Quote:
Originally Posted by Dartboy
May I ask a naive question? why does the view matter?so what if the harbour is obscured for a few folks peering down for a few minutes from citadel.
May I be so bold as to suggest a CC and stadium allon the citadell hill and surrounding property,
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I don't think this is a bad question at all and I've had some exposure to the history during my brief time with the city; but also because I found it very interesting. If I miss something or I'm wrong; please someone correct me. So obviously the history of Halifax was that the citadell was a part of the defensive mechanism to the city (combined with Yorke Redoubt and George's Island and I also think McNabs island too??). So because we are one of the older cities in Canada, we have a lot of older heritage buildings.
In the late 60's and early 70's, there was a rash of projects to rejuvinate older areas of cities that were getting run down and were in need of a push - this wasn't specific to Halifax. This caused a number of older buildings to be taken down and started the heritage push; which eventually saw the citadell named a national historic site. Thus it became a tourist attraction and probably always was and became part of the tourism draw.
Then enter into the late 70's when the city started seeing some economic growth and a number of buildings were proposed (Fenwick and Maritime Centre). Now I don't know where the city stood on those (whether City Council said no and they were granted on appeal) but they eventually got built. It was these projects that caused a huge issue with the heritage groups and pushed Halifax to create the viewplanes that exist today. The main concept that was behind it was to strike a balance between the heritage groups desire to preserve the entire view (360 degrees) and the desire to build in the downtown and around the hill on all sides.
Over the years; the Halifax planning strategy got changed to have a policy put in to encourage the city to try to preserve, enhance or restore the view - why that got in I don't know why because the city isn't going to take down buildings like Maritime Centre and give up those tax dollars so the view improves.
So there is a variety of layers of planning rules related to building height around the citadell. Along Brunswick Street there is a certain set of rules, in addition to the building height maps (pre/post bonus) for HRM by Design, then the viewplanes and then finally the rampart rule. So for building height along Brunswick Street, the height of the Metro Centre is pretty much at max for what can happen along Brunswick Street in that area (with the exception of the apartment buildings above Scotia Square).
Personally; I accept the principle of why the viewplanes were created and I think they do well to achieve their goal. However, I do believe that the MPS policy to 'restore' the view is BS. It should be removed. Certainly some of the opinions of the heritage groups that 'walling' off the protected view is an issue; it creates a view tunnel (for a lack of a better way to phrase it). However, if that's an issue I'm sure staff can come up with something that could reduce the walling effect by requiring buildings over a certain height to be pushed away from the viewplane by a certain distance.
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