Quote:
Originally Posted by Waye Mason
There will be residential R1/R2 neighbourhoods that will continue to function, and not be rezoned for height... the peninsula is big and HRM can hit all its growth targets easily without starting to put 12 story towers on Oakland or Cedar or Cork or Leeds. The whole peninsula is not now, will not be zoned highrise. If anything the Centre Plan will provide clarity - say "height here" and "low rise" here, and make it much harder to put towers in low rise residential zones.
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While I don't always agree with your opinions, I do in part on this. My problem with your comment is that this proposal is for a mid rise building in a context where mid-rise has already occurred. There are two mid rise buildings there, now...which establish a context. So one could make the reasonable argument that Tower Road acts as an edge to this neighbourhood and this proposal is for mid rise buildings along the far edge in a location where midrise had already occurred and this would be a reasonable one.
Where I do agree with you, is the more obvious low rise, low density areas which are the typical R1/R2. The problem for this area is that it's not all R1/R2. It's R-3 or R-2A, which promotes the sort of low rise 4 storey apartment buildings or high rise apartment buildings (like what is on South Street or South Park). Yes, R-2A does allow low density uses (like R1/R2) - but there is no actually zoned R2/R1 parcels in this area. I would make the logical arguement that given the zoning on the ground, this area was encouraged to have a higher density than R1/R2 and so any consideration to those characteristics is really not viable.
But I do agree that most R1/R2 should be left alone, although I think there should be some exceptions. For example the low density area behind Agricola between Agricola and Robie (by the car dealership). I believe that if someone could buy up all that land, mid rise apartments to support the commercial street envisioned in the Centre Plan would be appropriate. Particularly if the car dealership redevelops into a mixed use development of some form.
But in most cases - I do agree, R1/R2 sites should be encouraged to mainly stay as it. At most, any redevelopment that should be encouraged in these areas might be some 3 or 4 storey walk up apartments to a maximum of say 8-10 units. Something similar to
these but not necessarily this design (something better - haha).