General Updates and News

[Empire]

Time for a good chuckle. Here is a logo I did for an HRM amalgamation logo contest in 1997.
- yes it is far too busy
- once I started I included everything from Ecum-Secum to Peggy's Cove with a strong pillar of Halifax in the middle
- in light of the simplicity of our new logo we are lucky it doesn't look like mine
- and yes, that's the Bluenose telling time


Sketch by Empire 1997:

[worldlyhaligonian]

Best in the world:

[counterfactual]

Originally Posted by worldlyhaligonian

Best in the world:

I unsure. What means.

[Keith P.]

Originally Posted by counterfactual

I unsure. What means.

You have to be stoned to have it make sense I guess.

[MountPleasant]

New logo is fantastic— really sends a strong message about the City's desire to progress

...We redesigned ours a few years back:

[MountPleasant]

and yeah.. Amsterdam's is right bold

[halifaxboyns]

I've always liked the new Saint John logo. Has that historic seafaring past but the guy in the pic is looking (almost like looking to the future). Always a fave.

[counterfactual]

Originally Posted by MountPleasant

New logo is fantastic— really sends a strong message about the City's desire to progress

...We redesigned ours a few years back:

That's great, but why did make your fellow there play the Clarinet? Is this sort of an ode to Saint John's musical future?

....

[hokus83]

Does any expect thy'll be anymore major development proposals in the next few years or do you think what there is now and the rumors of a few other proposals will be the last we'll have for the next few decades. Does development come in spurts in Halifax like a small a amount once every 20 years?

[someone123]

Originally Posted by hokus83

Does any expect thy'll be anymore major development proposals in the next few years or do you think what there is now and the rumors of a few other proposals will be the last we'll have for the next few decades. Does development come in spurts in Halifax like a small a amount once every 20 years?

I keep reading "no cranes for 20 years" type canards in the media but they're untrue. There has been a steady stream of residential projects in the urban core since 2000 or so. For example, around 2000 there were buildings like Garden Crest and the Waterford and around 2004-2005 there was the Martello and Paramount. Even if you don't consider Spring Garden Road to be downtown, there have been buildings like the Marriott hotel on Sackville Street. There was also a new office building that went up on Market Street around 2001 and a few of the residential towers have contained small amounts of office and commercial space.

I have a feeling the residential buildings will keep coming because the city is still growing and urban living is becoming more and more attractive.

Office buildings do seem more cyclical. Apparently a bunch of these proposals are coming forward now because the leases for the banks are running out. I don't think this pace of office development is sustainable, although it's hard to predict what will happen in the future. Halifax's economy is predicted to be much stronger in the coming years than it was back in the 1990's when there was relatively little construction.

[Drybrain]

I hope that office space centralizes more in the core, but with TD Waterside and Nova Centre and 1592 Barrington and Espace coming online or being built, and projects like Commerce Square and Westhill on Duke planned and likely to be built, our already high downtown office vacancy rates(well over 10 percent, compared to the mid single digits in most cities) are going to go even higher.

Even with a decently humming urban economy and a trend back to the core, there's going to be a lot of space compared with demand, so I imagine office development is going to slow a lot.

But I think residential development is going to continue--we may be seeing an unusually large amount of planned projects now due to pent-up demand getting satisfied, but as the city sees a trend toward more urban living options, I think a reasonable pace of development will continue--partly due to population growth, but partly just due to a re-orientation of the city's existing population.

[Colin May]

Cogswell Interchange documents at HRM Executive Cttee Monday April 28

http://www.halifax.ca/boardscom/SCadmin/140428escAgenda.html

3 documents to download

[Drybrain]

Originally Posted by Colin May

Cogswell Interchange documents at HRM Executive Cttee Monday April 28

http://www.halifax.ca/boardscom/SCadmin/140428escAgenda.html

3 documents to download

Cool doc. The historic photos again depict how insane the scale of destruction was when Cogswell/Scotia Square were built. We really lost our collective mind as city builders back then. The stretch of Barrington knocked down was almost as impressive as what we still have south of George Street.

Good to see the re-built historic grid, filled with dense mixed-use development, being recommended over mega-blocks. Hope the suggestion of a Dundas Square-esque area doesn't come to fruition, however. Downtown has enough gathering space, and Dundas Square is a terrible template for that sort of thing anyway. Just a bunch of irritating electro-billboards.

[Colin May]

Originally Posted by Drybrain

Cool doc. The historic photos again depict how insane the scale of destruction was when Cogswell/Scotia Square were built. We really lost our collective mind as city builders back then. The stretch of Barrington knocked down was almost as impressive as what we still have south of George Street.

Good to see the re-built historic grid, filled with dense mixed-use development, being recommended over mega-blocks. Hope the suggestion of a Dundas Square-esque area doesn't come to fruition, however. Downtown has enough gathering space, and Dundas Square is a terrible template for that sort of thing anyway. Just a bunch of irritating electro-billboards.

The media haven't clued on to the documents because they are all listed in the agenda for the Exec Cttee and no press release in the HRM Media Room page.

[IanWatson]

Originally Posted by Colin May

Cogswell Interchange documents at HRM Executive Cttee Monday April 28

http://www.halifax.ca/boardscom/SCadmin/140428escAgenda.html

3 documents to download

Lots of roundabouts. Keith will be pleased

I haven't had more than a skim of the document so I look forward to reading it in more detail this weekend. What I'm skimmed past looks pretty awesome though.

[someone123]

Don't have time to look at the report in detail but here's one of the renderings. Looks pretty good:

[hokus83]

A lot more green space than I would have liked, looks a little too spread out. Isn't block A where the International Place is meat to be, it looks like they are messing with the site plans for that area a lot, putting a walk way through part of it and reducing the area of the building, I thought the International Place was going to be right up against Barrington Place, are they allowed to mess with a approved proposal like that.

[Drybrain]

It's a bit more boulevard-y looking than I'd like to see at ground level (where a more intimate, urban scale is preferable) and the towers look a bit dated, but I assume this isn't really a rendering of exactly what to expect--more of a hypothetical.

Really, the worst thing would be to over-think it. Just rebuild some of the lost streets to restore walkability, get some well-designed buildings with streetfront-facing uses, and no setbacks along Barrington, Brunswick and Water, and a variety of building scales (i.e., not all highrises; should be mid- and high-rises to create aesthetic variety, and not have it look like some mono-block). Just create a finer urban grain and put some good buildings with good street interaction down, at a variety of sizes.

I agree there really isn't much need for green space. There's plenty already nearby.

[ILoveHalifax]

I am not seeing any tall buildings.
Thought we would see some 30, 40 50 stories.

[Colin May]

There is very little green space on the HRM properties and most of it is surrounds the sewage treatment plant. HRM owns 9 of the 14 properties and the green space to the south of the sewage plan is an NSP sub station.