You can’t fight sprawl without downtown development
No disrespect to Halifax — or Detroit, for that matter — but the Nova Scotia capital has a long way to go before it could be considered the Detroit of Canada’s East Coast, as some suggest it is in danger of becoming.
For one thing, Halifax Regional Municipality, one of the largest municipalities by area in the country, has a population of about 400,000, which is still not nearly as large as Detroit even after it was decimated by a declining economy, crime and urban decay.
In many respects, it is like comparing apples and oranges.
Despite losing a large portion of its population to the suburbs, urban Detroit has a population of slightly more than 700,000 residents. When you throw in the population of the suburbs, metro Detroit has a population of about 4.3 million.
Yes, Halifax is growing, but the sprawl here is nothing compared to the other major centres in the country. Anyone who has tried to get around metro Toronto knows what I’m talking about.
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You can’t fight sprawl without downtown development – Business – TheChronicleHerald.ca.
A Deal is a Deal …
A Deal is a Deal … In November 2007, the Province of Nova Scotia signed a landmark agreement with municipalities across Nova Scotia.
The Province made a commitment to pay for provincial responsibilities.
It was a fair deal: one that recognized property taxes should be spent on municipal programs and services – like police, firefighters, better streets, parks and playgrounds – rather than being collected to offset provincial costs.
Under the agreement, municipalities across Nova Scotia could have reduced our taxes collected by more than $100 million over seven years as the result of the Province agreeing to gradually take over financial responsibility for corrections and public housing and limit increased contributions to education.
Earlier this month, the Dexter government tabled legislation that – if passed – will effectively tear up that fair deal.
So what does this mean to you, the taxpayer?
This legislative sleight of hand will cost HRM taxpayers $46 million more over the next four years as the province attempts to balance its books on the backs of property owners.
Tearing up this deal will cost homeowners $100 per year on average, and commercial property owners $400 per year on average, when the full impact is felt.
Putting an end to this fair deal on taxes will mean a bigger slice of your property tax bill – as much as a quarter – will go straight from your wallet to the province’s coffers.
At HRM, we are determined to make our communities better places to live, learn, work and play.
Managing Sprawl the Hot Topic of the 10th Anniversary Carmichael Lecture
Release:
April 28, 2011, Halifax, NS – Guest speakers David Donnelly and Bruce Lourie will discuss managing urban sprawl and why it matters to Downtown at this year’s 10th Anniversary Carmichael Lecture, presented by the Downtown Halifax Business Commission (DHBC) in partnership with the Ecology Action Centre. The Lecture will take place on Thursday, May 12, 6:00-8:00 pm, in the Atlantic Ballroom of the Westin Nova Scotian Hotel, 1181 Hollis Street. The event is free and open to the public on a first-come, first-served basis.
“As HRM continues to grow, so do the challenges of balancing Downtown revitalization, regional growth, transportation, and environmental and economic sustainability,” said Paul MacKinnon, Executive Director of DHBC. “What we build and where we build it dictate all of these things.”
2011 will see a review of HRM’s Regional Plan, the development plan that allows and guides future growth of the municipality. HRM’s challenges around transportation, sprawl, lack of Downtown redevelopment, as well as failing to meet environmental and fiscal goals indicates that HRM needs to change how it has been growing.
David Donnelly and Bruce Lourie were instrumental in establishing Greater Toronto’s Greenbelt, which will have a major impact on how that city reinvigorates its downtown, resists sprawl, and protects its local food source. They will be here to challenge HRM on how it moves forward, and to actually embrace smart growth.
Read the rest of this release>>>>>>> Managing Sprawl the Hot Topic of the 10th Anniversary Carmichael Lecture | Downtown, Environmental, Halifax, Dhbc, Director, Gr.
Art gallery mulls new Halifax home
The AGNS found its downtown Halifax building to be “seriously inadequate” in a 2008 report that recommended constructing a new, larger building elsewhere in the downtown area.
The report’s other suggested options were a creating new building outside the core or renovating the current space on Hollis Street.
On Friday, AGNS issued a request for tender for a new building.
Art gallery mulls new Halifax home – Nova Scotia – CBC News.
Kelly takes funding fight with province to YouTube
Nova Scotia’s disgruntled municipal leaders are continuing their cash-related quarrel with the Dexter government and turning it up a notch.
Halifax Mayor Peter Kelly spent part of Thursday shooting a protest video that he said will soon appear on YouTube.
He was seen standing near Province House in downtown Halifax, speaking on camera with a prepared script at the ready.
“It was done in different segments — in front of city hall, on a street in HRM and also across the street from Province House,” Kelly said.
Kelly takes funding fight with province to YouTube – Metro – TheChronicleHerald.ca.
DIY s’mores at new dessert, martini bar
Anyone looking to roast their own marshmallows at a downtown Halifax table might want to visit The Middle Spoon Desserterie and Bar.
The new restaurant has inked a deal with Starfish Properties to set up in the former Carsand-Mosher building on Barrington Street, next to Argyle Fine Art.
“It’s supposed to be a nice comfy place where you can go for a date or a girls night out and have a nice dessert and a martini,” said Ciaran Doherty, whose wife, Lacey, is the driving force behind the establishment slated to open in mid-June.
They are hoping to draw from the Neptune Theatre crowd, as well as diners who eat in one restaurant but want a change of scenery before satiating their sweet tooth.
“We’ve been kind of kicking around the idea for a while,” said Ciaran Doherty, who helps run his family’s 26 dry cleaning establishments in Nova Scotia, which operate as Don Schelew Dry Cleaning and Same Day Dry Cleaners.
DIY s’mores at new dessert, martini bar – Business – TheChronicleHerald.ca.
HRM budget tabled, no new taxes
The Halifax Regional Municipality tabled its budget Tuesday and Halifax’s chief administrative officer says residents don’t need to worry about new taxes.
Richard Butts said the budget its proposing is balanced.
“There are no tax rate increases, but I would tell you that there are assessment increases and a cap increase which has generated additional revenues for HRM.”
Butts said the city had some flexibility, thanks to an increase in property values.
The value of the average home and commercial property in HRM went up five per cent in the last year—an extra $12 million dollars for the municipality.
Anti-Harper website attracts two million hits
Social media are wreaking havoc on the Conservative party’s image with an anti-Harper website that’s gone viral, reaching more than a million Canadians since its Wednesday release.
Mixing humour with profanity, the website -shitharperdid.ca -crashed under the weight of traffic within hours of its launch Wednesday morning. By Thursday, it passed two million hits, with the average viewer spending four minutes on the site reading through news reports chronicling Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s record.
Among people who noticed the site was author Margaret Atwood, who tweeted the link to her 160,000-plus followers: “Didn’t know about some of these things! Yikes!” she wrote.
Despite Efforts, Government Has Not Yet Killed Downtown
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There was even less parking than usual on Friday night, rather, there was fear, anger, miss-communication, and clear signs why the downtown we prize so highly is in danger of being undone by thoughtless bureaucracy and in-effective political leadership.
Around eight in the evening that night, a local journalist and media personality tweeted “HRM is helpfully shutting down downtown…duh.”
Moments later “Grafton st closed to parking as is Argyle from Duke to Prince. Helpful for Friday night business. No cops or politicos seem to know why” was added.
Was it the Bluenose Marathon? Why hadn’t local businesses been given notice? How long would it last? The Mayor did not know, nor did the Councillor for downtown, but over the next couple of hours the story slowly came out through emails, Twitter, and Facebook.
Some of the street closure had been planned a long time. While the marathon was the reason for the closure of Grafton, closures on and around Argyle were for the Jesse Stone film. The film production needed space for technical parking and filming on Friday, and to film on Saturday.
This kind of thing happens, but the restaurants, bars and shops on Blowers, Prince, Argyle and Grafton have said clearly to HRM, again and again – don’t shoot on the weekend, give adequate notice. Neither happened this weekend.
Why are these small business people so angry? “It means eliminating something like at least fifty prime parking spaces for our district. My business was off about $2,000 for a normal Friday night. Don’t know what happened to everyone else but I do know everyone is very pissed” said one irate bar owner.
Bars and restaurants pay rent seven days a week, but usually make the most revenue on the weekend nights. Losing parking and interfering with the normal function of the restaurant district on the weekend hurts a quarter of their monthly earnings.
Another restaurateur added “What is most frustrating in this situation is the lack of communication so that we could at least provide our clientele enough time to plan for parking or make different arrangements such as taxi cabs.”
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Written by lesmuise
May 23, 2011 at 9:32 pm
Posted in Argyle Street, Downtown, Haligonia.ca, Infastructure, Market Conditions, Political Comment, Real Estate
Tagged with Development, Downtown, Halifax Downtown, Haligonia.ca