Posted Jul 27, 2011, 4:16 AM
|
 |
Registered User
|
|
Join Date: Mar 2011
Location: Calgary
Posts: 329
|
|
not sure if this is the place for this but this shows just how bad this problem has got, possibly one more business moving to the "burbs" how sad.
CH today:
Dealing with city hall a 'mind-bending experience'
By ROGER TAYLOR Business Columnist
Halifax businessman Michael Turner says he’s developed a whole new appreciation for the type of frustration developers must be encountering when dealing with city hall.
Turner, president of real estate counselling, evaluation and brokerage firm Turner Drake and Partners Ltd., says he’s been building and renovating mainly heritage buildings in Halifax for 31 years, and he’s never been more aggravated than by what he’s experienced recently, describing it as a "mind-bending experience."
In May, Turner says he acquired a property at the corner of Windsor and North streets that was until recently a real estate office. His plan was to renovate the building and simply connect it to Turner Drake’s existing offices at 6182 North St.
"It is a building that has been a target for vandals. (Century 21 Team One Real Estate Ltd.) was in there and had their windows smashed. And they put a graffiti wall up in an effort to appease the graffiti guys," Turner told me Monday.
He attempted to buy the building two years ago, he says, but the owners weren’t selling. He had all but given up trying to get the building and was investigating the possibility of moving his company to larger facilities in Burnside Park in Dartmouth.
He suspects the real estate company became discouraged. Out of the blue one Friday, Turner received a phone call from them asking if he still wanted to buy it.
"We said yes, and so we settled a deal with them within an hour."
The problems with the city started when Turner applied for a building permit, initially to renovate and raise the back of the building two storeys to allow it to be connected to the existing Turner Drake office. There was some push-back from the planning department.
But a carpenter friend suggested it would probably be easier to raze the building and replace it with another two-storey structure, this time with a full basement, since there was no historical significance to the building at the corner and it was such a target for graffiti.
"The issue really is that we wanted to put planters around the building (on two sides) and the planters on Windsor Street fall pretty well within the present encroachment of the existing building. The planters to North Street follow the line of our planters from our present building and the line of all of the gardens all the way down the street, and we’ve just gone round and round, round and round."
Putting planters in front of the building is an attempt to keep graffiti artists away and has been a very effective strategy at Turner Drake’s existing offices.
Turner insists that adding the planters to the building would be within the existing city bylaw, but he says the planning office simply doesn’t want planters included. Rather than staff simply approving the landscaping under the existing rules, Turner says, he’s been told he’d have to take the matter to city council for approval, which could take up to six months.
"What it boils down to is, nobody wants to make a decision because if they make a decision somebody might point the finger at ’em. They’re decision averse."
He presumes everyone who wants to build something in the city is having the same problem with the planning department over relatively minor issues.
"It’s no wonder that nobody wants to build anything."
Turner says he’s writing a letter to the planning department explaining his situation in one last attempt to resolve the problem.
"I’ve said in the letter that we’re starting to look again at Burnside. We would hate to leave our location but we need the space."
Another possibility, he says, is to expand Turner Drake’s Saint John, N.B., office and move some of the work and people currently in the Halifax office.
|
Prev
Linear Mode
