This is an article in Wednesday's Chronicle Herald
MacDonald eyes $60m downtown plan
6 hours ago
By CHRIS LAMBIE Business Editor
Mickey MacDonald says he has a $60-million plan for his properties in downtown Halifax. (PETER PARSONS / Staff)
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Mickey MacDonald has an ambitious $60-million plan for downtown Halifax.
In addition to redeveloping buildings on Queen and Birmingham streets, which he announced late last week, the head of Micco Group plans to build between eight and 10 storeys above Spring Garden Road on the site now occupied by Mills.
“After everything is all said and done, I think the value is going to be around $60 million,” MacDonald said Tuesday. “Hopefully it’s going to be a great development.”
He is no stranger to building projects.
“I did a bunch of different little kids’ stuff before. I developed some subdivisions and things like that. But this will be our first big project.”
The L-shaped downtown development, which will include commercial space on the ground floor and apartments above, will be built in stages, MacDonald said.
“I’m thinking (it will probably take) four or five years.”
He couldn’t say exactly how many apartments will fit in the project, which requires approval from city hall.
“We should be able to get a couple of hundred anyway.”
The first construction should start in early spring, MacDonald said. That initial phase will likely take at least two years to build.
MacDonald wants the ground floors on all three properties to be connected so shoppers can walk from one to the next, but he said the residential portions likely won’t have the same connection.
The project will probably include two buildings, one on the Birmingham side and another on the Queen side, MacDonald said.
He announced the sale earlier this fall of Mills, a high-end women’s wear shop, to Lisa Gallivan, Deanne MacLeod and Candace Thomas — all lawyers at Stewart McKelvey — and Toronto physiotherapist Katharine Perry, who grew up in Amherst.
“Women’s clothing is something that I was never cut out for,” MacDonald said. “I did it just to kind of keep the brand alive and I think (this) was a good opportunity for some women who want to take it over. I think they’ll do a far better job than me.”
But the business isn’t moving out of its three-storey location on Spring Garden and Birmingham, which MacDonald bought in 2007, until the end of March.
In the interim, MacDonald’s plan includes tearing down MacDonald’s short-lived Queen Street Chickenburger, formerly a doctors office, which is only two storeys.
“We’ll have that down by the end of December.”
Later in the project, MacDonald aims to redevelop the two-storey building on Birmingham that is presently home to King’s Krown Company Ltd. barbershop and M Home furniture showroom. But he couldn’t say Tuesday when that might come down.
MacDonald said he has talked with several high-level Halifax developers, including Wadih Fares and Jim Spatz, about the project. But they likely won’t be the developer he partners with to build the towers and he has not picked an architect yet.
“I’m negotiating with a couple of developers,” MacDonald said. “Over the next few weeks, I think we’ll have a decision on who we’re going to go with.”
In terms of a name, MacDonald’s toying with something that plays on the history of Mills Brothers, which opened in 1919.
“I’m not sure. But I’m thinking of calling it The Mills.”
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