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Originally Posted by isaidso
The Gottingen Street proposal has the right scale, but it's far too unsophisticated a design for a city over 100,000... It's reminiscent of starter apartments blocks that people in university/fixed income live in.
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This is pretty much exactly the market that this building is targeting, as far as I know. It's tough to develop in this area because "gentrification" is considered such a dirty word. This is going up in an area that has a major public housing presence and is becoming more and more popular with students.
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Originally Posted by Someone123
Gottingen was considered rough but has been gentrifying a lot lately and has seen a couple of private condo developments. I'm not sure exactly what it's like presently because I haven't been back in a couple of years.
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I'd say it's getting better overall. It's becoming a bit of a hipster heartland.. there are a few new art galleries and performance venues (the Paragon closed a few months ago but the Company House and Bus Stop Theatre seems to be doing well). Crime is still an issue (I lived at Brunswick and Cogswell before the new year and was the victim of a nasty break-and-enter, part of a larger crime wave in the area in the fall) but these incidents tend to drop in the winter, since most of the "criminals" are kids from the projects who seem to commit most of their crimes when it's nice out
There has been speculation that this area will develop as Halifax's Gay Village (a few of the establishments on Gottingen cater to the LGBT crowd, and Refelctions was looking at taking over the Paragon but wasn't able to transfer its cabaret license) although downtown Halifax is basically one big gay village anyway
the Gottingen area I'd describe as increasingly "hipster" though for sure, and decidedly left-wing (Megan Leslie's office is at Gottingen and Cunard).
I think the city should focus on emphasizing the qualities that make Gottingen unique. One thing that I think would improve the street tremendously would be some old-school, exaggerated googie-deco signage like it had back in the 60s:
Some of the newer buildings such as Theatre Lofts seem to be incorporating architectural references to this area (TL itself is a visual reference to the abundance of cinemas that used to line Gottingen). Global's new studios will also add an interesting dynamic, although it's a shame that Palooka's is closing.
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