[Dartmouth] Shannon Park Redevelopment | ? m | ? fl | Approved

[Empire]

Originally Posted by bluenoser

Update on this development:

Couldn't be more mundane.

[Keith P.]

Originally Posted by Empire

Couldn't be more mundane.

I'll say.

Mancini, the councillor for the area, was blaming the interminable delays on the Centre Plan but really this has been dragged out for what seems like decades. Now to see the conceptual plan, with what looks almost like Shannon Park V2, is extremely disappointing.

[OldDartmouthMark]

Yeah, pretty disappointing.

Also, I don't see any space allotted for the proposed ferry terminal and transit connections. Is it not supposed to be in Shannon Park?


Source

Don't they have to plan for these things?

FWIW, the drawing looks like a sketch done on the back of a napkin, but at least they included the requisite curb bumpouts for 'safety'...

Also, I get a kick out of how things are worded now:

“We expect to provide more than the HRM’s requirement of affordable housing," said Jarvis. "Our standard is 20 percent of residential units that are provided on-site are affordable."

Does that mean that 80 percent of the units are unaffordable? Shouldn't 100% be affordable, otherwise nobody will be able to live there...

In terms of a timeline, the development is considered to be in its early stages and pending all approvals would be 10 to 15 years away from completion.

So we're still 10 to 15 years away? It's out of date now (i.e. Shannon Park 2.0)... how will it look in 2038?

[Dmajackson]

The development agreement was approved this week;

HEMDCC February 02, 2023 Agenda

CLC says service work will begin in 2024. Lots will be released to developers at that time allowing for building construction to commence.

[Empire]

Originally Posted by OldDartmouthMark

Yeah, pretty disappointing.

Also, I don't see any space allotted for the proposed ferry terminal and transit connections. Is it not supposed to be in Shannon Park?


Source

Don't they have to plan for these things?

FWIW, the drawing looks like a sketch done on the back of a napkin, but at least they included the requisite curb bumpouts for 'safety'...

Also, I get a kick out of how things are worded now:

Does that mean that 80 percent of the units are unaffordable? Shouldn't 100% be affordable, otherwise nobody will be able to live there...


So we're still 10 to 15 years away? It's out of date now (i.e. Shannon Park 2.0)... how will it look in 2038?

The planning for the ferry terminal is poor to non-existent. The ferry terminal may go in the waterfront park space or the Millbrook site.
I would expect a ferry to Shannon Park to have a capacity of 400 – 500. (Staten Island Ferry has a capacity of 4500 and is free). The woodside ferry parking lot has been over capacity for more than five years. I superimposed the woodside parking lot (approx. 3.5 acres) on the Shannon Park site and it would eliminate a significant amount of residential space.
Irrespective of ferry parking requirements parking for the proposed waterfront park would be needed as well. Without available parking the residential streets will be congested with park visitors.

Shannon Park - Woodside parking overlay
https://www.dropbox.com/s/40tmrfjf4y...erlay.jpg?dl=0

[Drybrain]

Originally Posted by Empire

The planning for the ferry terminal is poor to non-existent. The ferry terminal may go in the waterfront park space or the Millbrook site.
I would expect a ferry to Shannon Park to have a capacity of 400 – 500. (Staten Island Ferry has a capacity of 4500 and is free). The woodside ferry parking lot has been over capacity for more than five years. I superimposed the woodside parking lot (approx. 3.5 acres) on the Shannon Park site and it would eliminate a significant amount of residential space.
Irrespective of ferry parking requirements parking for the proposed waterfront park would be needed as well. Without available parking the residential streets will be congested with park visitors.

Shannon Park - Woodside parking overlay
https://www.dropbox.com/s/40tmrfjf4y...erlay.jpg?dl=0

The development agreement states this: In 2020, Regional Council approved the Rapid Transit Strategy which includes a proposed ferry route and terminal to the Shannon Park area. Halifax Transit has advised that the location of the ferry terminal has yet to be determined. In the absence of definitive ferry terminal plans, a transit hub will be required along the main collector road. The agreement requires this hub to be a sheltered stop with bus bays where transfers could be facilitated. Additionally, the agreement requires road reserves that are wide enough to accommodate active transportation and transit services should the potential ferry terminal location be identified on abutting lands.


Sounds like transit is high on the priority list, but also sounds like there's potential for a ferry terminal (on the water, of necessity) to be disconnected from the larger transit hub, up along the main street through the area. That would be...weird.

[Empire]

Originally Posted by Drybrain

The development agreement states this: In 2020, Regional Council approved the Rapid Transit Strategy which includes a proposed ferry route and terminal to the Shannon Park area. Halifax Transit has advised that the location of the ferry terminal has yet to be determined. In the absence of definitive ferry terminal plans, a transit hub will be required along the main collector road. The agreement requires this hub to be a sheltered stop with bus bays where transfers could be facilitated. Additionally, the agreement requires road reserves that are wide enough to accommodate active transportation and transit services should the potential ferry terminal location be identified on abutting lands.


Sounds like transit is high on the priority list, but also sounds like there's potential for a ferry terminal (on the water, of necessity) to be disconnected from the larger transit hub, up along the main street through the area. That would be...weird.

Seems like quite a stretch to assume 300 ferry commuters per trip will all take approx. 6 busses required per trip? If commuters are headed to Bedford or Fall River they will have a significant challenge.

[fatscat]

Is any of this space zoned retail? A few small corner stores/grocers, coffee shops, and the like would do well for such a neighbourhood. Sometimes, that's all you really need on a day. Save people from driving out.

[Dmajackson]

Originally Posted by fatscat

Is any of this space zoned retail? A few small corner stores/grocers, coffee shops, and the like would do well for such a neighbourhood. Sometimes, that's all you really need on a day. Save people from driving out.

The main N/S street requires "pedestrian oriented retail" along its lower half with increasing setbacks towards the south. The idea is a retail main street with views of the harbour. For better or worse this view is angled towards Pier 9 and CN Intermodal Yard.

[Colin May]

I think an electric ferry is a waste of money. Move jobs to where people live.
This one is a whopper : https://insideevs.com/news/491590/la...y-norway-oslo/
Or this one : https://www.bbc.com/news/business-50233206

[IanWatson]

Originally Posted by Colin May

I think an electric ferry is a waste of money. Move jobs to where people live.
This one is a whopper : https://insideevs.com/news/491590/la...y-norway-oslo/
Or this one : https://www.bbc.com/news/business-50233206

While you could reduce the concentration of jobs on the Peninsula, it’ll never be possible to balance things out where everyone lives close to where they work. Dual-income families would still need to choose being located close to one job or the other, people have neighbourhood preferences (I could get a job in Burnside but I don’t want to LIVE there!) and major employers like the health authority and universities by their nature require way more employees than surrounding neighborhoods could supply. Good transportation links are only going to get more important as the city grows.

[eastcoastal]

Originally Posted by IanWatson

While you could reduce the concentration of jobs on the Peninsula, it’ll never be possible to balance things out where everyone lives close to where they work. Dual-income families would still need to choose being located close to one job or the other, people have neighbourhood preferences (I could get a job in Burnside but I don’t want to LIVE there!) and major employers like the health authority and universities by their nature require way more employees than surrounding neighborhoods could supply. Good transportation links are only going to get more important as the city grows.

Some of us might also frequent places other than work and home. Good transportation links are important.

[someone123]

Originally Posted by IanWatson

While you could reduce the concentration of jobs on the Peninsula, it’ll never be possible to balance things out where everyone lives close to where they work. Dual-income families would still need to choose being located close to one job or the other, people have neighbourhood preferences (I could get a job in Burnside but I don’t want to LIVE there!) and major employers like the health authority and universities by their nature require way more employees than surrounding neighborhoods could supply. Good transportation links are only going to get more important as the city grows.

I recall seeing the common sense reply here that "most people don't live on the peninsula" is kind of meaningless as "not the peninsula" is not a coherent place that can be traversed easily. If you put a stadium in Shannon Park you are not conveniently serving anyone who isn't on the peninsula. In fact it is less convenient on average for a non peninsula resident than a location in say the North End.

In Halifax it often seems to be the public sector driving suburban development whether it's a preference for highway development, the Bayer's Lake service places (Access NS and the health one IIRC), the RIM/IBM office park, or the federal government tearing down its historic office buildings downtown. I associate this suburban mentality with older and more rural politicians and I think we will see it lose favour in the coming years when the median NS voter becomes an urban Millennial (and many will be immigrants with whom historical entitlement politics likely won't register so much).

There is also remote work which has shifted the calculus for some workers. It has caused the "tract housing by office park" model to lose value somewhat while people have a range of preferences for interesting urban environments/conveniences or more living space or nature. For a lot of younger people who tend to have few or no kids and often even no license the urban areas are more attractive.

With hub and spoke vs. decentralized cities you can approximate a layout that either requires X transport routes or X^2. If Halifax slides more and more toward X^2 transportation will get worse and worse and fixing it will become more difficult. Transportation-wise people should be asking how planning can be directed so that it's possible to get a lot of bang for the buck from one transit corridor.

[Drybrain]

Originally Posted by Colin May

I think an electric ferry is a waste of money. Move jobs to where people live.

I don’t get the “move things to where people live” argument for decentralizing jobs or services or anything else. People do live on the peninsula—lots of them. As was discussed on here a few weeks ago, the proportion of Haligonians living on the peninsula actually increased a little between 2016 and 2021, from 5% to 16.5%. It’s the densest population centre, and has the most effective public transportation links to other areas (a direct result of that density), so if you want to put a service, or anything else, within easy reach of the greatest number of Haligonians, the peninsula just about tops the list of potential locations.

You could spread jobs around the city more, but many industries benefit from centralization (which is the whole point of cities in the first place). Further decentralizing a city as small as Halifax would be a great way to siphon the liveliness and vitality from it. Fortunately, things seem to be going the other way—the peninsula and central areas in general are gaining relevance, not losing it.

[someone123]

Originally Posted by Drybrain

I don’t get the “move things to where people live” argument for decentralizing jobs or services or anything else. People do live on the peninsula—lots of them. As was discussed on here a few weeks ago, the proportion of Haligonians living on the peninsula actually increased a little between 2016 and 2021, from 5% to 16.5%. It’s the densest population centre, and has the most effective public transportation links to other areas (a direct result of that density), so if you want to put a service, or anything else, within easy reach of the greatest number of Haligonians, the peninsula just about tops the list of potential locations.

It's also pretty geographically central and it's where the bridges go. If you go from Dartmouth to the mainland Halifax side suburbs or vice versa you go via the peninsula.

It's similar for Halifax within NS. It was a planned town that they put in the middle for a reason.

[OldDartmouthMark]

Originally Posted by someone123

It's similar for Halifax within NS. It was a planned town that they put in the middle for a reason.

The deep, ice-free harbour provided a strategic location at which to start a military outpost in the 1700s, given that the main mode of transportation was by sailing ship at the time.

[Hali87]

At the same time, in a lot of cases we are getting "move things to (non-peninsula areas) where people live" - look at the Lacewood-Bayer's Lake corridor. Bayer's Lake itself is fairly "central" relative to the western suburbs, at the junction of the 102, 103, and St. Margaret's Bay Rd, surrounded by the Clayton Park West, Fairview, Timberlea, and Brookside corridors. Bayer's Lake has a lot of obvious flaws as a destination but there are a lot of jobs and a lot of retail/services there, extending down Lacewood to Mainland Common and Dunbrack/Lacewood. It's not necessarily difficult for a couple or a group of roommates living somewhere like Parkland or Beechville or Dunbrack/Main to both/all work somewhere off of Chain Lake or Lacewood, and do most of their sports/leisure/shopping/dining in that area. Soon they'll be able to go to the hospital there too. Each major "cluster" of central HRM is kind of like this - Mainland South/Rotary, Dutch Village-Bayers Road, Woodside, Woodlawn, Cole Harbour, DT Dartmouth-Wyse, North Dartmouth-Burnside, Lower Sackville, and the various Bedfords each offer a concentration of retail/service/office/industrial jobs, medical clinics, civic and recreational centres, parks, etc. In theory it's not that hard to pick one of these areas and live in/around it 95% of the time (even for a small household) - of course right now this is confounded by low vacancy rates and relatively little choice in living location. But it seems like most of these areas have plans for major residential growth, usually with more retail/commercial (/job) growth built into that in mixed-use concepts.

On top of this there's also a lot more work-from-home (so one partner might work from the apartment on Parkland while the other commutes to Bayer's Lake, or maybe they just both work from home - this is possible basically everywhere, including the Peninsula) and a huge growth in delivery-based work that basically involves constant driving with little to no emphasis on a fixed "workplace".

[someone123]

Originally Posted by OldDartmouthMark

The deep, ice-free harbour provided a strategic location at which to start a military outpost in the 1700s, given that the main mode of transportation was by sailing ship at the time.

It wasn't just a military outpost, it was the new capital, built in a chosen location from which to administer the colony that replaced Annapolis Royal. Many harbours around NS would have been deep enough for the ships of the time and as ice-free as Halifax.

The modern airport YHZ is very close to being right in the middle of the province and even flights are sometimes framed as "which town gets more or less". To a large degree there is a natural centralization spot vs. the option to decentralize (which can be done but has costs), and it is not just a matter of simply picking winners and losers from a list of towns.

Halifax is probably one of the most "natural" capitals in Canada, more driven by geography than most others, though Charlottetown is even higher up that list. And the geography of Halifax Harbour with the location of the Narrows makes the peninsula a natural location to build as well.

[someone123]

Originally Posted by Hali87

At the same time, in a lot of cases we are getting "move things to (non-peninsula areas) where people live" - look at the Lacewood-Bayer's Lake corridor.

I think it is important to establish what scale we are talking about (local vs. regional or regionally unique amenity) and what we mean by "getting" (built organically or done by fiat).

If you have a suburb of 60,000 people it will demand and receive its own shopping, schools, and so on, but it might not be a good place to build a local airport or university or art gallery. It is good for these areas to develop so that people have better service levels but this is different from pushing to try to decentralize when that makes efficiencies go down.

Sometimes there are calls for the government to "spread the love" or arguments that suburbs are the natural location for new publicly-funded amenities. But I think for most things laissez-faire is better and usually for the major regional amenities the regional core makes more sense. I would not put a major convention centre, the central library, or a stadium in Bayers Lake. And because Halifax is a small city it will often only have 1 of a given type of amenity or there would be serious drawbacks to dropping the scale to 1/2, unlike in NYC or LA.

I would also argue that in NS the government generally tips the scales in favour of the suburbs to begin with. They do this via high tax rates for downtown and subsidies for suburban services, suburban office park development/zoning, highway funding, placement of government offices, and so on. The municipality used to be like this too and seems to have switched its outlook in the past decade, but the province has not.

[OldDartmouthMark]

Originally Posted by someone123

It wasn't just a military outpost, it was the new capital, built in a chosen location from which to administer the colony that replaced Annapolis Royal. Many harbours around NS would have been deep enough for the ships of the time and as ice-free as Halifax.

Halifax ("Fort George") was also more strategically located to defend attacks originating from Louisbourg.

No history lesson intended, it just seemed strange to fit the reason for Halifax being founded in its location into a discussion as to why modern services should be located on the peninsula. Nobody was thinking of this (or strategic locations for land travel as railroads were still 100 years out) in the 1700s. Water routes were the main mode of travel and moving of goods.