From:
http://thechronicleherald.ca/Metro/1105507.html
An interchange of ideas
Council to begin public process needed to tear down overpass
By Our Staff
Mon. Feb 9 - 5:45 AM
Halifax’s Cogswell Street interchange could soon be a thing of the past.
City hall is moving on a decades-old promise to tear down the overpass, which abruptly stops at the Morse’s Tea Building on Upper Water Street.
In 1968, it was slated to be the beginning bridge ramp for the peninsula’s six-lane shoreline freeway, called Harbour Drive.
Public opposition put a stop to the highway but not before 134 downtown buildings were razed to make room for the Cogswell overpass.
Now its demise signals a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for Halifax, Mayor Peter Kelly said Sunday
"These opportunities don’t come your way very often because this is basically the end of large acreage in the downtown," he said in an interview Sunday.
"So that’s why it’s key that we take the time to look, think and respond according to what we hear from the public."
Regional council will mull over a proposal call for a Cogswell Interchange master plan when it meets Tuesday.
Such consultation is necessary, Mr. Kelly says, because it will help form the long-term strategy for dealing with the eventual destruction of the overpass.
He also said a few developers have approached city hall with an interest in developing the land over the years.
"And each time we said, ‘No, we’ll wait until go through the process and then we’ll go for a proposal call.’ "
To ensure that the process is open and transparent, the city wants to get public feedback before proceeding with anything.
The dates for the public consultation sessions will likely be set Tuesday at council’s regular weekly meeting.
And with prime real estate at the ready, the opportunities are endless, Mr. Kelly said of the 6.5 hectares.
"Whether it’s a Metro Centre II or an office/hotel, performing arts centre, the list can go on and on and on," Mr. Kelly said.
The city might be eying some of the money earmarked for infrastructure projects in January’s federal budget.
"If they brought the dollars forward and they were open to having us help remove and reconfigure that interchange and the road network, it would be an advantage for HRM."
He said the interchange could be taken down and the road realigned "easily" before the end of his third term, which ends in 2012.
"And, depending upon market conditions, we could then begin the process of expression of interest."
Colin Whitcomb of the Hardman Group says the timing of council’s request for a master plan is unusual.
Just last week, he learned that his company’s proposal for the city’s new convention centre — on that site — had been rejected in favour of the former Chronicle Herald building site on Argyle Street.
"It’s completely weird," he said Sunday evening.
"We were just told that HRM doesn’t want to consider the area for a convention centre. And that was about it."
How they knew that a convention centre was not needed there — in advance of the public consultation — is puzzling, he says.
"Maybe they should have started this sort of a process last fall," he said, when the company first answered the province and city’s joint call for a new large convention centre site.
"And then we would have had community consultation on whether a convention centre works at the interchange."
Dismissing a plan to build a new centre at the Cogswell exchange — which would take up about half of the available developable land — is "premature," he says.
"Why not make the decision once there’s more information on the table? Leave the door open and wait and see."
(
newsroom@herald.ca)
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