Council rejects bid by Skye Halifax to exceed height limit
November 20, 2012 - 2:42pm BY LAURA FRASER CITY HALL REPORTER
The Halifax skyline will not include the 48-storey twin towers proposed by United Gulf Developments Ltd.
Regional council rejected the firm’s request for an exception to HRM by Design’s height restrictions, which the Skye Halifax development would have exceeded by 106 metres.
The vote marked the first controversial decision the new council has faced since being sworn in two weeks ago. It also upheld the recommendation from the city’s design and review committee and from planning staff.
That committee report suggested the developer had not successfully shown that Skye Halifax qualifies for the loophole built into the municipal planning blueprint. An exception to the rules may apply if a project will provide a social or economic benefit to the surrounding area, according to a clause in HRM by Design.
But both municipal staff and Mayor Mike Savage said any immediate benefit from the $350-million project would be overshadowed in the long term.
This exception would create uncertainty for those looking to develop downtown Halifax, Savage argued, the very thing the adoption of HRM by Design was meant to overcome.
“It would put us back into a degree of chaos,” Savage told council. “It would invite other proposals seeking not variances from the plan but an abandonment of both the plan and (the) principle behind it.
“It could return us to the days when every proposal became a fight between the developer and others, when every application required massive staff resources for review and analysis and public sessions.”
The mayor made his remarks after he chose to step down from the chairman’s seat and participate in the debate, a move that veteran observers had never seen.
Savage told reporters later he might do it again, albeit infrequently. He said he spoke out because he had strong opinions about the decision, not because he felt council might be leaning in a different direction.
The defeat, by a 9-6 vote, means the Skye Halifax project will not go any further in its current design. Had the outcome of the vote been different, it still would not have meant the project would be approved, only that it would go to a public hearing.
The president of United Gulf questioned council’s decision to kill the project without having heard from the public.
Skye Halifax would bring much-needed density to the downtown, Navid Saberi said, calling council short-sighted in its rejection of the project.
“The way I look at it is the choices we make today shape our future for tomorrow,” he said in an interview. “There have been a lot of choices made in the last 30 years and we see the result of that now downtown.”
The development firm submitted a petition to council with more than 1,400 signatures in support of the project, which Saberi said should have prompted the city to at least hear from the public.
Coun. David Hendsbee said the same thing to his colleagues when he called for council to move to the public hearing stage.
“With all due respect, I don’t think we’re opening the floodgates to a whole new downtown,” the Preston-Porters Lake-Eastern Shore councillor said. “And I’d ask that we hear from the citizens on the matter.”
Several opponents of the project, however, argued that council has already received direction from the public, in the creation of HRM by Design.
To abandon the planning blueprint would effectively ignore what council and the municipality have already heard from residents, Coun. Waye Mason said.
“How will any citizen trust our plans if they can be overturned whenever a big-dollar development is proposed?” the Peninsula South-Downtown representative asked his colleagues.
“Every gas station, every quarry is fair game to be considered. Citizens have trusted us to uphold these plans, and we have an obligation to follow through.”
The Downtown Halifax Business Commission had also petitioned council to kill the project, saying it would create uncertainty about the entire development process.
The previous council made one exception to HRM by Design, for the CBC-YMCA development slated for South Park and Sackville Streets, saying it met the criteria for community benefit.
It’s unclear what will happen to the former Tex-Park site where Skye Halifax was to be built. Saberi couldn’t say whether he plans to submit an amended development to the municipality.
In 2005, Saberi’s firm planned to build what became known as the Twisted Sisters on that same lot. Those 27-storey towers were eventually approved by council and later by the Utility and Review Board after heritage groups appealed.
But United Gulf allowed the permit to expire in 2010 and then returned with the much taller Skye Halifax proposal.
