Quote:
Originally Posted by HaliStreaks
The Imperial Oil building was one of the buildings that in the beginning was sort of a catalyst for this project, the "guts" of the building were no good, the weight of the structure was on old rotten wooden piles in very porous saturated ground, I was chatting with Ben McCrea at one point a few years ago.. about when they closed the bar in there, when we experienced really high tides and bad weather, the basements of those old buildings along Lower Water St. had a tendency to flood, and this was a common thing, for a very.. very long time. They could've just said "screw it" and ripped everything down due to the damage, so the fact they've kept the facades is fantastic, they'll look good, and the integration into the new building is going to keep them safe, stable, and looking good for years to come.
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Yeah, I didn't know that stuff. (Of course they still could've been saved if enough money was spent, but obviously a line has to be drawn somewhere.)
Generally I'm of the opinion that just about well-built old structure can be saved, and in Halifax, where we've lost so much, SHOULD be. But there are always exceptions, and I definitely concede that given all those issues, this might've been one. As someone else said below, it's so difficult to know when to believe developers, because so often in Canada we hear that a structure is worthless and beyond saving, only to hear a different opinion from the city itself. Or one building owner will claim a structure is worthless and beyond saving, and then pass it off to another, who actually ends up restoring the thing.
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