Quote:
Originally Posted by Keith P.
It's like most things in life - it depends. Few people would want architectural masterpieces torn down. There are damn few of those in Halifax though. Things like the Dennis fall into the middle ground - old, stone-built (a plus), mildly interesting architecturally, but not well kept up and as anyone who has been sentenced to work in it for any length of time can attest, a lousy, totally obsolete building from a functional standpoint. You can argue that case either way. But when you get into the majority of buildings that are getting torn down, it is an improvement. The reality is that economically it is not practical to save every old structure and restore it. That is the thinking that led to downtown not having anything built in over 20 years, and it is the reality that even those now-old buildings were constructed in during the 1800s and early 1900s - they replaced stables, older buildings from the 1800s whose use had been outlived, etc. You cannot stop progress.
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Certainly you fall under the category that Drybrain was referring to in his post. I definitely don't ever expect you to post an 'agree' smiley whenever I post about heritage buildings, so that is that.
I don't think it's accurate, though, to state that heritage preservation is the reason that little was built in the downtown in over 20 years. Simply stated, if there had been a good business case for it, the construction would have occurred. With little to no heritage protection laws and an ineffective HT, there was nothing to stop it from happening in the name of heritage protection.