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Originally Posted by someone123
I feel like these dilemmas made more sense in the 90's when the city wasn't growing much and didn't have as much money but these days this area is booming and must be generating enormous revenues for the municipality and province. It makes sense to invest to keep a few historic gems with public value in good shape. It seems like a disconnect now where the municipality and province operate as though they are smaller and poorer than they are and the level of literacy about local history and architecture is low.
The city would get a lot of bang for its buck trying to encourage restoration or enhancement of traditional character in some historic areas and filling in some small holes. I'm talking about areas like Barrington and Morris and that Snappy Tomato building. The city could add a dozen or two simple traditional looking lowrise apartment buildings in key spots and look dramatically nicer and more historic. These would all be quick to build, add housing, and generate net revenue.
Even if you look at the main stretch of Barrington the buildings aren't in great shape overall, and that's supposed to be a showcase heritage district in a city of over half a million that only has a few protected commercial blocks like that. There are some good projects like the Green Lantern but the city doesn't enforce high minimum standards even in key areas.
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It's an interesting question but there are two very contentious sides to it. HRM is rolling in cash right now because of the boom in property assessments and their continual increase in property tax revenue, plus largesse offered by your Federal govt. However they are spending that more quickly than it comes in with wasteful things like a bloated high-cost bureaucracy, various feel-good initiatives, numerous social engineering projects, overly intrusive land use planning enactments, and endless bylaws and other low-value initiatives. Meanwhile the core functions of streets, roads, sidewalks, parks and services seem to be largely ignored.
Given that latter point I'm not sure that having HRM take on ownership responsibility for historic buildings would ever be a good idea. Things like the restoration of the cottage at the Public Gardens cost mega-millions and now that it is done they use it for a municipal office for a program that most people are unaware of. We can see the debacle over many years that the Khyber has become, and even though that is not a municipal building, they have been heavily involved and it likely will become HRM's problem at some point. I'm not sure I would want them involved to any great extent in responsibility for things like Barrington St restoration/preservation, as they tend to only offer token support to property owners that is wrapped up in heavy bureaucratic netting.
As for St. Patrick's, it is hugely challenging given the structural problems resulting from deferred maintenance and it's location. It has the projects on one side, the sewage treatment plant down the hill, and the still-on-life-support stretch of Gottingen up the hill, along with some newer residential on the south side. The lack of amenities are not a space in the basement where you could have washrooms and a spot where you could serve coffee, sandwiches and squares to attendees, but anything that would make people want to go there for an event like you would normally find. It is just not a great location. Being surrounded by residential it seems likely that such things as bars and restos would never be allowed.
It is a tough issue. I think the best one could hope for would be to remove and preserve the existing architectural pieces from the interior and repurpose/reuse them elsewhere in a sympathetic way.
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