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Old Posted Dec 2, 2015, 3:19 PM
OldDartmouthMark OldDartmouthMark is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by halifaxboyns View Post
This argument about Schmidtville is getting old and frankly has been solved by Council. It's called HRM by Design - there is no conflict in planning at all. Council made a clear decision to allow taller buildings through HBD in the block between Spring Garden and Clyde from South Park all the way over to Queen - period. The building heights, rules etc. all reflect a desire to increase density; taller and greater intensity.

The two blocks that are between South Park Street and Dresdon Row are the only ones not impacted by viewplanes (literally a viewplane line goes down the middle of DR). So these two blocks are where taller buildings are emphasised by the planning documents - they tried and failed to have that thinking changed. Move on.

The 'midrise' blocks are the parking lots from DR to Queen - which are impacted by viewplanes and height limited.

Don't get me wrong - I love a lot of the buildings in the Schmidtville low rise area (below Clyde to Morris) - but tall/mid-rise and the smaller buildings can live quite fine together. Just make sure there are good separation distances; stepping the building back as it goes up to break up the massing and shadow studies to make sure that the street gets some light for a certain # of hours. Wow - it's not rocket science.

This also speaks to what is heritage and who determines it - I made a point of that in a post a few weeks ago. We really need a list of buildings that are Council (not the public not even staff; but Council decides on) that are of heritage value. Maybe let the public submit stuff for consideration but legislatively it should be council who decides.
I dunno, looking at the proposed boundaries posted by bluenoser on page one of this thread, it seems like the heritage conservation district boundaries haven't been settled yet:



Also, the article said:
Quote:
The proposed conservation area stretches from Brenton to Queen and from Morris to Clyde streets. The plan is slated to be presented to regional council in the spring, and if approved, would take affect in 2017.
I'm not intimately familiar with the whole Schmidtville situation, but this leaves me with the impression that the developer is trying to get in there and mow these down before it becomes a heritage conservation district, an situation that has been discussed on this forum in other threads.

Who is right and who is wrong? Frankly, I don't really know, but I'm kinda surprised by the ire that this situation brings on this board, between Keith's attempt to make Schmidtville supporters appear to all be some group that people like to make fun of and despise (which confounds me, really) and the general attitude of 'let's get this over with already'.

Is there not some kind of due process that has to happen here or am I mistaken on this?

Also, is it right that people should have no say in this? I know the whole NIMBY mystique, but really, should people have no say about what goes on in their neighborhoods?

Regardless, despite all the nay-sayers I feel this is reasonable process. The city makes a decision, a citizen's group doesn't agree and rallies to make some sort of protest, people of the city are made aware and whatever decision results hopefully has at least had the due process of a second look. I don't see that as a bad thing.
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