HALIFAX - The CBC and YMCA buildings occupy a prominent corner in Halifax - a stone's throw from the bustling Spring Garden Road, the Citadel and Public Gardens. In recent years, its neighbours have undergone extensive changes, including the addition of the Martello atop Park Lane Mall and the construction of the Paramount Apartments, directly across from the Public Gardens. And while much of the block has “grown-up”, the CBC building and the adjacent YMCA have sat comfortably, tucked away between civic landmarks, new residential towers and a busy retail strip. But now, the CBC and YMCA are ready and willing to work together to exploit the potential of the strategic place that they hold in the city. View in Google Streetview [caption id="" align="alignnone" width="568" caption="Top: Current view of CBC building from Bell Road. Bottom: Conceptual rendering of proposed development."][/caption] View in Google Streetview [caption id="" align="alignnone" width="568" caption="Top: Current view from South Park Street. Bottom: Proposed development."][/caption] In December 2010, the YMCA and CBC Radio-Canada submitted a Plan Amendment Application to HRM Planning Services to allow for the joint development of their properties. The current application seeks site specific amendments to the Regional Municipal Planning Strategy, the Halifax Municipal Planning Strategy, the Downtown Halifax Secondary Municipal Planning Strategy and the Downtown Halifax Land Use By-Law. Current regulations limit post-bonus building height to 23 metres (CBC) and 49 metres (YMCA); the application seeks to increase the height limit only for the CBC site in order to match current height limits in place for the YMCA parcel.

HALIFAX = To celebrate one of the Ecology Action Centre’s (EAC) first successful campaigns that stopped plans for a four lane highway plowing through downtown Halifax,  there will be a picnic and demo at the Barrington Street Bus stop across from Scotia square overlooking the Cogswell Interchange today, Friday, April 22nd from 11:30am to 1:30pm. The picnic and demonstration at the monstrous Cogswell Interchange will recall the EAC's struggle to prevent a four lane highway from obliterating downtown Halifax and most importantly the event will collectively imagine a brighter future for the existing monstrous Cogswell Interchange. WHAT: EAC's 40th Birthday Picnic and Demo WHEN: Today - Friday, April 22nd (Earth Day), 11:30am – 1:30pm WHERE: Barrington Street Bus Stop, across from Scotia Square overlooking the Cogswell Interchange HOW  MUCH: Free Today's event celebrates one of EAC’s earliest victories and kicks off the organizations 40 Days of Action celebrating their 4o years of operation. “We wanted to do something really big to celebrate forty years of action,” said Policy Director Mark Butler.  “We are organizing special events around the big issues in Nova Scotia: food, energy, water, and our coasts, climate change, environmental racism, forests, fisheries, sprawl and sustainable transportation.  There’s something for everyone.”

HALIFAX - On May 3, 2010, The Coasts' Tim Bousquet wrote an article titled Proposed YMCA/CBC development will break HRM By Design height limits which covered the YMCA/CBC buildings deconstruction on South Park and Sackville Streets and the Y's controversial future development in the same location. Nearly a year later, HRM By Design is hosting a public information session at City Hall in Halifax, NS tonight, Thursday, April 21st at 7pm. As reported on the New Halifax YMCA website, the Public Information Session is a chance for the public to get a ...

Halifax, Nova Scotia Photo by Dean Bouchard, member of Spacing Atlantic's flickr pool.

HALIFAX REGIONAL MUNICIPALITY - In early April, Halifax Regional Council approved a two hundred and fifty million dollar expansion to Bayers Lake Business Park, which will be built on eighty hectares (one hundred and ninety seven acres). Halifax Regional Municipality (HRM) will sell the land to the developer, Banc Developments. Almost doubling the Park's retail space, a project this big deserves careful consideration and public consultation. Instead, Council approved a quarter-billion dollar development in a private meeting, with no public input. Bayers Lake was originally planned as a light industrial park, similar to Burnside Industrial Park in Dartmouth. Lacewood Drive was extended to Bayers Lake to encourage retail development and big box stores like Costco were soon tenants. Retail space grew beyond expectations, creating huge traffic problems that Bayers Lake's roads simply can't handle. To relive congestion a new entrance to Bayers Lake is currently under construction, the Washmill Lake underpass. The high cost of the Washmill Lake underpass partially explains why Council approved this new expansion. The Halifax Regional Municipality (HRM) Business Park Plan for Bayers Lake recommends that "HRM should maximize development potential of the remaining lands in Bayers Lake to provide income for necessary transportation upgrades". The road upgrades in Bayers Lake are necessary only because of poor planning and inadequate transportation options. A municipality shouldn't have to rely on income from new development simply to provide appropriate infrastructure in an already built-up area.

SAINT JOHN - In early 2010, the City launched PlanSJ to create a new Growth Strategy and to develop a new Municipal Plan to guide development over the next 25 years. We profiled the launch of PlanSJ here. Now that the Growth Strategy [PDF] has been unanimously endorsed by Council – ‘where do we want to go as a city’ - it’s time to help develop Municipal Plan policies – 'how do we get there’. PlanSJ is hosting an open house workshop today, Putting the Plan on Paper. Topics to ...

HALIFAX - Ka-Ching. With a $13 billion dollar debt in NS (cleverly illustrated by Hugh Pouliot), how can we not talk about value? It is ironic really, that HRM with its past spending habits, has not fully assessed the value(s) of, and in, the HRM Regional Municipality Strategy Plan. Thankfully, on Saturday, March 12, 2011, a panel consisting of IMAGINE conferences' key-note speakers - Bruce Tonn, Hugh Millward and Patricia Gordon, as well as city councillor Jennifer Watts - talked about planning values in relation to the HRM's Regional Municipal Strategy and long-term planning, in general. Despite spending a significant value in, on and for HRM in the past, the conference revealed that money rather than planning took a priority in the 25-year Municipal Strategy plan. Millward suggested that a lot of smart growth ideas were watered down in the actual HRM plan; he assumed that it was a result of municipal resources, specifically financial. He also attributed the watering down to the fact that "the plan had to be sold as a package", which may be why certain topics had less of an impact. Watts pointed to the fact that there was and is no conversation about water, despite the fact that there are 46 watersheds in Nova Scotia with a majority of them in the HRM area. Watts suggested that "It would be important to address water and understand the implications of water. I've been hearing lots of land-use planning, but what is our relationship to water? Again though, planning water is really expensive." Gordon indicated that "the scope of any municipal plan is hard to address." When Gordon was working for the City of Calgary, during ImagineCALGARY, they reduced their municipal plan to two key areas that would shape the plan and long-term planning - Energy and Water. Gordon felt that both were missing from the HRM plan and both are really important and necessary to assess now and in the long-term: "To me if you don't have energy (in the plan) you have a problem ... you are going nowhere without energy." Tonn expressed surprise that NS still relied heavily on fossil fuel energy, when the province had access to other sustainable resources. But Tonn also indicated that a challenge of transitioning to sustainable energy resources is that, as evidenced in the USA, the traditional grid energy infrastructures are not capable of distributing the new and long-term energy technology. Watts quipped in indicating that "it is a hard slug and that hands are tied to what we can do." She did indicate however, that council has hired legal teams to write new charters. What is clear though, is that planning is expensive or at least it is under the current bureaucratic (debt) structure.

HALIFAX - Launch Spring 2011 with Imagine Bloomfield and a general celebration of renewal at Obladee Wine bar in downtown Halifax on Monday, March 21st! Enjoy a social and entertaining evening featuring delectable light fare; the Uncork Spring event features a complimentary tasting of local wine and a selection of local cheeses, a short performance by actor John Dunsworth (Mr. Lahey of The Trailer Park Boys), and an update on the redevelopment of the Bloomfield Centre. WHAT: Uncork Spring: a wine and cheese fundraiser ...