Here's a related news story about NS adopting national building codes that allow for construction of wood frame buildings up to 6 floors:
http://www.metronews.ca/views/halifa...n-halifax.html
Ross Cantwell is interviewed as part of that and explains how it will be easier to get the economics of developments like this one to work out with a couple more floors and wood frame construction. With modern fire strategies for preventing and suppressing fires this seems reasonable. Some wooden buildings are noisier but there are lots of ways to deal with that too. You can have good and bad wooden buildings, just like there are good and bad concrete towers.
I think the old limit was 4 floors, but sometimes developments will have some concrete levels, and I believe parking garages must be concrete due to the fire hazard. So maybe this one has one ground floor of concrete and then 4 levels above of wood?
I wonder if we will see more proposals for areas like Gottingen or North End Dartmouth because of this change. It also has me wondering if the Housing Trust of NS projects will be changed to wood construction or if they will go through as-is.