while the average household size has been shrinking. On top of this, units are sometimes torn down or replaced. Even if the population growth were 0 there would be demand for new apartments every year.

Another factor here is that more and more people want to live on the peninsula. We don't know how many because up until recently it has been hard to build housing there.

Southwest is planning both the BoC tower and Cunard. Combined they are about the same scale that Skye would have been, and it is entirely possible that the two Skye towers could have been put on the market and built at different times. They may or may not have been desirable but I don't think they were nearly as far-fetched as a lot of people suggested.

Really?... Well: Let's pack the Cogswell site with 40-storey towers.

And just like King's Wharf that must also bear the realities of the real-estate market, the towers would be built over a planned duration of time that would most likely be subject to changes in completion dates and pricing.

There could be advantages to filling Cogswell with not-40 storey buildings though, in that it would fill in sooner, reconnecting downtown with the North End sooner. I get what Drybrain is saying - given the hypothetical choice between developing Cogswell with 8-15 storey buildings over a period of 5 years, or 40 storey buildings over a period of 20 years, some people would probably choose the latter, especially because in 10 years, once we have 2 40 storey buildings, that will set a precedent for a 50 storey building!

In other words, some people seem to value building height over most other factors. I guess, this being "skyscraperpage.com", this is understandable, but for me, height is more of a means to an end, with both advantages and disadvantages, and not so much a desired end result in and of itself. Again, I realize not everyone agrees, which I think was the original point.

Okay guys, I'm not gonna argue. My feeling is that Halifax can support a decent number of tall buildings, no doubt, but it's not the kind of market that's going to support, say, a whole high-rise residential district at any time soon.

But I guess part of this is just that I don't care about skyscrapers, or skylines--I used to, especially when I was a teenager in Calgary. I thought that city's exploding skyline was so cool. But somewhere along the way I just stopped caring much (unless the skyscraper in question was really, really awesome, of course).

EDIT: Just saw what Hali87 posted. Agree totally--height is a means to an end, not an end in itself. For some people, skyscrapers are symbols of progress and prosperity and are must-haves for a modern city. For me, they're just tools in the urban toolkit. They have to be deployed when and if they make sense, not just 'cause they're cool. (And I really react negatively when I read people suggesting, as someone did a while ago here, that the fine-grained, historical housing stock surrounding the Commons should be knocked down for "high-rises, baby!" I think, "Jesus, when did Robert Moses start posting here, and isn't he dead?")

Case in point:

Why would this have been far better?