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Has Nova Centre site become a hole too big to fail?
Last week, a small drama played out at City Hall. HRM staff had drafted a July 15 report in response to a July 3 letter from Joseph Ramia of Argyle Developments Inc. Mr. Ramia was seeking help since he had not yet applied for, nor received, any of the necessary approvals or a building permit for the proposed Nova Centre. Yet he wanted to continue straight on into construction as soon as the excavation was done at the end of July.
Staff suggested that council approve making a request to the provincial government for something dubbed “a Statement of Provincial Interest” to facilitate the creation of an Interim Planning Area wherein all the requirements for permits, or administrative approvals, would be waived for at least eight months.
This ploy would then allow construction work to continue upwards from the bedrock with first the footings, then two levels of underground parking and the lowest floor of the convention centre, before any of the mandatory municipal permits are debated, approved by, and issued by HRM.
In the Interim Planning Area, all requirements for the usual permits will be waived.
The province can declare a Provincial Interest itself. In this case, the council motion will allow the province to act out the charade and say, “We are only responding to a request from the municipality. Non peccavimus (we have not sinned).”
Such a power, while deeply buried away in the Municipal Government Act, has never been used in Nova Scotia. Such a tactic to assist a single developer has never been used in Atlantic Canada. The provision exists to allow the province to act in extreme cases where a municipality is unable to, or refuses, to act.
A good example faces Alberta at present in the community of High River, where the recent disastrous floods have left the town paralyzed. It is in need of a total rethink and replanning, at least along the river. This may be a prime candidate for provincial intervention by way of an Interim Planning Area that may comprise 1,000 to 2,000 hectares in size.
Nova Scotia will most certainly eventually face a similar situation in Truro when an 1865 Saxby Gale-type storm surge reoccurs. In Truro, an Interim Planning Area of over 1,000 hectares will be needed.
In Halifax, council and the mayor will tell us that a $500-million project is in jeopardy on a two-block area of downtown that is barely 1.1 hectares in size. One councillor gushed, “This is the biggest project that HRM has ever had.”
It is not HRM’s biggest project ever. If you convert Scotia Square (1964) into today’s dollars, it was bigger and I will wager that the Imperoyl Refinery in 1916-1917 was bigger.
The only part of the $500 million that has its funding in place is the $375 million proposed convention centre that Argyle Developments is to build with mainly our money from the three levels of government. The oft-mooted 4.5-star hotel and the business tower have drawn only silence in the last year.
There is no urgency vis-à-vis five modest-sized 2016 conventions that have been booked. The real issue is that HRM and the province are playing favourites, which is absolutely unfair to other developers.
There are a number of projects underway, or planned, by proponents who are playing by the normal rules. Faced with high downtown vacancy rates, the competition for tenants is fierce; the development community must feel betrayed.
To HRM council, after all, this is “a hole too big to fail.” This developer is very experienced and he well understands what the rules are. Perhaps that is exactly why he waited until the last moment to seek the help of this never-before-used provision in the Municipal Government Act. He, too, knows that he has “a hole too big to fail.”
The provincial imposition of an Interim Planning Area will give HRM the welcome result that, to use the words of the staff report, “No community engagement will occur pursuant to the establishment of the Statement of Provincial Interest and Interim Planning Order. Further, there is no appeal possible. Citizens, and for that matter, the opinions of other developers who abide by the rules, do not count.
Curiously, there appears to be no proposed provincial supervision, or involvement, in the proposed tiny Interim Planning Area. If the Municipal Affairs minister, in this case John MacDonell, “... is satisfied that there are necessary and compelling reasons to establish an interim planning area to protect the Provincial Interest,” and that he has no other recourse but to use the draconian measure of imposing an Interim Planning Area, he surely should insist that the province play a significant role. But perhaps the province, with a critical election looming, also realizes that it too is sitting on the edge of a hole too deep to fail?
Alan Ruffman lives in Halifax.
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By ALAN RUFFMAN
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