Quote:
Originally Posted by Drybrain
Any stagnancy in Halifax in years past was due to economic conditions. You can't lay the lack of development at Phil Pacey's feet--he's too ineffectual.
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I disagree. There's more construction now than in past years but the economic fundamentals in the city aren't necessarily much better than in the last decade or the late 90's. The planning regime and public tastes have changed more than the strength of the economy.
Pre-HbD it used to be very common for development approval to drag on for (3, 4, 5) years. St. James Place for example started out as a 19 storey proposal circa 1997 I believe and was finally built as a 10 storey building in 2006 or so after years of tweaking and opposition. The city's terrible development rules created this situation but the Heritage Trust and a few other related groups played a major role in terms of moving appeals forward. It is hard to say what the real cost of all this was but I could see it being in the tens or hundreds of millions of dollars over the last few years once you take into account the cost of the approvals themselves, the loss of tax revenue, and the diversion of development out to more permissive suburban areas.
I also blame some members of the Heritage Trust for contributing to the adversarial "heritage vs. developer" atmosphere that has held the city back so much. Instead of working with developers they decided to dig in their heels and oppose as much construction as possible, and instead of sticking to preservation the HT's primary goal was subverted by NIMBYism.
Halifax has already improved somewhat but it still hasn't struck the right balance of heritage preservation, public realm investment, and friendliness to quality urban development. And this is just downtown. The suburbs are a total disaster and transit is a disaster too.