Tall & Urban News

A Halifax developer is pitching a 22-story, mixed-use building to fill the gap between two towers on Robie Street in Halifax. 

A proposal for the property, situated between the Willow Tree site and Welsford apartments, was initially introduced in 2014, but was put on pause as the Centre Plan was still in the works with Halifax regional council. 

So in May 2020, Westwood Developments president Danny Chedrawe submitted a revised proposal, after “council directed staff to amend the proposed regional center planning documents to allow for the development of 2032-2050 Robie Street.” 

Now, Halifax Regional Municipality is looking for feedback, positive or negative, on the proposed high-rise. 

The proposed structure will stand 84.3 meters high and have a total of 102 residential units: 58 one-bedrooms and 44 two-bedrooms. The ground floor along Robie Street will be primarily a commercial space, according to the application put forward in May, and is “setback from the streetline to allow space for ‘spill out’ activity from the ground floor commercial units.” 

There will also be individual balconies, two levels of underground parking, a rooftop patio space and interior amenity spaces, which haven’t been defined yet. 

The application says the building has been designed to address four key design features: Massing, density, tower spacing and human-scale design, while also considering its effect on traffic and wind. 

“Providing higher density housing at this location allows more people to live on the peninsula, which reduces travel distances to the amenities on the peninsula and downtown Halifax allowing residents to choose active transportation and transit to access their daily needs,” it says. 

But Peggy Cameron says the proposal shouldn’t be reconsidered. 

“It is effectively raising the dead,” the co-chair of Friends of Halifax Common, a non-profit group dedicated to preserving and expanding open and green space in HRM, said of the revised proposal. 

In a letter addressed to Mayor Mike Savage, Halifax regional council and the city’s planners, Cameron says the development “is not necessary and will cause harm.”

“The list is endless,” Cameron said of the group’s concerns, such as density in the area, degradation of existing green spaces while not adding new ones and spacing between the other two towers. 

It’s not the first time the group has been against a high rise in the area. 

The Friends of Halifax Common also previously voiced their opposition to the 25-story tower to be built on the corner of Robie Street and Quinpool Road.

“Adding this 22-story Westwood proposal would form a wall of high-rises, standing between the unwanted 25-story building and next to the Welsford high-rise,” Cameron said. 

For more on this story, go to TheChronicleHerald.