Quote:
Originally Posted by Keith P.
Made a rare visit to the Dutch Village Rd/Joe Howe Dr area yesterday and was astounded. Dutch Village Rd sadly still looks like a street in an unincorporated municipality with no sidewalks or curbs in some areas which is astonishing. I guess Coun. Cleary doesn't get there very often or at least doesn't care about those constituents. Parts still remain somewhat shabby but even in those there are a few new apartment buildings that have gone up right to the ROW line as per HRM practice, which I will never understand. They are 3 or 4 floors high, but thankfully with a bit of design to them and not Highfield Park Specials. Still a ways to go but it is improving slowly.
Joe Howe Dr in that same stretch is really changing fast. The new build by Fares on the corner of Bayers Rd that replaced the postwar little brick apartments looks really good and is many times larger than what it replaced. They are working on the exterior and it retains some red brick as a homage to what was there. The development diagonally across from it at the intersection is now complete of course and looks really good. As was noted by others there are 4 other developments underway further north on both sides of the street. On the east side the houses on the corner of Scot St have all been cleared and the resulting land assembly next to the Superstore awaits construction to begin. Across the street that large development is underway, and further north the Interchange project is up and finishes appear to be getting started. I think it is the smallest of the ones I saw. Quite the remarkable change in the area!
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Hopefully Dutch Village will look less decrepit by the end of this year, given they should be starting the
enhancements soon.
But yes, the Joe Howe stretch is reminding me of what happened on Adelaide/Richmond in Toronto when I lived there. No life/pedestrians/housing 60km/h artery for traffic transformed into a strip full of residential, restaurants, and bike lanes (!). It's still 5-10 years away from that possibility, but that'd be nice to see.