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Originally Posted by Keith P.
Well, naturally planning staff recommends rejecting the proposal, because god forbid anything new gets built in this area. Oddly enough though, the comments at the public information session are almost all positive and in favor of this. One hilarious comment was that "Halifax seems to get approval pretty quick for these types of developments. If anyone try’s to development anything in this area of Dartmouth they seem to run into roadblocks". The person must have witnessed the debacle surrounding the Austin Hotel site proposal. Refreshingly, there was virtually none of the typical "It's TOO TALL!!!" nonsense we see so often.
As a side note, the wind study included in the report has sections that are virtually unreadable and never should have seen the light of day. I would be embarrassed if I was the engineer whose name is on that document.
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It can definitely be very confusing. I could be wrong, but it seems like the recommendation was based more on aesthetics than utility. The buildings would be at the confluence of a grocery store, highway, bike lane, transit stop, school; arguably a much better location for density than horizon court. I agree with the concern of cutting pedestrian access, but I think it would be easy to integrate existing accessibility as part of a requirement for approval. Yes, from a scale point of view it dwarfs neighbouring houses, but so will the new hotel nearby. I personally feel that being in such a strategic location outweighs the concern of scale. I also wonder if the rejection is more of a suggestion of things to improve, and maybe placating nearby residents while letting council approve. I would have to ask those last two questions to city staff who prepared the recommendations, or at least someone having been involved in similar recommendations elsewhere.
The wind study is unfortunate. I think what happens is that the PDF document can’t accept all the letters from trendy fonts, which cut the I’s and L’s. Must have been on a tight deadline if they couldn’t review and catch this.
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