[Jonovision]

A somewhat scary article from todays Herald.

Bayers Lake expansion in the works


By JEFFREY SIMPSON

Staff Reporter

The Bayers Lake Business Park is about to bulk up.

Halifax Regional Municipality is preparing to sell all or part of an 81-hectare swath of wooded and rocky land behind the Kent Build ing Supplies store for a multimil lion- dollar development.

John MacPherson, a real estate officer with the municipality, said Friday that the city is look ing for engineering firms to study potential uses for the land. A re quest for proposals closes Wednesday and MacPherson ex pects the work to take eight to 10 weeks.

Then the land will be put up for sale to bidders who come forward with development plans.

“It would be your typical com mercial- style development with the opportunity to do large-for mat retail," MacPherson said in an interview.

“It could also be small-format retail, it could be office space."

Plazacorp Retail Properties Ltd. of New Brunswick had an agree ment with the municipality a cou ple of years ago to buy 36 hectares of the land and build a large retail development but withdrew its of fer as the recession struck, Mac Pherson said. A price hadn’t been agreed upon.

No officials from Plazacorp could be reached for comment Friday.

Michael Wile, the municipal ity’s business parks manager, said any sale agreement would re sult in specific requirements in keeping with the development plan for the area, including the construction of a third entrance to Bayers Lake, from Northwest Arm Drive. That’s expected to ease traffic woes in the area and offset any increase in traffic caused by the expansion, he said. The 81 hectares probably won’t be sold in one chunk, Wile said.

“We’ll probably be selling bits and pieces as the market demand and supply calls for," he said.

“We’d want to make sure if someone’s buying the land, they have all intentions of construct­ing within a given amount of time — as opposed to just buying the land and sitting on it for years."

Wile expects there to be signif icant interest among developers. Several have been inquiring about it for years, he said.

“The economy is doing quite well now, so I guess we think we would have some takers," he said. “We don’t really see that as a problem right now."

The municipality’s business parks have weathered the eco nomic downturn of the last cou ple of years quite well, Wile said.

One big appeal of Bayers Lake to developers is the dense residen tial population of the surround ing area, he said.

It’s too early to know what price the land will sell for because ser vices such as streets and side walks will be part of any proposal and taken into consideration when reaching a deal.

Wile said it will be about a year before any construction starts.

And he doesn’t expect that ex panding the business park will have an adverse effect on down­town Halifax.

“I don’t think it’s an either-or proposition," he said.

But Coun. Dawn Sloane (Hali fax Downtown) said she’s not im pressed by the plan to expand the sprawling business park.

“I’m against that," she said.

“Every time you put a big-box store in, something happens in the downtown — another mom­and- pop shop dies."

Sloane said she would prefer development to be concentrated in the downtown so better servic es such as public transit could be offered and the city centre would be a livelier place.

“Your downtown is supposed to be your hub," she said.

“The more we sprawl, the more it costs us all."

(jsimpson@herald.ca)





I'm with Sloane on this one.