Article from
today's Herald.
Red tape benefits developer
By CHRIS LAMBIE Business Editor
Tue, Feb 8 - 4:54 AM
Halifax developer Frank Medjuck says plans for his 117-unit apartment building on Barrington Street have benefited from a long delay at city hall.
He’s shaved a large chunk off what was originally proposed as a 20-storey building on the Discovery Centre site at 1595 Barrington St., while politicians and bureaucrats took more than a year to figure out how to correct a problem where two downtown proposals were grandfathered under one set of rules, but not under another.
"Some good has come of it," Medjuck said of the long delay.
The building as now proposed will be about 50.4 metres tall from the Barrington Street level to the top of the penthouse.
"We took off about four or five storeys," said Medjuck of Centennial Group Ltd.
After some "sober second thought on the design" and checking out public hearings for other buildings to see what kind of criticisms other developers were facing, he decided to avoid making the structure’s south side a long, blank wall.
The south-facing wall is on the property line, which means builders normally wouldn’t be able to put windows in it due to fire regulations, Medjuck said.
Now, he’s decided to use windows equipped with metal shutters that automatically slide down when the fire alarm sounds.
"It’s an expensive feature," he said in a recent interview. "We did that on the south wall and . . . it’s the best view. It’s the southern view of the head of the harbour."
Medjuck was able to make the change by moving the shear wall — usually the elevated core in the stairwell that supports the building when it moves in the wind — off the back wall toward the centre of the structure.
"The inside of the building is hollow anyway," he said. "That’s where the mezzanine is, so I was able not to remove surrounding pillars and supports and floors. They all stay intact."
Concerns about the project’s scale have prompted other design changes, he said.
"We’ve made it a rounder building and set it back from the street."
The building’s exterior, which was originally slated to be green, has been changed to fit in better with the surrounding area. "It’s going to be a bronze-y, golden-colour glass."
Medjuck intends to make the Barrington level commercial.
"The existing building has two levels of residential, which are those (two-floor) mezzanine units (that now house the Discovery Centre)," he said.
"Then I have another floor that’s also two-floor apartments — another high-ceilinged floor I’ll put in brand new on top of it."
Above that, the project will have another 10 storeys of regular apartments.
Medjuck said he doesn’t know what the rents will be yet because he still hasn’t calculated the cost of construction. The building will have underground parking.
"There’s none there at all and normally we’d have to rip out the entire inside (to) support it . . . with those crossbeams. But I don’t have to do any of that," he said.
"I’m coming in with a garage door entrance off of Sackville and another off of Granville. So they’re not linked together."
That will save on ramping and excavation, and it will allow Medjuck to preserve much of the building’s structure.
"The heritage people are very strong on keeping the original structure," Medjuck said. "They once called me a facade-ist (for) just saving the façade only."
Engineers must determine if the floors need to be reinforced to take the weight of cars, he said.
"It was built in the late ’30s. It’s a heavy, heavy concrete, steel-supported building," Medjuck said.
"I call this building nostalgic, not historic," he said of the existing structure. "I used to go there with my mother and sit at the soda counter, and as kids we ran around the aisles of Zellers and tormented everybody."
Reflections Cabaret, which is housed now in the basement of the building, will need to find a new location, he said.
Medjuck’s going to have to find a new name for his building, as the Discovery Centre is slated to move out.
Last fall, the science centre for children announced it was moving from its present Barrington Street location to the Lower Water Street complex that includes Nova Scotia Power’s new offices.
Medjuck said he’ll apply for a construction permit soon after the science centre moves out.
Developer Louis Reznick’s Roy Building project was the other large downtown building hampered by rules that needed to be changed at city hall, which also had to be approved by the province.
(
clambie@herald.ca)