July 31, 2007
Daily News, Halifax
Local News, Tuesday, July 31, 2007, p. 4
Robyn Young
Dartmouth - Dartmouth Cove could soon be home to a new world-class development including condos, restaurants and retail space.
Environmental Design and Management, consultants to Francis Fares of Fares Real Estate, which owns the old Irving Marine Slips property, led a public workshop about the project yesterday afternoon and evening.
Fares invited the community to share ideas for the site and ask questions about the proposed development.
One Dartmouth resident at the meeting thinks the project would be a step in the right direction.
"Dartmouth has been stagnant for 50 years or so," Maurice Muise said.
"This will bring new life to Dartmouth."
Muise and his wife, Lucy Muise, said young people keep leaving Dartmouth and Halifax for newer, more exciting places and opportunities, and it's time for HRM to start bringing them back.
Margot Young of Environmental Design and Management shared a slide show picturing the possible layout of King's Wharf to an audience of about 80 people at Alderney Gate Public Library last night.
The 80,000-square-foot wharf area is designed to be a pedestrian-friendly space combining cafes, shops, 1,200 condominium units, a hotel and boardwalk.
Young said the project would require infilling of areas around the slips to straighten out the sea wall.
The buildings in the wharf would create an organic "hill-shape form," including taller buildings and shorter buildings, said Young.
"The tall buildings will be slender, elegant and light," she said of the primarily glass structures around the outside of the property.
One of the slender glass buildings, at the tip of the cove, would be 30 storeys high.
Another building, the Gatehouse building, will be low, made of masonry stone and modelled after Historic Properties in Halifax.
Not everyone at last night's presentation was happy about the idea.
Frances Howard, who has lived in Dartmouth with her husband Tom Howard for 30 years, said the project would give the area the highest density and tallest buildings in all of HRM.
She's worried about the congestion the new project would create.
"They're very evasive about the numbers and parking and cars," Howard said.
"We moved here for peace," she added.
But Muise thinks people who don't like the idea should just move out.
"Anybody that opposes this project should put a For Sale sign up and move to the country," he said.
Fares Real Estate originally unveiled the Dartmouth Cove plan in February 2006, taking suggestions and ideas from the public.
The 2006 plan was reworked after public input, and this is the company's second time through the process.
David Lane, of HRM Community Development Planning Applications, said the proposal is just an application at this time.
The proposal will be brought forward to the public in a formal meeting in early September, he said.
"There's an interest in doing something different there," Lane said.