Howard Epstein To Mayor Savage: Use Your Best Efforts

July 15, 2015
Mayor Mike Savage
PO Box 1749, Halifax, NS B3J 3A5

Your Worship:
I am writing on behalf of Friends of Halifax Common to set out an important concern about the state of play in overall land-use planning in the Capital/Regional Centre. Our focus is on the Halifax Common, but some of the issues that illustrate problems that affect the Common are also of wider impact and concern.

Originating with the 2006 Regional Plan, a focus on the Centre has been adopted by Council. Unfortunately this has suffered from delay. It is worthwhile to recall the reasons for this focus in the Regional Plan: stemming general residential sprawl (especially with associated energy use for transportation); controlling the cost of hard and soft infrastructure; and a concern with the hollowing-out of downtowns. These remain valid concerns. Delay has come about through several steps: first, HRM By Design abandoned its initial focus on the whole of the Centre area and dealt for several years exclusively with the Halifax CBD; next, a ‘corridors’ policy was attempted as an interim measure; and in the meantime, Council and the community councils have been dealing with many individual site applications, approving much of what has been asked for.

The result of this has been not only delay in settling on a new Centre plan, but in a series of decisions that effectively pre-determine the results of what should be an open public planning process. Very little will be left to be determined, especially on the Halifax peninsula, if important, individual site-based decisions continue to be made. Continue reading →

St Pat’s Background Report Inaccurate, Inadequate & Biased

HRM has posted a background report by WSP Canada Inc. about the former St. Patrick’s High School site (Quinpool 6067) in advance of Wendesday’s meeting. The three concept designs are not yet avalable. Errors and omissions in the report are detailed below. The report

St Pat’s Process Deeply Flawed (Photo-Rebecca Lau/Global News)

would be a very faulty basis for a public consultation and should be withdrawn and revised before the consultation starts.

The report is clearly biased towards a large scale development despite a 2013 Stantec Report commissioned by HRM determined that there is sufficient development capacity in the Regional Capital to meet density targets for the next 25 years. Presently there is equivalent to 20 empty blocks of land in the downtown, most used as parking lots and most with existing development agreements and yet the report does not consider retaining this land as public open space. Below is a list of the problems, followed by some discussion.

1. The report does not mention the existing height limit on the property.
2. The report has an inadequate discussion of the Quinpool Road Commercial Area Plan (QRCAP).
3. The densities on surrounding blocks are calculated incorrectly.
4. The wind consultants did not consider the effect of winds on Cogswell Park, between Windsor, Parker and Welsford Streets.
5. The report starts with a density that is twice as great as the density allowed in this part of Halifax.

Discussion:

The report does not mention the existing height limit on the property.

Continue reading →

St Pat’s High School Property – Public Meeting- Wed. Jul. 22

There’s a public open house to review and comment on three preliminary design options for St Pat’s High School on Wed., July 22, 6:30 – 9 p.m., Halifax Forum, Multi-Purpose Room

Why is the public meeting on such short notice and in the middle of vacation season?

Can’t make it?
Ask questions or make comments at: https://shapeyourcityhalifax.ca/quinpool6067.

Our questions? …..
1. Why is this very important public consultation meeting being scheduled on such short notice and in the middle of prime vacation time?

2. What is the urgency to sell and re-develop the St Pat’s high school site with such haste that a final design will be selected by September?

3. This area has many highrise developments being proposed -isn’t their approval and the approval for a St Pat’s project in advance of the Centre Plan precluding what the Centre Plan will be able to do?

4. Halifax has taken 21 years to begin the process of developing an integrated master plan for the Halifax Common. St Pat’s highschool is common land in that it belongs to the public. According to the 2013 Stantec Report commissioned by the city there is adequate land to meet all of our projected population growth for the next twenty years. Why doesn’t the city land bank the St Pat’s site as common land to compensate for the loss of over 200 acres of the Halifax Common’s public open space ?

Herald Opinion – Halifax Common Takes Another Hit

Published June 22, 2015 –
On June 23, 1763, King George III granted 240 acres of common land “to and for the use of the inhabitants of the town of Halifax as Common forever.” Unwittingly, this year the city will commemorate the anniversary by cutting several mature trees to make way for a roundabout at the Cogswell/North Park/Ahern/Trollope intersection.This is a fitting tribute to the ongoing

The proposed developments will block the common view of the western sky and will increase wind, shadow and traffic.

onslaught of the Common, whereby less than 30 acres remain as public open space. And it suits the city’s habit of ignoring the 1994 Halifax Common Plan to protect it by not decreasing the amount of public open space or the amount of city-owned land, and to increase the amount of land under city ownership through recapture of lands.

Examples of giveaways include the lands of the former Queen Elizabeth High School, Grace Maternity Hospital and Civic Hospital, School for the Blind and its adjacent block of Tower Road as well as the side-yards of All Saints Cathedral. Next will be the CBC-TV and the Victoria General Hospital lands. And decisions for the permanent Oval, the Oval building, the roundabouts and several public art projects were all outside of an integrated Halifax Common Master Plan.

Now, after a 21-year wait, this year’s municipal budget included money to begin the planning process. Time is not on the Common’s side. Developers are unjustifiably making extensive use Continue reading →

CBC Radio Interview- Common’s Death by a Thousand Cuts

People walk up Citadel Hill through some thick fog on Thursday in Halifax-photo by Jeff Harper, Metro News

On the eve of the Halifax Common’s 252 anniversary CBC Mainstreet’s Stephanie Domet interviews Peggy Cameron. The conversation outlines the many decisions that the city is making in advance of an integrated master plan for the Halifax Common.

There are no rules. Individual decisions outside of a plan are having a cumulative impact and are diminishing the Common. These also preclude the outcome of any planning process related to the now promised Halifax Common Master Plan.

Concerned about what Common will be left for posterity? Or that the Mayor and Council have no vision for the Common?
Email the Mayor and Council at: clerks@halifax.ca.

(begins at 4:10)

Write to Protect the Halifax Common

This year Halifax will commemorate the June 23rd anniversary of the 240 acre Halifax Common grant from King George III by cutting several mature trees to make way for a roundabout at the Cogswell/NorthPark/Ahern/Trollope intersection. Its a fitting tribute

View towards Cunard & North Park

to the on-going onslaught of the Common whereby less than 30 acres remain as public open space. And it suits the City’s habit of ignoring the 1994 Halifax Common Plan.

Now after a 21-year wait this year’s municipal budget includes money to begin the planning process. Time is not on the side of the Common.

Developers are unjustifiably making extensive use of the Development Agreement (DA) application process to ignore the Regional Plan’s existing controls that regulate size, mass, height and set back of buildings for spot-rezoning. Right now there are DA applications for 25-, 28-, 18-, 11-, 24-storey buildings adjacent to the Halifax Common. And an 18-storey building approved next to Camphill Cemetery on Carleton St. and a 30-storey building proposed for Spring Garden Road at Carleton are on Halifax Common land.

By approving DAs for out-of-scale buildings, the Mayor and Council are allowing developers to preclude not just the Halifax Common Master Plan process, but also the Centre Plan and the Halifax Green Network processes. We have yet to ever hear about an Integrated Transportation Strategy and where roundabouts would rank against other priorities such as commuter rail.

Please write the Mayor and Council at clerks@halifax.ca to ask that they stick to the existing rules until new plans are complete. And send comments to the Halifax Green Network https://engage.o2design.com/halifax/engage_map/ asking for regulations to protect the Halifax Common and all public open BLUE space. Continue reading →

100 in 1 Day Halifax – June 6/7, 2015

50 perimeter flags and 4 corner gardens where to mark when we enter or leave the Halifax Common. This SW corner is at Robie & South Streets.

The SW corner of South & Robie has 1 of 50 perimeter flags & 4 corner gardens to mark when we enter or leave the Halifax Common.

For FHC 100 in 1 Day is the perfect way to Celebrate the Common. To remind Haligonians of the Halifax Common’s real size the Friends have marked the perimeter by hanging approximately fifty small flags silk-screened with “Halifax Common” and an outline of its shape. And as well the group has marked the four corners of the Halifax Common by planting small garden boxes and installing painted signs.

“The flags around the perimeter and four common corner gardens at South/Robie, South/South Park, Cunard/Robie, and Cunard/North Park are to help remind us when we are entering or leaving the 240 acre Halifax Common,” said participant Jyelle Vogel. “Everyone will be surprized at how large our Halifax Common is,” said Vogel.

“Halifax isn’t just giving away the common green space, its now privatizing the blue space on and around the perimeter by permitting developers to build out of scale high-rises so they can sell the luxury view to their paying clients,” says Peggy Cameron, Friends of Halifax Common, Co-chair. “This changes the experience of being on the Halifax Common by blocking the view, the access to light and Continue reading →

Urban Halifax stream dormant but not gone

Op Ed for the Chronicle Herald by John DeMont.

Ben Wedge, pictured in Victoria Park, has found a correlation between the presence of flourishing trees and the locations of underground water systems in Halifax. (CHRISTIAN LAFORCE / Staff)

It occurred like so many great insights have at Charlie’s Club on a Wednesday night, with the smell of hops and the click-click-click of pool balls in the north-end Halifax air.

Ben Wedge, born in Summerside, P.E.I., with a mind that is interested in many things, was nursing a Garrison beer and Googling a map of Halifax on his iPad Continue reading →

Jane’s Walk – Freshwater Brook, Halifax Common – Sunday May 3, 11am

The path of Freshwater Brook as commemorated by Friends of Halifax Common for Earth Day 2011

Did you know that Halifax has its own lost river system? Join Jane’s Walk guide, Ben Wedge on the North Common to explore Halifax’s river system and its influence on development patterns in a growing garrison town. After centuries of development burying our beautiful urban streams, cities are rediscovering them and starting to bring them back. Inspired in part by the documentary “Lost Rivers” Halifax Council is debating daylighting Dartmouth’s Sawmill River.
Here is a nice facebook page and previous posts on Freshwater Brook can be found here…This post about HRM’s 2006 daylighting policy for both Sawmill River and Freshwater Brook. This post includes links to excellent essays by Matt Neviille and Sam Austin. Continue reading →

Cartography of the Commons – Workshops with Zachery Gough

With your help, artist Zachery Gough envisions our Biophysical,Knowledge, Social and Cultural Commons in Halifax.

With you, artist Zachery Gough will envision our Biophysical, Knowledge, Social and Cultural Commons in Halifax.

Cartography of the Commons is a collective mapping initiative and workshop series by artist Zachery Gough to take stock of the things we share in Halifax. We’ll swap info about shared and free resources (Biophysical, Knowledge, Social and Cultural) and talk about how increasingly everything is for sale.
All workshops take place a the Halifax Public Library. Everyone welcome. Free.

Continue reading →

Is Parking for the Common Good?

Letter To The Coast Magazine by Peggy Cameron, Coordinator, Friends of the Halifax Common

Why should parking be convenient? Get on board, support commuter rail at: halifax.ca/transit/commuterrail.php The Coast Image credit: Jenn Wall, Cunard Street at North Common

Great job describing myriad reasons why metro pedestrians feel they’re the last on the list. I suspect it’s not the sidewalks that have patience maxed out but also the long-term failure of the city to develop an integrated transportation policy. Decades of widening streets to improve capacity and speed of vehicles (more recently it’s a roundabout fetish) has been to the detriment of meeting real transportation Continue reading →

HRM Tender for The Pavilion at The Oval

Survey Preverence for Pavilion Architecture Design 38%- Traditional 25% Modern & Contemporary 18% Fun & Vibrant 12%Contextual and Low Key

Survey Preference for Pavilion Architecture Design
38% Traditional
25% Modern & Contemporary
18% Fun & Vibrant
12% Contextual and Low Key

The Halifax Examiner reports: after much delay, the city is offering the tender for construction of the pavilion at The Oval. Back in 2012, the city issued a request for proposals for design of both the plaza and the accompanying building, but with the sense that things were going too fast for design of a building, that tender was cancelled*. Since then, the plaza has been built and named after a beer company that paid pennies on the dollars of the construction price, and the city went into super consultation-with-citizens mode for design of the building. Here are some pretty pictures of what is said to be the final Continue reading →