Halifax is about to lose an entire downtown city street and gain a giant empty monolith in the place where our heart could be. If you can get informed on this issue and write to Council or have time to appear and speak please do. Letters can be sent to Mayor Michael Savage and Members of Regional Council, c/o [email protected]. Much has been written about the failure of Convention Centres to deliver even the most modest real economic gains. brookings.edu/research/reports/2005/01/01cities-sanders Economic studies that are independent of government and convention centre industry interests have confirmed again and again that the industry is in a race to the bottom. theatlanticcities/politics/2012/06/stop-building-convention-centers/2210/ Cities comparable to Halifax and our own long experience itself have proven that convention centres are bad economic development bets. strongtowns.org/journal/2012/7/11/convention-centers-its-a-race-to-the-bottom.html#.Uz2mIcevzKl However, of much more concern in Halifax now is the ever increasing opportunity cost of the convention centre site space itself. What is the value of a downtown street? What is the best vision for the heart of our city? As it becomes more clear that the citizens, visitors and government want a livable, walkable, useful and beautiful Halifax downtown we continue to allow the cancerous growth of the convention centre concept - a large, essentially single use monolith in the centre of our community that will not lend to street life or any of the agreed human goals for our community. Our property taxes may be increasing enough to absorb the costs of this mega-project but our downtown is simply not geographically suited to absorb more monolithic structures. We need to scale down the size of our developments and focus on more diversified use and ownership of the very small monopoly board that is our downtown. This project is destroying prime real estate and, like all mega-development, will be an economic, cultural and visual drain on the surrounding area. Only through diversifying risk, vision and ownership can we ensure a secure future for our town and encourage the range of new creative ideas that will inspire and challenge people to make things better. Better use of this property would entail expanding the density of the street grid in the town centre rather than eliminating streets. A central core of diversely held small blocks developed as small properties for business, retail and flexible public use could be the beating heart of our hillside town. We can not simply continue further in the wrong direction just because that is the way we started. We must have the courage to learn from the world and from our own experience and change our minds and our city. We need human size development appropriate for our size, economics and prospects. We need the right fit. The proposed changes to the convention centre plan are yet another step in the wrong direction.
Posted on: Thu, 03 Apr 2014 18:47:38 +0000
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