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Originally Posted by OldDartmouthMark
I'm curious as to why you've included national historic sites in your summation of Halifax. Aren't they controlled by the federal government? Is it somehow a failing of Halifax in not maintaining those sites?
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The designation is managed federally but there's no dedicated funding for maintaining these buildings. Some are privately owned, some are not. The federally owned ones are not necessarily in better shape.
Black-Binney House is a good privately owned example. It is a national heritage site. It almost had a condo addition built on top. It's a 3-4 storey stone mansion from around 1800 or so. As a building type in Canada it is incredibly rare.
There are under 1,000 national heritage sites in total in Canada. My main reasons for bringing up the designation are that a lot of poorly maintained Halifax buildings are nationally significant, not just locally significant, and there are not that many of them in all of Canada. Maintaining them all to decent standards would not be a significant federal financial burden.