[Drybrain]

Frankly, if this delays things slightly but results in full retention and restoration of even some of the heritage buildings (especially Champlain and Merchants Bank, which has a great interior) I'm okay with it. But no way will this derail the whole project--even if the appeal is successful (doubtful) they're definitely going to work with that, rather than abandon it.

I assume it'll be rejected, though. It seems that city council and the DRC consider facadism to be equivalent in most cases to preservation or even restoration. One look at Waterside Centre's embarrassingly cheap and chintzy street frontage on Water and Hollis should disprove that, but anyway...

That document is massive, but if anyone has read it or knows, are there plans to turn the heritage facades into actual building entrances or storefronts? That's the big failure of a lot of Halifax facadism from Waterside to Founders Square: the old building fronts are reduced to functionless decoration. They look like the corpses of old buildings prettying up the new ones. If they actually utilize the entry points of the facades, I'd feel a bit more positive (or less negative) about the demolition.