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Originally Posted by TheNovaScotian
Surprise surprise Waye Mason voted against it as per the usual.
I wish he would realize that the normal everyday constituents want these changes to happen. I I know we aren't special like some people but he's supposed to represent us all
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Mason was simply voting with the staff recommendation. I think a 29-storey building is fine here, and if the discussion were about changing the zoning on a permanent basis, I'd be pro-height all the way. I think the "it doesn't fit here" arguments from anti-height types make very little sense.
But if I were on council voting on this specific project, I'd have voted in favour of the 20-storey limit as well. There is a perception, not undeserved, that council simply hands to developers any zoning exemptions they ask for. Zoning and heritage restrictions in Halifax are not particularly onerous, yet our development community (by and large) is constantly proposing projects that seek enormous exemptions. And they typically receive those exemptions, or very generous compromises.
The development industry is essentially rewriting the city's planning regime piecemeal every time a new project is announced, and it's breeding a distorted sense of reality. And watch out when a developer occasionally doesn't get his way: i.e., John Ghosn throwing a public hissy fit because the city won't let him build a swimming pool backing into the Northwest Arm, and claim that such rules are "stagnating growth". This is also why people like Louie Lawen can apply to demolish heritage buildings on Barrington Street as an opening gambit for a development proposal. There's no sense that the rules exist to be respected, they exist to be weaseled around as much as possible by playing hardball and complaining about "anti-development" attitudes when you don't get what you want.
Council needs to reign that in, rather than enable it by voting "sure, do whatever you want" every time someone decides that the rules don't apply to them.
Hopefully once the Centre Plan is done and implemented, council will find the cojones to say "NO" to developers who seek to undermine the whole thing with massive variances. Otherwise there's no point even having planners, or a land-use bylaw, or anything. Just let developers go wild.