Cogswell Interchange

[Drybrain]

Originally Posted by Keith P.

Did they not spend years, along with countless open houses, public meetings, consultations, pop-ups and workshops to come up with what they had? And now it all just gets tossed in the waste can and changed at a whim during a Council meeting? Hello???

No, what they spent years on was the road and infrastructure design. There was never any specific planning for the private land use, and only a vague suggestion of the population target. So this is new, and it sounds like the consultation and planning will be much faster—initiated today and wrapped up next year.

[fatscat]

Originally Posted by Drybrain

Council voted today to amend the land-use bylaw for Cogswell, apparently taking to heart some of the critiques that the district could turn into a handful of bland podium towers. Now they're looking at implementing some design guidelines, and subdividing development blocks so each development parcel has a smaller footprint. At the same time, there was a lot of talk about maxing out heights, and there appears to be an increase in the density ambition, from 2,500 people to 3,400 units, which would probably be closer to 6,000 people.

Also some verbiage about affordable housing, though less specific. Remains to be seen what the amended LUB looks like, but the density boost is good news; 2,500 always seems under-ambitious here, especially now. 3,400 units will be around 210 units/acre, which is like St. Jamestown levels of density. Quite good.

That all feels very positive. Thank you for the summary!

[someone123]

Originally Posted by Drybrain

No, what they spent years on was the road and infrastructure design. There was never any specific planning for the private land use, and only a vague suggestion of the population target. So this is new, and it sounds like the consultation and planning will be much faster—initiated today and wrapped up next year.

Not sure how important it is but they did have community consultation with things like building models. The 3,400 number seems to come out of infrastructure constraints.

I think it's pretty obvious that a lot of this stuff is driven by economics and it's just not possible to see many years into the future. Nobody in the 90's had any clue what 2020's development in Halifax would be like. Many aspects of a development like this aren't direct outputs from community consultation. Anyway, it seems like a positive sign and breaking up the blocks is really good.

It would be nice if they tried to bring back a little of what was demolished in this area for Cogswell. How about rebuilding the Pentagon building or Hauser stores, maybe in a different location and form? It could provide a new place for the dockyard clock.

They also have the ability to add some real height here and that could add more flexibility with budgets for shorter buildings in other areas or public space. A mix of heights would be more interesting and there are no older residential areas around that would be impacted.

[someone123]

One funny thing about Cogswell is all the delays seem to be positive so far. There wasn't really much demand for this land back in the 2000's when there were a lot more parking lots and the development standards would have been a lot lower.

[Drybrain]

Originally Posted by someone123

One funny thing about Cogswell is all the delays seem to be positive so far. There wasn't really much demand for this land back in the 2000's when there were a lot more parking lots and the development standards would have been a lot lower.

I thought of that recently actually—if the is process had unfolded 20 years ago, it’d probably have turned into some mega-version of Bishop’s Landing, at best. (I actually don’t have a problem with Bishop’s Landing, which is pleasant enough, but at a Cogswell scale it would surely look in retrospect like a waste of prime land.)

[egb]

My only gripe with this is the affordable housing component. I think its great they're considering it but this is a case where how you frame the question determines the kinds of answers you'll get. Framing it as 'how do we integrate affordable housing into the Cogswell redevelopment' limits your scope in a way that isn't really helpful.

It may make the most sense to have affordable housing in this space from a neighborhood integration perspective but you could possibly get even more benefit (i.e. more units) by selling the land at full value and using the proceeds to develop affordable housing in other parts of the city.

[Keith P.]

Originally Posted by egb

My only gripe with this is the affordable housing component. I think its great they're considering it but this is a case where how you frame the question determines the kinds of answers you'll get. Framing it as 'how do we integrate affordable housing into the Cogswell redevelopment' limits your scope in a way that isn't really helpful.

It may make the most sense to have affordable housing in this space from a neighborhood integration perspective but you could possibly get even more benefit (i.e. more units) by selling the land at full value and using the proceeds to develop affordable housing in other parts of the city.

Exactly. It is a knee-jerk reaction by our weathervane Council to the hot issue of the day without any real forethought other than to appear to be doing something. My point is that there was a long and extensive process that preceded this which now has been tossed in the trash.

[Drybrain]

Originally Posted by Keith P.

My point is that there was a long and extensive process that preceded this which now has been tossed in the trash.

But it hasn't been. This just builds on that previous process, which informed what's being built there right this minute.

[OldDartmouthMark]

If it results in better quality buildings with more housing units than originally planned, I'm all for it. The proof will be in the result, and frankly I don't care so much how they arrived at it.

It would be nice if they could incorporate a requirement on a couple of lots to build modern recreations of historic buildings that were lost on the site (specifically, the Pentagon Building), but I don't expect that to happen ever.

Beyond that, something has to be done about affordable housing (along with better mental healthcare), as we have tents in the Grand Parade. If nothing else tells us that something needs to be done, there should be no debate when you walk by City Hall. The idea of being creative so that more affordable housing units could be built elsewhere sounds good, but IMHO the council that we have in there now couldn't pull it off... so we perhaps have to lower our expectations and accept whatever they can manage to do (even if it is fewer units in a high-profile simple-to-understand-but-looks-good-to-the-public fashion).

Overall, what Drybrain has posted sounds generally positive and I am happy to hear it.

[someone123]

Originally Posted by egb

It may make the most sense to have affordable housing in this space from a neighborhood integration perspective but you could possibly get even more benefit (i.e. more units) by selling the land at full value and using the proceeds to develop affordable housing in other parts of the city.

A lot of the policies seem reactionary and there are cases where council contributes to a problem, eventually notices a symptom, and then considers adding more red tape instead of adjusting decisions closer to the root cause. This council that will debate building affordable housing on the Cogswell lands has in many cases fought to scale back developments elsewhere. For example a lot of them didn't like trailer parks which used to be very affordable, they often don't want greenfield developments and prefer nature preservation, and they don't like tall buildings.

The tents debate is about as sensible. Why are they okay on the Grand Parade when council said no to some other areas? It has as much to do with bylaw enforcement as anything else. It's not only about housing affordability. Many cities would be overrun with tents, RVs, etc. if they were allowed. The solution to this in NYC wasn't to provide affordable housing for anybody who likes Times Square.

[new2halifax]

Good news overall. And frankly there's no excuse for not allowing to have the tallest buildings in the peninsula located in that area. It's a blank canvas after all. Increasing density will help with affordable housing either on-site or somewhere else.

[egb]

I take the point on feasibility and I definitely get the dynamics they're operating under. But I also feel like the city is really under stain in a way we aren't used to and that makes it more difficult to get by with the sometime low quality decision making we've been used to.

To pick on another example, both a new Bedford Library and a Bedford Ferry are good ideas but they're moving forward with them in a way that risks both becoming white elephants. Again the decision making process is understandable but if you compound poor quality decision on top of poor quality decision you end up in a bad spot.

[someone123]

Originally Posted by egb

I take the point on feasibility and I definitely get the dynamics they're operating under. But I also feel like the city is really under stain in a way we aren't used to and that makes it more difficult to get by with the sometime low quality decision making we've been used to.

Unfortunately it's like this in municipal government in lots of cities including larger cities that have been under lots of development pressure for years. Realistically the province probably has to get involved to improve things. Around here the best stuff all comes from either the province (mandatory upzoning around transit; the municipalities were never going to get this right so it got legislated) or the regional transit authority (which also handles bridges and some roads and does multi-decade planning), while City of Vancouver council is arguably no better than HRM (there are many municipalities around here with some being better run and some worse run; Burnaby is a relatively good one for example) and some of the boards are really out there sometimes.

The small-scale local politics and consultations aren't necessarily bad but they fall apart when the interests of local homeowners don't align with larger issues like the need for regional housing or transport.

[JET]

Originally Posted by egb

My only gripe with this is the affordable housing component. I think its great they're considering it but this is a case where how you frame the question determines the kinds of answers you'll get. Framing it as 'how do we integrate affordable housing into the Cogswell redevelopment' limits your scope in a way that isn't really helpful.

It may make the most sense to have affordable housing in this space from a neighborhood integration perspective but you could possibly get even more benefit (i.e. more units) by selling the land at full value and using the proceeds to develop affordable housing in other parts of the city.

I guess there must be something wrong with affordable housing in this part of the city?

[Nouvellecosse]

Originally Posted by JET

I guess there must be something wrong with affordable housing in this part of the city?

I think it's a valid question to ask whether it's better to house fewer people in a more premium location or more people in a more modest location. City centres (at least successful ones) tend to be the most expensive part of a city to live in, so I also question whether this is the best location to build affordable housing during a housing crisis. If you can deliver fewer units in one place vs more units in another places for the same price, you have to question whether it's better to provide a few people with the most ideal accommodations or more people with perfunctory accommodations. It would be a harder question to answer under normal conditions, but during a housing shortage and affordability crisis it seems like higher volume should be the priority.

Same thing with transportation or any other domain. Let's say the city was spending $20 per ride to transport people by taxi and someone suggested that you could transport a lot more people by spending $3/ride to subsidize bus service. I don't think it would be useful to ask if there was something "wrong" with affordable taxi service. The topic at hand wouldn't be right vs wrong, it would be more vs less effective public policy.

[someone123]

Originally Posted by Nouvellecosse

I think it's a valid question to ask whether it's better to house fewer people in a more premium location or more people in a more modest location.

I'd say you want some kind of long-running entity looking at affordable housing that considers the issue holistically. Maybe Cogswell is a good place, maybe it's not. But the business of saying that every project or particular projects people happen to fixate on need to have some affordable housing component short-circuits that process, and everything tends to slow down when you want all projects to be all things to all people and tick a long list of requirements.

They have boilerplate climate change, indigenous, and African Nova Scotian content in a bunch of these documents. They are not bad areas to consider but they become overly abstract and watered down. IMO something like looking at land titles in Africville or Turtle Grove is much more relevant than some boilerplate "how does this help people X" content in every single staff report. I also wonder where it ends and whether it gets scaled back as other compensatory measures come into place. For example we have carbon pricing now so in theory a district energy plan should be financially optimal and doesn't need an extra "we need to do this because climate change" requirement.

[JET]

What we don't need is ghettos.
What we do need is a mix of income in all new builds, there should be some low rent options in all new builds where the rent is locked in. If the province needs to be the body that pays the rent supplement to the builder then so be it.

[Nouvellecosse]

^ I think that's a great general principle. But I also think that in a crisis we need the flexibility to allow for pragmatic temporary exception. We don't need ghettos, but we also don't need homelessness. It seems like we're having a very tough time supplying the necessary number of new units so relaxing certain policies may do more good than harm even if the policy is normally beneficial.

It's also important to remember that affordable housing doesn't necessarily equate to "low rent". It may just mean a little bit below average. The official HRM definition describes it as, “housing that meets the needs of a variety of households in the low to moderate income range”. Well we already have cheaper and pricier areas and that's unlikely to change in the near future. Yet the term ghetto implies something a lot more extreme. That people of a certain class ( often race or ethnicity) are basically trapped there with substandard conditions. Also, there's also a difference between having all low income housing concentrated together compared to having it a wide variety of areas across the city except for a few of the most expensive.

[Haliguy]

New Highway improvement plan released:

https://atlantic.ctvnews.ca/more/n-s...plan-1.6687775

[Haliguy]

Sorry put this in the wrong place.