Quote:
Originally Posted by RyeJay
The casted shadow will be greater during the winter as the sun's arc becomes smaller, moving south.
And we need to look beyond just the impact of Skye -- because other developers will want to take advantage of a downtown without rampart by-laws. Whatever Skye's impact may be, it's important to ask ourselves if we are at all concerned with this level of impact along the entire waterfront.
A compelling reason to do away with the rampart height limits is to allow developers to propose building heights that may be more profitable and affordable.
I want Halifax to densify and build vertically, but the desire to do so on this tiny portion of land between the Citadel and the waterfront is somewhat irrational considering we may be drastically affecting the boardwalk, which is one of the downtown's main attractions.
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Well I'm going to argue the flip side of the coin on this one. You mention the shadow could be worse in winter - but just how much of the boardwalk is used in the winter when it's cold and windy? Would this really cause a major problem? Also, I'd point out that no one has a right to 'sunlight' or the be prevented from being 'shaded'. I've never seen legislation to prevent that.
That being said, I've been concerned about shadowing of taller buildings should Halifax densify. My thought has been to decrease the bulk of the building as you go higher, creating more point towers. This means that the full bulk of the building (building to every property line) might occur on the first say 3-5 stories; but then you would only get 80% of the bulk up to a certain height (lets say 15 stories). Then beyond that you only get 50% of the floor plate from 16-23 (where the rampart bylaw would typically kick in) and then somewhere between 35-40% for the rest.
By making the tallest portions of the building slimmer the shadow casting effects reduce. This way, you could remove the rampart rule, get buildings appearing to people inside of the fort, but they would be rather slim in nature. You'd balance the taller building and appearance by reducing shadow and likely wind effects too. This would also have the added benefit of likely not walling off protected views, which is something that STV have harped on about which I have some minor concern over. Because the floor plate would be reduced as you go higher, the wall of the building would push away from any protected views (I'm thinking of the skye site as an example).