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HALIFAX—A local developer says his latest proposal is a challenge to his peers, and to regional council, to get serious about affordable housing in Halifax.
It would also include one of the tallest buildings in the city.
“This is a challenge to council,” Danny Chedrawe told reporters Tuesday night.
“We have an affordable housing crisis in our city, especially on the peninsula of Halifax, and sitting on their hands waiting for the Centre Plan is not going to work.”
The municipal planning department held a public information meeting Tuesday night at the Halifax Forum on Westwood Developments’ proposed Midtown North development.
The proposal would see six buildings, a mix of commercial and residential, put up in the block between Almon St. and St. Albans St., near Robie St., ranging in height from two to 27 storeys.
The 27-storey building would be located on Almon St. where the old Acadian Bus terminal stood, across the street from Rona and Shoppers Drug Mart. The bus terminal was torn down last month, along with the buildings next door, to make way for this development.
That building would house about 200 high-end rental units, and Chedrawe said that while it won’t be the tallest in the city (that’s the 32-storey Fenwick Tower), it would be the highest, due to its elevation.
The second building would connect to the first on the lower levels, but front on St. Albans St. at seven storeys, and Chedrawe said it would be 100 per cent affordable — meaning all 60 units would rent for 70 per cent of market value.
“All the development in our city now is a race to the top, all they can put in, the more they can charge rent and all that. To me, it’s a race to the bottom. I’m going the opposite direction,” he said.
These units won’t have high-end finishes like granite countertops and the building won’t have “fancy lobbies,” Chedrawe said. They won’t even have washers and dryers in the units.
Instead, he said the building would have an “amazing laundry room with pool tables and with Wi-Fi.” That saves $100 a month, he said.
Chedrawe said he’d “sacrifice” on his end financially, and tap into some of Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation’s affordable housing incentives to pay for it. He wouldn’t say whether he’d use the up to $50,000 per unit available from the provincial government.
“We haven’t gone down that road yet,” he said. “But to me, I don’t want to be a beggar sitting at the municipal level, at the provincial level looking for handouts. To me, it’s that I can stand on my two feet and do this, and show the public, show the politicians it can be done.”
The move is a challenge to his fellow developers, Chedrawe said, and especially to Halifax regional council, which has struggled to create affordable housing in the municipality.
One method it’s exploring through the long-delayed municipal planning document known as the Centre Plan is density bonusing — the practice of trading added height or density to a developer for some public benefit, which Halifax would use to create affordability.
The plan’s been criticized in the past for its potential to actually make housing less affordable in general, and Chedrawe suggested it would take decades for it to create the number of affordable units Halifax needs now.
“I fired the first salvo across their bow by saying I’m bringing 60 units to market now and I’m not asking for density bonusing,” he said.
“They can take their density bonusing and shove it.”
Chedrawe had also pledged to council in November, as it approved his project for the former Ben’s Bakery site, that he would include affordable housing in his next project.
The councillor for the area, Lindell Smith, said in an interview that he was happy to see Chedrawe follow through, but he was cautiously optimistic.
“I’ve got to see how that’ll work,” he said.
Smith suggested adding a clause to the development agreement between Chedrawe and the municipality requiring and setting out terms for the affordability.
The proposal is following the development agreement process because the Centre Plan has yet to be approved, Carl Purvis, municipal planning applications program manager said in an interview.
Purvis said the project was using the municipality’s Schedule Q policy, which allows converting commercially zoned properties to residential.
The proposal unveiled at Tuesday’s meeting was the fifth iteration of the project, on which Westwood first started public consultations in 2016.
“There’s been a number of iterations of this around for a few years, but they’re sort of starting new to say, ‘This is a new concept,’” Purvis said.
“There’s a lot of familiar components to it, but we’re going to circulate it around as though it were a new application to get everyone’s fresh take on it and to make sure we’re applying the best and the most modern policies and best practices.”
Along with the 27-storey and seven-storey residential buildings, the proposal includes three commercial buildings and another residential building with some townhouse-style units on the ground floor. All the buildings would house retail space on the ground floor as well.
The project would also connect King St. and Clifton St., which currently both end at St. Albans St., to Almon St.
Along with the new streets, the development would create two public spaces: one, a park beside Clifton St. known as Clifton Green, and the other, a public square off King St. known as King’s Square.
That square could be used as a market or for events, but would also serve as a parking lot at times to supplement the 600 underground spots planned for the project.
“It’s going to be a hub and a destination in the city,” lead architect Susan Fitzgerald, partner at FBM Architects, said in an interview.
“I live in the neighbourhood and I think it’s going to be really exciting.”
Fitzgerald also said the project planned for a potential bike lane on Almon St., and Chedrawe was pledging wide sidewalks, like those on Spring Garden Rd. in front of Westwood’s Doyle Building.
“The whole development is about sort of pedestrian access, close to transit, and also kind of slowing traffic down and bringing people to the community,” Fitzgerald said.
The next step for the project is a review of public comments, then a meeting of the municipality’s planning advisory committee. From there, it goes to the Halifax and West Community Council for a public hearing and final decision.
Chedrawe said he hopes to have the project approved by July, and buildings up in two years.
“This would be the largest project our company has undertaken and I’m, as you can see, pretty hyped up about it.”
Zane Woodford is a Halifax-based reporter focusing on City Hall. Follow him on Twitter: @zwoodford
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