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  #21  
Old Posted Aug 20, 2019, 7:53 PM
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Originally Posted by Keith P. View Post
Well, look who's back? Our old favorite obstructionists, the Heritage Trust! And they have filed an appeal guaranteed to hold this one up for months, if not years:

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/nova-...urch-1.5252006
Just when we thought we were safe. Amazing! 1. I didn't know that was a "heritage district" with Brunswick Towers nearby. 2. They already repaired the street front building so it's safe from demolition.
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  #22  
Old Posted Aug 20, 2019, 7:56 PM
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Just when we thought we were safe. Amazing! 1. I didn't know that was a "heritage district" with Brunswick Towers nearby. 2. They already repaired the street front building so it's safe from demolition.
One has to wonder how many hours and dollars will be spent on fighting this new building, and how much would have been accomplished had that effort been channeled into maintaining the actual heritage buildings along Brunswick.

Why doesn't the Heritage Trust focus on trying to lobby the city to improve building maintenance? Halifax is full of crumbling pseudo-heritage-districts.
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  #23  
Old Posted Aug 21, 2019, 12:49 AM
Colin May Colin May is offline
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One has to wonder how many hours and dollars will be spent on fighting this new building, and how much would have been accomplished had that effort been channeled into maintaining the actual heritage buildings along Brunswick.

Why doesn't the Heritage Trust focus on trying to lobby the city to improve building maintenance? Halifax is full of crumbling pseudo-heritage-districts.
Everyone in metro who has had an interest in the development of the area knows Heritage Trust has been banging its head against the wall for many decades in favour of preserving heritage buildings and districts.
Unfortunately over far too many decades few of the councillors in Halifax and Dartmouth have been to other parts of the world to see and understand what is valuable and what is possible. The province has little interest in the matter.
In a few weeks I will be in a village where my ancestors lived for circa 400 years. A property owner cannot change anything without obtaining approval from the parish council and the county council.
Councils in many parts of Canada can only see dollar signs.

Last edited by Colin May; Aug 21, 2019 at 3:56 PM.
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  #24  
Old Posted Aug 21, 2019, 11:50 AM
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One has to wonder how many hours and dollars will be spent on fighting this new building, and how much would have been accomplished had that effort been channeled into maintaining the actual heritage buildings along Brunswick.

Why doesn't the Heritage Trust focus on trying to lobby the city to improve building maintenance? Halifax is full of crumbling pseudo-heritage-districts.
On twitter this am I read a post about their direction. The church next to it is a recognized site yet looks about ready to be demolished itself. They'd be much better of going after the province for not funding those repairs as opposed to worrying about the "too tall" eight storey building next door. For years they've argued height as opposed to actual preservation. This took away any credibility they had in my opinion.
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  #25  
Old Posted Aug 21, 2019, 12:44 PM
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The Province cannot get into the business of giving money away to restore derelict churches. There is an excess of such structures thanks to the move away by society from organized religion and it would be a never-ending money pit giving us unused or underused structures that would again become derelict due to lack of financial support by the community.
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  #26  
Old Posted Aug 21, 2019, 4:16 PM
OldDartmouthMark OldDartmouthMark is offline
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Originally Posted by Jstaleness View Post
On twitter this am I read a post about their direction. The church next to it is a recognized site yet looks about ready to be demolished itself. They'd be much better of going after the province for not funding those repairs as opposed to worrying about the "too tall" eight storey building next door. For years they've argued height as opposed to actual preservation. This took away any credibility they had in my opinion.
As far as I know, the church is still owned by the Catholic diocese, which has left the funding for repairs to the staff of the church (which, ultimately, would be funded by donations). As a privately owned building, I don't think it would be appropriate for the Heritage Trust to lobby the province to fund the repairs, but they could lobby them to invoke incentives like tax breaks to assist them in restoration/repair.

I don't really understand their stance on blocking this development, given the three purple towers almost next door to this lot. I recall reading about a neighbor complaining about it, but the HT should really try to distance itself from NIMBY complaints, and instead build a fact-based argument for saving buildings that are at risk, rather than preventing a development that does not actually involve demolishing a heritage building. In the long run I believe this argument will fail anyhow, but only after wasting everybody's time.

Colin makes a good point, though, in that the HT is continually fighting winless battles due to the lack of conviction and political will of Halifax councillors towards protecting heritage buildings. Continually we still see them fall, with absolutely no action from council. It must be a depressing job to say the least.

As an aside, I visited the church a couple of years ago during Doors Open and learned a little about it. Yes, the structure has deteriorated over the years and the Catholic church organization has not provided sufficient funding to maintain/restore it. In fact, some granite ornamentation had to be removed from the spire to reduce the loading on it. The church needs major repairs.

My understanding at the time was that they were receiving donations (I donated a little that day) and that they did have a plan to shore up the structure so that it at least remains structurally sound. I haven't been back, nor have I heard any news as to how that is going.

As far as I know, it's still being used as a place to practice religion, so hopefully the members of the church are doing all they can to preserve the building.

The relatively conservative exterior of the church doesn't give many hints to the splendid architecture inside the church, with its gothic arches, woodwork, and ornamentation. It is definitely worth preserving IMHO, even if it ceases to be used as a church. I visited an example of a successful church repurposing earlier this summer in Wolfville: The Church Brewing Company.

Here are a few photos from the Doors Open visit:






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  #27  
Old Posted Aug 21, 2019, 4:40 PM
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I think it would be inappropriate for the city or province to fork over money to the church itself with no strings attached but the city's paid out heritage restoration rebates to many private property owners. The concepts works just fine; it has led to a lot of restoration work with a large public benefit and low overall spending (very little in the way if identifiable negative impact on municipal coffers since heritage restoration tends to raise property values).

To me the boarded up church windows are real "eyesores" along Brunswick, along with the weedy empty lots, and some poorly-maintained houses with peeling paint or vinyl siding on them.

It's just sad that the Heritage Trust are fighting one of the few property owners that have done a good job of maintaining buildings along this street in the past few years. It feels like the HT follows its own agenda developed in its own ideological bubble with little sense of goals or what would be best for heritage preservation in the city. What do they hope to accomplish with this appeal? They lose almost all of their appeals.
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  #28  
Old Posted Aug 21, 2019, 6:20 PM
Hali87 Hali87 is offline
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Originally Posted by OldDartmouthMark View Post
I don't really understand their stance on blocking this development, given the three purple towers almost next door to this lot. I recall reading about a neighbor complaining about it, but the HT should really try to distance itself from NIMBY complaints, and instead build a fact-based argument for saving buildings that are at risk, rather than preventing a development that does not actually involve demolishing a heritage building. In the long run I believe this argument will fail anyhow, but only after wasting everybody's time.
The HT's vision of "heritage preservation" seems to be less about keeping old buildings in good/attractive/usable shape and more about maintaining "historical integrity" by preventing anything large or modern-looking from being built. Given the choice between an attractive, well-maintained old neighbourhood with a few modern buildings or a run-down, poorly-maintained neighbourhood with 0 modern buildings (and perhaps a handful of vacant lots), they tend to be heavily biased toward the latter. I get the impression that a lot of them just want to be able to stand in the middle of a given neighbourhood (or the Citadel) and pretend it's the year 1800, and having tasteful modern architecture ruins this for them. I'm not sure what proportion of them grew up in Halifax vs. elsewhere but I've encountered a lot of people who have moved here from Toronto and feel that they need to "save" Halifax from being "just another Toronto", which to them means making the city look and feel like the post-war era(s) never happened (implicitly this is, to them, the only real difference between Halifax and Toronto).

I wish they would be more honest and straightforward about this. Perhaps I'm wrong about this but it is consistently the impression that I've gotten from them over the last 15 years or so.
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  #29  
Old Posted Aug 21, 2019, 6:29 PM
Colin May Colin May is offline
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If the church is not worth an injection of public funds to preserve the building I don't know what is.
Is it less worthy than Province House or the LG mansion ?
Civilized countries invest in preserving history for future generations.
The central library should be preserved to ensure future generations appreciate the political act of funding a well designed building as part of a civilized society.
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  #30  
Old Posted Aug 21, 2019, 6:56 PM
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I've often wondered if Halifax would be better off with a "real" architectural heritage group that is focused exclusively on promoting the maintenance of publicly-visible architectural heritage. Ideally this would cover more modern heritage buildings too like the now gone Bank of Canada building which the Heritage Trust probably ignored.

All that aside, the Heritage Trust won't be able to make these appeals once the Centre Plan comes into effect. But true heritage preservation might become even more important because it will be even easier for developers to bulldoze small heritage buildings, even registered ones, and put up medium-sized buildings. The municipality needs to greatly expand heritage protection, while channeling development into the many areas that can be developed without sacrificing the city's architectural heritage (e.g. maybe 1/3 of Brunswick Street).
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  #31  
Old Posted Aug 21, 2019, 7:01 PM
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Given the choice between an attractive, well-maintained old neighbourhood with a few modern buildings or a run-down, poorly-maintained neighbourhood with 0 modern buildings (and perhaps a handful of vacant lots), they tend to be heavily biased toward the latter.
They also tend to prefer a small and ugly modern building to a taller, nicer one. The North End in particular is full of awful 80's/90's schlock.

https://www.google.com/maps/@44.6572...7i16384!8i8192

In my opinion the development above is far worse for the integrity of the street than the rectory development.
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  #32  
Old Posted Aug 21, 2019, 8:21 PM
OldDartmouthMark OldDartmouthMark is offline
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The HT's vision of "heritage preservation" seems to be less about keeping old buildings in good/attractive/usable shape and more about maintaining "historical integrity" by preventing anything large or modern-looking from being built. Given the choice between an attractive, well-maintained old neighbourhood with a few modern buildings or a run-down, poorly-maintained neighbourhood with 0 modern buildings (and perhaps a handful of vacant lots), they tend to be heavily biased toward the latter. I get the impression that a lot of them just want to be able to stand in the middle of a given neighbourhood (or the Citadel) and pretend it's the year 1800, and having tasteful modern architecture ruins this for them. I'm not sure what proportion of them grew up in Halifax vs. elsewhere but I've encountered a lot of people who have moved here from Toronto and feel that they need to "save" Halifax from being "just another Toronto", which to them means making the city look and feel like the post-war era(s) never happened (implicitly this is, to them, the only real difference between Halifax and Toronto).

I wish they would be more honest and straightforward about this. Perhaps I'm wrong about this but it is consistently the impression that I've gotten from them over the last 15 years or so.
I don't have any personal experience in dealing with the HT, so I can't agree or disagree with you, but your statement seems a little extreme.

Their website appears to be a wealth of historical information about heritage buildings and properties of Nova Scotia, and their downloadable quarterly seems to have some interesting reading contained within.

From their website:
https://www.htns.ca/about.html

Quote:
Purpose of the Society

The object of the society is to promote, foster and encourage interest in and preservation of buildings and sites of an historic, architectural and cultural nature within Nova Scotia and to acquire and preserve buildings and sites which are appropriate to this. To effect such purposes we will:

Advance the public knowledge of the historical and architectural importance of heritage buildings and sites in Nova Scotia by conducting research in this matter and by disseminating the results of such research;

Educate the public about the value and the conservation of Nova Scotia's built heritage and historic places through workshops, publications and lectures;

Acquire, preserve and protect buildings and sites which are recognized as historical sites by the Department of Canadian Heritage, Parks Canada or an appropriate provincial or municipal authority;

Gift funds to qualified donees, as described in subsection 149.1 (1) of the Income Tax Act, to advance knowledge of or preservation of buildings and sites of historical significance.
This doesn't seem to describe the view that you've outlined in your post, so presumably most of us are forming our opinions based on impressions from a newspaper article.

Just trying to keep it real, but in all fairness I suffer similar frustration with actions such as the one discussed in this thread. It seems like they do a lot more important (in a historian's view) work, but we only seem to hear of the 'questionable' actions of the HT (my impression).

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  #33  
Old Posted Aug 21, 2019, 8:24 PM
OldDartmouthMark OldDartmouthMark is offline
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They also tend to prefer a small and ugly modern building to a taller, nicer one. The North End in particular is full of awful 80's/90's schlock.

https://www.google.com/maps/@44.6572...7i16384!8i8192

In my opinion the development above is far worse for the integrity of the street than the rectory development.
If that particular building is the result of Heritage Trust involvement, then it would seem that they resolve to stick to a particular procedural process without considering the quality of the outcome. If that's the case, then they need a countermeasure.

If it's not the result of Heritage Trust involvement, then I'm confused as to why it is included in this discussion.
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  #34  
Old Posted Aug 21, 2019, 8:32 PM
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If that particular building is the result of Heritage Trust involvement, then it would seem that they resolve to stick to a particular procedural process without considering the quality of the outcome. If that's the case, then they need a countermeasure.

If it's not the result of Heritage Trust involvement, then I'm confused as to why it is included in this discussion.
It's absolutely the result of Heritage Trust involvement. They apply pressure for buildings to conform to the 40-foot as-of-right height limit, contributing to this result.
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  #35  
Old Posted Aug 21, 2019, 8:55 PM
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It's absolutely the result of Heritage Trust involvement. They apply pressure for buildings to conform to the 40-foot as-of-right height limit, contributing to this result.
I wasn't aware of the history of this particular building. Thanks for filling us in.

It's odd, however, that they didn't build it out to the 40-foot limit since the HT kept them from building higher. One would think they would build to the max height.
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  #36  
Old Posted Aug 21, 2019, 9:53 PM
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The HT's vision of "heritage preservation" seems to be less about keeping old buildings in good/attractive/usable shape and more about maintaining "historical integrity" by preventing anything large or modern-looking from being built. Given the choice between an attractive, well-maintained old neighbourhood with a few modern buildings or a run-down, poorly-maintained neighbourhood with 0 modern buildings (and perhaps a handful of vacant lots), they tend to be heavily biased toward the latter. I get the impression that a lot of them just want to be able to stand in the middle of a given neighbourhood (or the Citadel) and pretend it's the year 1800, and having tasteful modern architecture ruins this for them. I'm not sure what proportion of them grew up in Halifax vs. elsewhere but I've encountered a lot of people who have moved here from Toronto and feel that they need to "save" Halifax from being "just another Toronto", which to them means making the city look and feel like the post-war era(s) never happened (implicitly this is, to them, the only real difference between Halifax and Toronto).

I wish they would be more honest and straightforward about this. Perhaps I'm wrong about this but it is consistently the impression that I've gotten from them over the last 15 years or so.
I don't disagree with this but would offer some additional context.

The HT is a provincial organization and their members outside of Halifax have done some good work. But in Halifax their core for many years was a group of hard-core obstructionists and left-wingers who seem to believe at their core that developers are evil people. They were run for a long time by Phil and Betty Pacey, who were against anything that wasn't a short Victorian recreation, plus you had a cadre of hardcore NDPers like Kommissar Howard Epstein and Peter Delefes, and old-timers like Allan Robertson calling the shots for what they did in this city. The result was that any new development that involved replacing an old (not of historic significance, just old) building was automatically deemed bad because of "greedy" developers unless what was proposed were things like the Marriott Residence Inn with its styrofoam cornices on Grafton or the new Neptune Theater. Did this reflect the wishes of their province-wide membership? Perhaps, but not to the same rabid degree as was seen here I would suggest, where they literally (as in this case) opposed developments on empty lots. Their new President, Andrew Murphy, appears to be following the same path, opposing not only this development but apparently one proposed for the parking lot next to St. Mary's Basilica. It is close to a lunatic fringe running their Halifax interests, one that believes DT Halifax should be frozen in time. What is sad is how many resources they have expended tilting at windmills and fighting progress, and then imagining how those could have been used to preserve truly historic buildings. Their one recent effort locally was Morris House, which they proved incapable of actually doing much with, and which has languished unfinished for many years.
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  #37  
Old Posted Aug 21, 2019, 10:23 PM
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I wasn't aware of the history of this particular building. Thanks for filling us in.

It's odd, however, that they didn't build it out to the 40-foot limit since the HT kept them from building higher. One would think they would build to the max height.
It might be below 40 feet. I thought this was under the same height precinct as a nearby part of Gottingen but this map suggests it's not:

https://www.halifax.ca/sites/default...June2019to.pdf

We can see that along Brunswick the low height limit did not guarantee good quality for new developments.

I agree with Keith's post above. The Heritage Trust could have picked their battles but instead they try to appeal anything that requires a development agreement. The effect is that they impose a large "tax" on developments that are just over the height limits. I would imagine that they have perversely encouraged highrise development because it might be worth fighting appeals on a 20 storey building but not to build a 6 storey instead of a 5 storey. But the overall effect on the city is higher costs and lower quality, because time and effort is diverted to pointless obstructionism and because the debate is myopically fixated on building height.
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  #38  
Old Posted Aug 21, 2019, 11:09 PM
OldDartmouthMark OldDartmouthMark is offline
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I don't disagree with yours or Keith's posts, and found Keith's statement about the work of those in Halifax vs those outside of the city to be quite telling - an astute observation.

I can't speak about the individuals named because I do not know them, nor do I know much of them (nor do I have any desire to actually).

But I will also say that the city has never gone out of its way to preserve heritage either, other than a few token efforts, such as has happened in the Barrington Street district.

However, I question whether it is possible for any heritage group to be successful in Halifax, as it appears that AGBANS hasn't had any progress either. I had started a thread inquiring about the status of the group in May, and the thread received zero responses, so I will assume that there have been no successes to be discussed.

I have observed, though, that for all the complaints about the HT's obstructionism (which certainly appears to exist), I'm not walking through Halifax looking at a bunch of pristine preserved 1800's streetscapes - rather I see a bunch of shiny new buildings surrounded by a bunch of 1980s and 1970s buildings, with a few token stone and brick buildings from the early 20th and late 19th dotting the landscape - so for all their obstructionism, it hasn't seemed to have much of an effect on development...
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  #39  
Old Posted Aug 21, 2019, 11:58 PM
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I can't speak to what things were like in the 70s or 80s (or even the 90s really), my observations are mostly based on the last ~15 years.

It could be a media thing. I would say that I have read several dozen articles over the last 15 years where the Heritage Trust were trying to block modern developments (in many cases on vacant lots) because it would "ruin the street/neighbourhood/city's heritage" and approximately 0 where they were advocating for the restoration of a heritage building. They very frequently referred to development agreements and LUB amendments as "developers trying to break the rules again" which annoyed me because this is a very disingenous way of framing these things. Maybe it's just that they never get interviewed about restorations because those are rarely controversial. This proposal is an example - they publicly oppose building this 8-storey building because it will ruin the neighbourhood's heritage... but as far as I know they've never made any effort to have the church restored (or at least haven't been interviewed about it).

The one project where they seemed willing to compromise was the Vic development where they actually worked with the developer and property owner (if memory serves correctly) to save and relocate the Morris House (the more typical scenario would have seen the HT trying at all costs to prevent the Vic from being built at all and ultimately failing, resulting in the Morris House being destroyed and maybe the Vic having one fewer storey or something). I do care about heritage preservation and I'm not one of those "we NEED 40 storey buidings so that Halifax can finally be a real city" types, I've always tried to give them the benefit of a doubt, and they have disappointed almost every single time.

That being said, it's worth noting that many of their members were involved in the fight against Harbour Drive which resulted in the preservation of the Historic Properties and the creation of the Harbourwalk (which I do see as a net positive).
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  #40  
Old Posted Aug 23, 2019, 12:36 PM
OldDartmouthMark OldDartmouthMark is offline
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Like I said, I can't really disagree with your assertions, as I don't really follow the actions of the HT, nor am I privy to their internal workings. I see the same news reports as most do, but have also learned to qualify what I read in the news, as it's generally aimed at creating sensationalism in order to sell papers - or more aptly, website clicks and subscriptions. I just thought that the statement that they want to be able to stand anywhere and pretend it's the year 1800 was a little over the top.

That said, I agree with most of the points that you and other posters made, and I also wish they would focus more on saving/preserving existing buildings at risk than trying to obstruct development - especially where it doesn't really make a difference, as in this case.

One thing I do recall them working on was saving the Dennis Building, which was at risk, but now appears that at least its facade will be saved. I'm not sure how much their efforts contributed to this outcome, but one would have to think it at least had some small influence.
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