[Halifax] SoHo Square (1212 Hollis) | 24 m | 7 fl | Completed
New proposal for the corner of Hollis & South where in 2010 fire destroyed a row of Victorian townhouses. The Metlej's are proposing to construct a 7-storey, 63-unit residential building with 66 underground parking spaces. There will be 7 ground floor commercial pads ranging from 315 - 1635 sq ft. The building will be mostly clad in brick and glass with some wood trim. Amenity space will be located on the roof. In the public realm the building will be set-back from South Street to allow for patios and the sidewalk will be widened along Hollis Street.
Design Review Committee Report |
Thought this spot allowed for much taller, it should be much taller with residential. I thought I read on here waye saying he would support 14+ stories or something
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The rendering is all covered in weird green and purple overlays—is that in the PDF or is my computer wonky?
Anyway, from what I can tell, I'm impressed—the front-facing facade looks like it might be a little too busy, but overall the materials and colours look good, and it works well along the sidewalk. Of course I can't help but wish to get the row of Victorians back—a solid row of brick townhouses is extremely rare in Halifax, and that was probably the last best example. But I'm happy to see that the replacement won't be some tacky piece of junk. |
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This looks great in my opinion, and I'm really excited to see the sidewalks widened. |
OK thanks I was unclear with what happened with that, thought it was a lot more.
Maybe a building called The Gromit can be built somewhere close by on Hollis street and can have the Wallis and Gromit |
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WHILE I SUPPORT DOWNTOWN DEVELOPMENT, I CANNOT SUPPORT THIS DEVELOPMENT FOR THE FOLLOWING REASONS:
Too tall. Will create a wind tunnel. Will cast a shadow across the street. Will bring too many people to area. Will create traffic. Will endanger me and my children. DANGER! May devalue surrounding property. Out of character with neighbourhood. Fails to respect historical development of local area. I don't like people. I really, really, don't like people. Or students. Will block the sun from my urban garden. One day, I *may* build something on an empty lot near here, and require a greater set back protruding 20ft into this property. There, now. I've pretty much summarized the comments about this proposal at the first two public feedback sessions,. Can we thus skip those and put it directly to a vote? |
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Looks like a good solid mid-rise. I like the mix of small commercial space at the ground floor. Great opportunity for a bunch of small businesses to add life to the corner. I lived in the Elmwood Hotel (yellow place on the corner) when the fire happened. Several years ago now! It will be great to see something happen here as the loss of the townhouses really punched a hole in the streetscape. I'm kind of surprised though that this isn't a much larger block-spanning proposal. It's my understanding that Galaxy Properties (owned by the Metlej clan) has bought up the whole block. Relieved that the old Elmwood Hotel isn't coming down, but I'm curious as to what their plans are for it.
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If Galaxy does own it, it may be safe--there was a Chronicle Herald story right after the fire in which Tony Metlej said he'd bought the townhouses specifically because he liked them, and no intention of demolishing and redeveloping the property. Bit of a shame that the fire happened here, of all places--the block was probably safe in his hands. In any case, if he owns the Elmwood, maybe he feels the same about it. I could see a reno'd Elmwood and this new project doing wonders for the park area. |
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https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?v...type=2&theater
in looking at this video and website, there were a lot of stone buildings that were lost. There is a picture on this website of the Pentagon building from the side opposite the 'prow'. It was an impressive building, so many old stone building were razed to make cogswell, quite a shame. |
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Most of what they show was not in any way remarkable, just old even at the time of the photos. |
I liked the rows more but this looks OK.
Brick rows are a smaller percentage of the housing stock in Halifax than they are in, say, Toronto, but I wouldn't call them extremely rare. There are a few around Brunswick St/Portland Pl in the North End, Jubilee, and parts of the North End/Central Halifax (often painted or stucco). The Hydrostone rows are also pretty nice. I can think of a bunch of other little sets of brick rows and townhouses around the city. I do think that there isn't a good sense of the rarity of some of these building types or their impact of the character of the city. For example, I could see some decent pre-war masonry buildings coming down on Spring Garden Road even though they are only maybe 20% of the building stock at this point and could pretty easily be conserved. I think the root cause of this is that, in practice, the decision on whether or not to save buildings is happening piecemeal and is mostly driven by and expected to be bankrolled by individual property owners. The municipal and provincial governments should do a better job of coordinating heritage preservation and supporting owners of heritage buildings with tax breaks in recognition of the fact that part of their investment is primarily of public rather than private benefit. Right now this public benefit is not being valued correctly and a tiny public cost is being turned into proportionately much larger, optional private cost. It's pretty obvious why the system doesn't work well. |
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You weren't impressed by Saint Mary's School Barrington Street?, that was a lovely building. |
I like it. I think they've integrated the brick and glass nicely.
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