Quote:
Originally Posted by someone123
...whereas the lower end Spring Garden buildings are wood and have been significantly altered in many cases.
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True, but
most of Halifax's older buildings, commercial and residential, are wood, at least outside of the immediate downtown core. That's just the local vernacular. As we see with the city's well-preserved clapboard streetscapes, a properly maintained wooden structure can last for decades or centuries.
It looks like MacDonald wants to move fast with this, and the worst-case scenario would be to replace what's there right now with something hastily conceived, or just plain unattractive. (I'm thinking of the big slab of ugly that is Cornwallis House, right across the street, which replaced a decent three-storey Victorian wood building.) If the new development really turns out to be an improvement, awesome. But the current SGR streetscape works well, as does the Birmingham streetscape. The new development will have to be seriously fantastic, from an urban and aesthetic perspective, to justify the demolition. I'm just not confident MacDonald's got that in him. But--I hope I'm wrong!
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