[Jonovision]

Hearings to be set for downtown tower proposals


By CHRIS LAMBIE

Business Editor

More than a year after the problem first came to light, Halifax Regional Municipal­ity says it ready to go ahead with reviews and public hearings on two large devel­opments on Barrington Street that were nearly sidelined by an “oversight."

Large towers planned for sites that now house the Discovery Centre and the Roy Building were grandfathered under the Downtown Halifax Secondary Municipal Planning Strategy. But city staffers realized in January 2010 that similar grandfather­ing’ provisions were required under the Barrington Street Heritage Conservation District Revitalization Plan.

“No question, it’s been a very long time just to get that hiccup fixed," Kelly Denty, the city’s supervisor of planning applica­tions, said Thursday. “It’s been a year. We had hoped it would be much shorter."

The city reported Thursday that the “two long-standing development proposals for Barrington Street will be considered through a development application process that predates HRMByDesign provisions."

Both proposals are taller than the 21 metres allowed under the new rules, Denty said. “For us it was a technical exercise because it was a bit of an oops," she said.

“We amended one document without remembering to amend the other and we thought it was pretty straightforward. But . . . it’s taken a year to get us back to where we were before we realized we needed the amendment."

The amendment went to public hearing in August and then to the province in September for the required approval, she said.

“We just got word back from the prov­ince, I think it was yesterday, that they had been signed off," she said Thursday.

Each project will now have to go to its own public hearing.

That should happen within 90 days, Denty said.

If the municipal planning strategy amendments are approved by council, they will be sent to the province for its approv­al, which normally takes a month, she said.

(clambie@herald.ca)