Halifax Park Development
 

I thought it would be good to have a thread for all the various park development or redevelopment that is happening around the city.

I was up checking out the newly redesigned Fort Needham park on the weekend. Very impressive and a good high quality space that uses high quality materials.

https://farm5.staticflickr.com/4670/...3e0aa568_b.jpg20180224_141228 by Jonovision23, on Flickr

https://farm5.staticflickr.com/4667/...88853336_b.jpg20180224_141020 by Jonovision23, on Flickr

https://farm5.staticflickr.com/4762/...9f7de798_b.jpg20180224_141014 by Jonovision23, on Flickr

https://farm5.staticflickr.com/4653/...a243241b_b.jpg20180224_140406 by Jonovision23, on Flickr

https://farm5.staticflickr.com/4650/...f51a2728_b.jpg20180224_140309_HDR by Jonovision23, on Flickr

https://farm5.staticflickr.com/4708/...80596d60_b.jpg20180224_140210 by Jonovision23, on Flickr

The Halifax Common Master Plan is starting to cause a lot of concern now that it is approaching a deadline day of July 16th. Current documents are here:

https://www.shapeyourcityhalifax.ca/...plan/documents

It would appear the desire of HRM Planning is to eliminate the existing ball diamonds, plant a bunch of trees, construct several buildings, force out the Bengal Lancers, get rid of the Public Gardens greenhouses, and create a "Great Lawn" among other things. A great deal of it sounds like changing things for the sake of spending money. Hopefully this will get derailed.

Thanks for sharing the link... I took a read through this morning (a bit annoying that you have to download each document separately). I didn't get the same sense for all of the items about which you have concerns:

I don't have a sense of how many diamonds are currently there and what the optimal number are. I get that there should be a balance - i.e. the Common should balance structured activities like cricket and ball leagues with unstructured activities - but I can certainly see how this might be alarming. The casual sense I have is that the ball diamonds are well used (at least for the brief period we have weather that supports it!)

Planting a bunch of trees doesn't seem heinous to me.

New buildings I saw included a replacement of the existing Pavilion, relocation of the greenhouses and maintenance building, and a new field house at Wanderer's Grounds... instead of "construct several buildings," it's replace five (the Pavillion, one maintenance building and three greenhouses) and build one new (the field house). The Pavillion needs replacement, and it looks to me like relocating the maintenance building and greenhouses makes some potential for better use of space by the public on the Wanderers Grounds.

I didn't catch the part about forcing out the Bengal Lancers.

Public Gardens' greenhouses are shown on the Wanders Grounds page... Note "5" in the legend is identified as "Parks Maintenance and Greenhouse Complex."

I assume the "Great Lawn" is part of the attempt to introduce a greater variety of spaces to support unstructured uses. The moniker is a bit eye roll-y at this point, but the only issue I see with this is related to whether the balance is tipped too far away from the structured uses of the Common.

A growing city needs a well loved and well used central space. I don't know if this gets there, but I'm glad someone's finally looking at it. It's undervalued at the moment (in my opinion) and deserves some investment (although, maybe we don't need 29 games tables at the northwest corner of the North Common?).

I've printed off the master plan documents and looked at them again - The more I look at them, the more I feel like this might be the right time to get rid of Cogswell, widening Bell and Trollope to route cars south of the Central Common instead. That right-of-way could be used to house some of the other spaces (the games tables at the northwest corner of the North Common, for example) and maybe shuffle things around enough to gain back one of the lost ball diamonds.

I was talking to a colleague who mentioned that the pool is kind of a waste of space for much of the year - when it's not used, it's still surrounded by a chain link fence. Perhaps a splash pad would be better in this location, with an outdoor pool somewhere else, not directly on the common.

I feel like planting trees on the skate park is a bad idea - looks like convenient ways to increase accidents for skaters hitting trunks.

There is a reference in one of the documents that says "This will revert to green space once their lease expires" (paraphrasing).

Since the greenhouses serve the Public Gardens I fail to understand why they would need to go away. Doesn't make much sense to truck in plants from a new facility in Burnside or wherever. What harm does it do to keep them in the existing space?

I think the proposed new location for the greenhouses would be on Bell Road where the vehicle compound currently exists. The vehicle compound would vanish and the area around the grounds-keeper's house would also be turned into a smaller garden area.

With a new field house, mini-garden and revised greenhouses, this corner gets cleaned up and more open to public use.

In the documents, they appear to be relocated just to the north of Power House, on Bell Rd., not Burnside.

That WOULD be a shame - they add a unique element to the Common and should be encouraged to remain part.

that's the exact quote

I responded to the survey.

I really like having the lancers downtown and put a comment to that effect. in fact I would encourage even more farm animals downtown, something like a little experimental farm would be really cool and very instructive for kids. When I was in Montreal last, they were using sheep as lawnmowers in some of the parks on the west island. Kids absolutely loved it and I think it fits a little bit with our tourism angle of being a heritage city. I also really like the new veggie/fruit displays in the gardens. The more educational features the better.

They appear to want to brand the entire commons area, including the gardens and the cemetery, in a similar way, personally I really love the historic feel of gardens and cemetery and don’t see why they need to be branded the same way.

Not sure why a great lawn area is needed with citadel hill right there. The ball diamonds seem well enough used to me.

My other comment on the survey: we need a lido pool! Not just the waeg!!

Doesn't matter what people say in response to the survey. The HRM planners with their textbook theories and their faux-planner buddies on Council like Mason, Cleary and Austin will do what they want and the wishes of the public at large be damned.

deleted smarta** comment

Don't tempt it...

LOL... Almost deleted...:haha:

Actually it was a good comment! :cheers: