General Updates and News

[RyeJay]

Originally Posted by Hali87

This is basically 100% semantics, but I'm just wondering what you mean when you say "an actual city". This is a question that I've been asking a lot of people lately, especially the more that I see of Canada, because different people are looking for different things, and have varying degrees of familiarity with their own region and others. I think you'd be surprised how much Halifax has to offer compared to almost every city in Canada outside of the largest five. Ultimately, the only things that Toronto and Montreal have that Halifax doesn't, at least as far as the average citizen is concerned, are subway systems and major league sports. I guess for a lot of people, these are the deciding factors, but based on those criteria Quebec City wouldn't be a real city (anymore) either. I agree that a major, tangible investment in public transit, beyond just incrementally adding more bus routes and replacing subpar infrastructure, should be prioritized above a stadium, and if we're being real here, is probably a more realistic short term possibility since it would be much more likely to receive federal funding. I'm talking about LRT or something equivalent in terms of both functionality and appeal.

Density. Walkability. Strength and versatility of public transit. Variety of retail. Parks. Multi-cultural. Exciting. Festivals and occasions. Sports. Concerts. Post secondary educational institutions. Lights, lights, and more lights.

Whenever I've managed to bring friends from Central and Western Canada (to Halifax for their first time), upon traversing the peninsula and giving them a detailed tour of the downtown, their reaction has always been: "Cute. But is that it?..."

Yes, Halifax has some urbanity to it, some nice neighbourhoods in which you can live, work, and play -- but the City's quantity of urban assets is very limited. What you can do in Halifax, you can do much, much more in Montreal and Toronto...

When I say I want Canadians to see Halifax as an actual city, I initially mean physically, from our cityscape. I want the downtown to sport as many towers as possible, to the point people begin feeling as though Halifax is a mini-Vancouver.

It sure would be nice if Halifax had some of Vancouver's modes of public transit.

[someone123]

"Mini Vancouver" is kind of a strange thing to aspire to. Halifax is about 1/5 the size of metro Vancouver but its inner city, to me, feels more like maybe 1/3 the size, or maybe even a bit larger. Vancouver doesn't have a lot of interesting old residential neighbourhoods (the oldest ones are like the West End), and its universities are in isolated suburban locations. The bigger buildings in Halifax like the Maritime Centre or Fenwick would still be major buildings in Vancouver.

The two biggest differences, I would say, are that Vancouver invests a lot more in transit and in other urban infrastructure like streetscaping. The City of Vancouver invests heavily in its downtown, and tries to intervene in creating successful, complete neighbourhoods, whereas HRM is more like an absentee landlord. The sad thing is that streetscaping the commercial streets, burying power lines, etc. is actually a pretty small investment in Halifax terms. A while ago, a councillor complained about how expensive it would be to bury the power poles on Hollis -- over $1M. A couple years later, council turned around and randomly invested several million in the Oval, and tens of millions in making up the difference for the Bedford four pad when the federal government declined to contribute funding. Talk about messed up priorities!

LRT is a bit different in that it would be a major project on par with something like Harbour Solutions, but it would be worth it.

[someone123]

Originally Posted by Hali87

You can do this in Halifax though. There aren't as many neighbourhoods like that, but think Spring Garden (both ends)

Spring Garden Road stacks up well as a neighbourhood compared to even some of the nicest neighbourhoods in Toronto, Montreal, or Vancouver. Pete's is one big factor, and it will just get better as more residential development goes in. With some modest improvements, Barrington, the waterfront, and the inner South End could be like SGR as well.

Large parts of the North End and West End are OK but are incomplete in some way. The lack of good transit also means that anything outside of walking distance of the downtown is going to be more car-dependent than in successful cities with subway systems. If Halifax had LRT or even streetcars (to serve somewhere like the North End) more people would choose to use transit for a wider variety of day-to-day trips, more people would want to live around transit stops, and it would be possible to add more density to inner-city neighbourhoods without increasing congestion. Historically, few key HRM people seemed to "get" any of this, so they seriously undervalued transit.

[RyeJay]

Originally Posted by someone123

The City of Vancouver invests heavily in its downtown, and tries to intervene in creating successful, complete neighbourhoods, whereas HRM is more like an absentee landlord.

I agree.

And my "mini-Vancouver" comment isn't based on anything more than appearance. I look forward to Halifax having a more impressive density of glass towers, which shall approach what some are calling the City's table-top height of the ramparts maximum.

[Drybrain]

Originally Posted by RyeJay

I want the downtown to sport as many towers as possible, to the point people begin feeling as though Halifax is a mini-Vancouver.

Heh. I think we have opposite ideas for the city's future growth. Having a bunch of glass towers poking up through Halifax's skyline might look cool, but it won't say much about our relative urbanity. (If it did, then Calgary, with its big, muscular skyline, would be far more "urban" than Halifax.)

What I find exciting about Halifax right now is all the mixed-use, mid-rise developments moving north and south across the peninsula, filling in holes in the streetscapes and expanding the boundaries of our urban neighbourhoods. North Gottingen could be a much more urbanized stretch in a few years, and Quinpool could be significantly densified as well. The South End around the bottom of Queen Street has the potential to be a serious neighbourhood node, as well—just needs a few new developments and critical mass of people.

Vancouver's gleaming skyline is lovely, but it's come at the expense of city-wide urbanity. It would be vastly better if the Broadway, Kingsway, and Main Street corridors had been more thoroughly filled out over the past 20 years, instead of seeing a bunch of lookalike towers get wedged into Coal Harbour/False Creek. (Metro Vancouver has 2.5 million people, and only 600,000 live in the city proper—and even a lot of those people live in un-walkable, suburban areas.) The skyline would suffer, but who cares? It's what on the street that counts (to me).

And I agree that Halifax, as others have pointed out, already affords a MORE urban everyday lifestyle, for a greater share of citizens, than many Canadian cities of much larger size—Calgary and Edmonton especially. Our urban assets might seem small to someone from Toronto, but they have 6 million people; we have 400,000. I think that with a bit of positive economic growth and good planning, Halifax has the potential to be a more fully realized city than Toronto—we don't sprawl as badly, we're not 20 years behind where we should be in building transit (we're behind, but if you've been following T.O.'s cruel transit saga in the past two years, you'd know how incomptently that city is dealing with their transit pressures), and while we may be under-developed downtown, T.O. is at risk of the opposite, which will be a huge burden on infrastructure and the housing market, while still leaving the suburbs, well, suburban.

Last thing: I think that a few key developments will make a big difference in people's perception of downtown. Having Nova Centre fill up two currently empty blocks will make an enormous visual difference, as will the Library, Sisters sites, etc. And Skye/Tex-Park, when something is finally built there. A few giant weedy lots make a big difference on a person's impression of a place, especially in high-traffic areas.

[someone123]

Vancouver has some nice glass towers but I find the downtown condo skylines somewhat monotonous and bland. Neighbourhoods like Yaletown are not as great as they look. They technically have the amenities people need (grocery school, daycare, whatever), but they have very little character or sense of community. Of course, part of the reason for Vancouver's limited sense of community is that so many people come and go so quickly. I am hoping that the housing market and immigration will cool off a bit and allow Vancouver to settle down a little.

One big problem in Vancouver is that most of the city is hugely dominated by NIMBYs and is still very low density, although some suburbs like Burnaby and New Westminster are doing a good job of developing high density near SkyTrain stations. Halifax can't do any of that because it doesn't have real transit.

[RyeJay]

Originally Posted by Drybrain

Heh. I think we have opposite ideas for the city's future growth. Having a bunch of glass towers poking up through Halifax's skyline might look cool, but it won't say much about our relative urbanity.

I want Vancouver's density, not its copycat green-blue towers.

[Drybrain]

Originally Posted by RyeJay

I want Vancouver's density, not its copycat green-blue towers.

Def, but can't happen in the short or even medium term—Halifax's entire peninsular population is about 55,000, compared to the City of Vancouver at 600,000. Downtown and west-end Vancouver alone have almost twice as many people as the entire halifax peninsula--to achieve a similar density, we'd either have to move everyone on the peninsula to something like the area between Cogswell and South Streets, east of the Citadel. Or move the entire HRM onto the peninsula.

More desirable (again, IMO) would be to spread the level of density found in the South End (currently the densest in Atlantic Canada, apparently) throughout the rest of the peninsula.

[someone123]

Spring Garden's probably not too far off from densities on Vancouver's downtown peninsula. The density for that census tract is only about 7000/km^2 but it includes the Public Gardens and possibly the Citadel as well.

Many of Vancouver's downtown condos are point towers with a small number of units per floor and they have a fair amount of lower-density space around them. Something like the Sister Sites development could have been built in a tower format with a similar number of units.

Most of the land area of Vancouver consists of a built environment similar to outer peninsula neighbourhoods or inner suburbs like Fairview.

My point I guess is that I don't think Halifax is that far off density-wise from being able to have a handful of quite vibrant neighbourhoods. They won't have all the "big city" stuff but they will have most of the convenience of a place like Yaletown even if all that happens is that most of the empty lots fill in with midrise residential buildings.

[Empire]

I think there are only four neighbourhoods on the peninsula that have an urban feel....

1. The area between Inglis & Sackville along Queen St. & Hollis St.
2. Central - North End from Cogswell St. to Young St.
3. Far North End Lady Hammond area including the Hydrostone.
4. Quinpool strip.

All other areas have a suburban / small town feel.

The big hope is for the Robie strip to pull in all of the contaminated wasteland form Young St. to the Bedford Basin as a high density neighbourhood.

As mentioned many times on this forum transit is the key. If HRM isn't willing to invest in LRT then they should look at 1/2 size buses running constantly across the peninsula. (Downtown shuttles)

Does anyone know where there is a real neighbourhood butcher on the peninsula?

[Drybrain]

Just did some random number crunching--looks like Vancouver's downtown has a population density about 11,000 per sq. km, and the west end is about 22,000!

So that's definitely not coming to Hali any time soon. But downtown Van is an outlier. Right outside the downtown area, in East Vancouver, the Grandview neighbourhood (the city's artsy hub, where Commercial Drive is) has a population density about 6,100 per sq. km--barely higher than the North End, and lower than the Quinpool area. Likewise, Toronto's inner-city neighbourhoods tend to be in the 5,000 to 10,000 per sq. km. range. Trinity Spadina, with Kensington Market, the Annex, etc, is only 7,500.

Anyway, getting off track. My original point was just that the Vancouver model involves densifying an already dense downtown, but leaving the rest of the city largely as-is. In Halifax, by contrast, our growth seems to be spread more evenly spread throughout the peninsula. Hopefully over the next few years that creates a continuous series of ever-livelier neighbourhoods, filling in our gap-toothed streets. I'd much prefer that over a skyline that looks good on a postcard. (Having said all that, we definitely need a few of these right-downtown residential projects that have been proposed to get built.)

[Drybrain]

Originally Posted by Empire

Does anyone know where there is a real neighbourhood butcher on the peninsula?

This place opened in the Hydrostone last year, but I haven't been by myself.

http://www.highlanddrive.ca/storehouse/

[someone123]

Commercial Drive and, increasingly, Main Street are arguably more interesting than much of downtown Vancouver. Cambie at Broadway has a bunch of urban format stores and few or no highrises; there are a ton of shorter condo buildings around there and they are enough to support a busy neighbourhood. There isn't much wasted land around that area. Down around Main and Terminal is another story.

Density numbers should always be taken with a grain of salt because they normally depend on setting an arbitrary area. They also tend to be slanted against smaller cities where the real size of a "neighbourhood" with a roughly consistent level of development is too small to make up a single census tract. There's no Spring Garden census tract, for example -- that neighbourhood is in two sections and is combined with the Citadel and the stretch running down to the waterfront that is mostly businesses. The area of the two tracts is multiple times larger than the real neighbourhood.

At the other extreme you could pick the block Park Vic is on and calculate a density figure in the 100,000 per square kilometre range (it has 500 units in 0.06 km squared or so).

[Drybrain]

Originally Posted by someone123

Commercial Drive and, increasingly, Main Street are arguably more interesting than much of downtown Vancouver. Cambie at Broadway has a bunch of urban format stores and few or no highrises; there are a ton of shorter condo buildings around there and they are enough to support a busy neighbourhood.

Exactly. It's a lot more "urban," really, than the Coal Harbour area, which may have 20-some thousand people per sq. km, but little street life. Just a wall of glass with some Shoppers Drug Marts at the bottom.

[Hali87]

Originally Posted by RyeJay

Density. Walkability. Strength and versatility of public transit. Variety of retail. Parks. Multi-cultural. Exciting. Festivals and occasions. Sports. Concerts. Post secondary educational institutions. Lights, lights, and more lights.

Again, I would say that Halifax has all of these things. It would be cool if it had a wider variety of them, and the city's newfound sense of development direction suggests that all of these options will continue to improve steadily for the foreseeable future. I'm not saying that we're "in the same league" as Montreal or Vancouver, but I am saying that we're much more like those cities than most other cities in Canada are. Places like Edmonton and Winnipeg don't offer better options than Halifax in any of the categories that you mentioned there except sports, and even that is debatable (sure you can watch an NHL game but opportunities for outdoor recreational activities like sailing, surfing, and rock climbing are much greater in Halifax). And I will assure you that these are very much considered "Real Cities" in the West. I would venture a bet that Halifax is solidly above average in terms of multiculturalism, and in many ways I prefer the Halifax model of cultural dispersion to the self-segregation into ethnic neighbourhoods that you see in Canada's largest cities. Growing up in Halifax you are less prone to seeing other ethnicities as "the other"; conversely, some of the most racist people I've ever met are from inner-city Toronto. These people are certainly the exception, but the whole process of creating and maintaining neighbourhoods based on country of origin creates a breeding ground for racial tension that doesn't really exist in Halifax. But I'm getting off-topic.

Whenever I've managed to bring friends from Central and Western Canada (to Halifax for their first time), upon traversing the peninsula and giving them a detailed tour of the downtown, their reaction has always been: "Cute. But is that it?..."

I think a lot of this has to do with the way that Halifax is presented to the rest of Canada in the history books and in the media. People from outside the Maritimes tend to have a preconceived idea of either a sleepy, Cape Cod sort of area or else "the major East Coast City". There seems to be very little sense of scale. So, for the ones who think of it as "a big city", it's a surprise that it doesn't go on and on and on forever like Toronto or Vancouver, because the only times they've seen the kind of urban environment that exists in Halifax, it's surrounded by seemingly limitless suburban sprawl. Of course, it's possible that they are simply underwhelmed by the lack of 40+ storey towers, but I doubt this is what most people mean.

Yes, Halifax has some urbanity to it, some nice neighbourhoods in which you can live, work, and play -- but the City's quantity of urban assets is very limited. What you can do in Halifax, you can do much, much more in Montreal and Toronto...

Yes, if there are people who need to spend each day of the month in a different walkable urbane neighbourhood then they will probably find Halifax disappointing after a week or two. But honestly, you can live the same kind of urbane lifestyle in Halifax as you can in Toronto or Montreal, 50th floor penthouses notwithstanding. For visitors, the options are not as "limitless" as they are in the largest cities, but there are still plenty of distinct, interesting areas that can be explored on foot. This is not true of most cities in Canada.

When I say I want Canadians to see Halifax as an actual city, I initially mean physically, from our cityscape. I want the downtown to sport as many towers as possible, to the point people begin feeling as though Halifax is a mini-Vancouver.

...

And my "mini-Vancouver" comment isn't based on anything more than appearance. I look forward to Halifax having a more impressive density of glass towers, which shall approach what some are calling the City's table-top height of the ramparts maximum.

...

I want Vancouver's density, not its copycat green-blue towers.

I find these comments interesting because they're very reflective of the "pro"/"anti"-development debate. They raise a few issues that I'd been finding it hard to isolate before:

- "highrises to address sustainability concerns" vs "highrises for aesthetic reasons/personal preference" or "skyscrapers for the sake of skyscrapers"
- whether we want clusters of downtown highrises like Montreal or a sea of highrises like Vancouver (or a sort of moratorium on highrises like Quebec City)
- whether density necessarily means highrises
- whether increasing density is invariably a good thing
- what sort of aesthetic treatment is appropriate or desirable for highrise buildings in Halifax

Even hoping that we'll cultivate the image of a "mini-Vancouver" seems kind of misguided. Totally understandable, but misguided. This implies that Halifax can only aspire to be "Vancouver the lesser", and I think that if that's what we aspire for, that's what we'll get. If we just try to be the best at what we do, then we'll once again be as respected, relevant, and interesting a place as Vancouver itself.

The first time I visited Vancouver, I felt like I was still in Halifax, but in the future. Vancouver seemed like a city that was like Halifax, but better in every way, more advanced. A real city.

The second time I visited Vancouver, I actually left the core downtown area and went to places like West Broadway, UBC, Commercial Drive, the "South-of-Broadway" part of Main, spent an evening in Surrey, and drove Hastings Street from end to end. These experiences, along with the experience of simply being in downtown Van for the second time, made me realize that Halifax is not necessarily less of "A Real City" than Vancouver; it's just different. There are enough similarities that invite casual (and not necessarily inaccurate) comparisons, but the cities are each distinct (and I would argue, "complete" in the sense of coherent sense of place and local identity), and fundamentally not the same. Downtown Vancouver may be more modern overall (sophisticated?) than Halifax, but honestly, Halifax is at least equally vibrant. You'd like what they've done with the lights though. Very interesting place to walk around at night.

It sure would be nice if Halifax had some of Vancouver's modes of public transit.

Agree 1000%. The SkyTrain model was looking more and more attractive the longer the transit strike dragged on..

I guess, just for sake of clarity, how many "real cities" would you say there are in Canada?

[Empire]

There was an interesting article about Grand Central Station in the Herald on Sat. Here is a quote that demonstrates how cities should take control of their built heritage. Halifax should consider legislation that would allow protection to be assigned to significant buildings. Buildings such as the Capitol Theatre and Birks Jewellery store may have survived demolition if there was legislation to protect them.

"The building’s survival is also a testament to historic preservation: The landmark was saved from demolition in the 1970s thanks to a battle spearheaded by Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis that went all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court. In 1978, the court ruled that cities have the right to protect historic buildings, even if that limits the owner’s ability to develop or sell the property. The decision legitimized preservation efforts around the country."

Full article from the Chronicle Herald:
http://thechronicleherald.ca/travel/418017-big-apple-s-stunning-grand-central-turns-100

[eastcoastal]

Originally Posted by Drybrain

This place opened in the Hydrostone last year, but I haven't been by myself.

http://www.highlanddrive.ca/storehouse/

I've been to Highland Drive Storehouse and it's quite good. I've found that it's not always consistent in that you can count on seeing the same cuts in the display case week after week, but that hasn't deterred me yet - I've come to enjoy going to see what they've got and ask for recommendations.

While not strictly a butcher, Local Source Market carries meat and poultry from smaller local producers. http://localsourcemarket.com/

[OldDartmouthMark]

Originally Posted by Hali87

Again, I would say that Halifax has all of these things. It would be cool if it had a wider variety of them, and the city's newfound sense of development direction suggests that all of these options will continue to improve steadily for the foreseeable future. I'm not saying that we're "in the same league" as Montreal or Vancouver, but I am saying that we're much more like those cities than most other cities in Canada are. Places like Edmonton and Winnipeg don't offer better options than Halifax in any of the categories that you mentioned there except sports, and even that is debatable (sure you can watch an NHL game but opportunities for outdoor recreational activities like sailing, surfing, and rock climbing are much greater in Halifax). And I will assure you that these are very much considered "Real Cities" in the West. I would venture a bet that Halifax is solidly above average in terms of multiculturalism, and in many ways I prefer the Halifax model of cultural dispersion to the self-segregation into ethnic neighbourhoods that you see in Canada's largest cities. Growing up in Halifax you are less prone to seeing other ethnicities as "the other"; conversely, some of the most racist people I've ever met are from inner-city Toronto. These people are certainly the exception, but the whole process of creating and maintaining neighbourhoods based on country of origin creates a breeding ground for racial tension that doesn't really exist in Halifax. But I'm getting off-topic.



I think a lot of this has to do with the way that Halifax is presented to the rest of Canada in the history books and in the media. People from outside the Maritimes tend to have a preconceived idea of either a sleepy, Cape Cod sort of area or else "the major East Coast City". There seems to be very little sense of scale. So, for the ones who think of it as "a big city", it's a surprise that it doesn't go on and on and on forever like Toronto or Vancouver, because the only times they've seen the kind of urban environment that exists in Halifax, it's surrounded by seemingly limitless suburban sprawl. Of course, it's possible that they are simply underwhelmed by the lack of 40+ storey towers, but I doubt this is what most people mean.



Yes, if there are people who need to spend each day of the month in a different walkable urbane neighbourhood then they will probably find Halifax disappointing after a week or two. But honestly, you can live the same kind of urbane lifestyle in Halifax as you can in Toronto or Montreal, 50th floor penthouses notwithstanding. For visitors, the options are not as "limitless" as they are in the largest cities, but there are still plenty of distinct, interesting areas that can be explored on foot. This is not true of most cities in Canada.



I find these comments interesting because they're very reflective of the "pro"/"anti"-development debate. They raise a few issues that I'd been finding it hard to isolate before:

- "highrises to address sustainability concerns" vs "highrises for aesthetic reasons/personal preference" or "skyscrapers for the sake of skyscrapers"
- whether we want clusters of downtown highrises like Montreal or a sea of highrises like Vancouver (or a sort of moratorium on highrises like Quebec City)
- whether density necessarily means highrises
- whether increasing density is invariably a good thing
- what sort of aesthetic treatment is appropriate or desirable for highrise buildings in Halifax

Even hoping that we'll cultivate the image of a "mini-Vancouver" seems kind of misguided. Totally understandable, but misguided. This implies that Halifax can only aspire to be "Vancouver the lesser", and I think that if that's what we aspire for, that's what we'll get. If we just try to be the best at what we do, then we'll once again be as respected, relevant, and interesting a place as Vancouver itself.

The first time I visited Vancouver, I felt like I was still in Halifax, but in the future. Vancouver seemed like a city that was like Halifax, but better in every way, more advanced. A real city.

The second time I visited Vancouver, I actually left the core downtown area and went to places like West Broadway, UBC, Commercial Drive, the "South-of-Broadway" part of Main, spent an evening in Surrey, and drove Hastings Street from end to end. These experiences, along with the experience of simply being in downtown Van for the second time, made me realize that Halifax is not necessarily less of "A Real City" than Vancouver; it's just different. There are enough similarities that invite casual (and not necessarily inaccurate) comparisons, but the cities are each distinct (and I would argue, "complete" in the sense of coherent sense of place and local identity), and fundamentally not the same. Downtown Vancouver may be more modern overall (sophisticated?) than Halifax, but honestly, Halifax is at least equally vibrant. You'd like what they've done with the lights though. Very interesting place to walk around at night.



Agree 1000%. The SkyTrain model was looking more and more attractive the longer the transit strike dragged on..

I guess, just for sake of clarity, how many "real cities" would you say there are in Canada?

Great post!

[OldDartmouthMark]

Originally Posted by Empire

There was an interesting article about Grand Central Station in the Herald on Sat. Here is a quote that demonstrates how cities should take control of their built heritage. Halifax should consider legislation that would allow protection to be assigned to significant buildings. Buildings such as the Capitol Theatre and Birks Jewellery store may have survived demolition if there was legislation to protect them.

"The building’s survival is also a testament to historic preservation: The landmark was saved from demolition in the 1970s thanks to a battle spearheaded by Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis that went all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court. In 1978, the court ruled that cities have the right to protect historic buildings, even if that limits the owner’s ability to develop or sell the property. The decision legitimized preservation efforts around the country."

Full article from the Chronicle Herald:
http://thechronicleherald.ca/travel/418017-big-apple-s-stunning-grand-central-turns-100

Thanks for posting that article - I hadn't seen it. Very good point, too, that we should consider such measures to protect our significant buildings, if possible.

New York certainly had some significant losses before the GCS, so it appeared that they at least learned from their experiences.

Two significant losses in the sixties:
Penn Station




The Singer Building



While Halifax has nothing on the scale of those two buildings, it should stand as a reminder that left unprotected, anything is susceptible no matter how grand.

Sources:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pennsylvani...on_Square_Garden_.281963.E2.80.931968.29
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:SingerBuilding15.jpg
http://wirednewyork.com/forum/showthread.php?t=5010

[Drybrain]

Originally Posted by OldDartmouthMark

While Halifax has nothing on the scale of those two buildings, it should stand as a reminder that left unprotected, anything is susceptible no matter how grand.
[/URL]

Indeed. I was completely shocked to learn that 1723 Hollis Street (not the provincial building facing George Street, but this one) is cited under the art gallery's own five-year redevelopment plan as a potential structure to tear down. The gallery needs more space (and I suspect desires a flashy, modern building a la the AGO). Their first choice is to relocate and build an entirely new inner-city locale. But their second choice is to demolish 1723 Hollis, which isn't a listed heritage property, and build anew on the site. Which, given how grandly this block works (the second grandest block in town, really, after the Dominion Building) it would be insane. And I don't say insane lightly.

So, take nothing for granted. If even the AGNS isn't above calling in the wrecking ball for one of the best buildings of any era in the entire province, then who knows what else can happen.