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It’s sometimes difficult to determine if the cart is leading the horse in the Halifax Regional Municipality development process.

“What we’re dealing with is policy amendments,” Jenny Lugar, chairwoman of the municipal heritage advisory committee, said at the completion of a committee meeting Wednesday evening.

Lugar said the policy amendment discussions usually centre on zone changes.

“The applicants in this case would like to rezone those properties into a site specific policy and then have staff use that policy to help negotiate a development agreement with them.”

The sites considered include two separate but fairly controversial projects in central Halifax pertaining to the alteration of seven heritage buildings in the area of Spring Garden Road and Carlton, College and Robie streets. The proposals include removing two buildings from their current locations.

Developers Dexel and Rovualis propose highrises with four towers of 30, 26, 20 and 16 storeys in a one-hectare block of property and to accommodate the two multi-use development, the Cold Cure Institute building and the McCoy Building would be moved a short distance from their College Street foundations to 1452-1456 Carlton St.

But Lugar cautions that the development plans have not been finalized or dealt with by her committee or regional council.

“The developer comes forth and says this is what we are thinking, what do you think,” Lugar said. “It’s a bit of a negotiation in that sense. There is no policy that exists. In this sense, they are walking back a little bit from what they would like to do. The policy won’t allow them to do what they’d like to do, they will have to do a version of that, adjust it to within the parameters of the policy.

“The policy is stipulating things like height, floor-area ration, the street-wall height, the setbacks from the lot lines. It will even stipulate things such as what the siding material is, how much glazing, glass needs to be on the ground floor.”

Members of volunteer citizens’ group Development Options Halifax attended Wednesday’s meeting.The group had requested to show a 3-D model print of the two proposals at the meeting.

“HRM has also ignored two requests by the Heritage Trust to have this area designated a conservation district,” the group said in a news release. “Twenty of the 44 buildings in the area are heritage and another 11 qualify. These proposals will result in 12 buildings being demolished on the last historic neighbourhood on the Halifax Common.

Lugar said municipal staff argues that the area is already provided strong protection, having been designated a heritage streetscape.

Development Options Halifax calls for all developments presently under consideration and proposed changes under the Centre Plan to be modelled before approval. They are asking citizens to read and sign a petition found at https://forms.gle/3enTs6PfSkmMmNW48

David Hendsbee (Preston-Chezzetcook-Eastern Shore), one of two regional councillors on the 12-member committee, asked why the two developments couldn’t be considered together instead of separately.

“Legally, how we look at this is that these are separate applications and staff cannot anticipate that any of those are going to get passed or approved or that anything is going to happen with either, so they can’t really look at them at the same time,” Lugar said.

“In terms of when the development agreements are being negotiated, then we’ll have a better idea of exactly what is going to be permitted on the sites and at that point, it might actually be a good time for staff to map out what will be permitted through the policy. This is the potential envelope that could be filled on these two sites together and this is how we will consider it in relation to the heritage streetscape that’s in behind on Carlton.”

The next step is for regional council to consider the multiple planning strategy and land-use bylaw amendments accepted by the heritage committee.

“They (council) will get our recommendation and it will say that, yes, we think that what staff has figured out for the policy, what they are proposing for the policy is reasonable.”

Development Options contends that “by continuing to demolish historic buildings HRM is destroying the proven advantages of older, smaller neighbourhoods for having better social, cultural, economic and environmental outcomes such as hidden density, diversity, affordability and locations for new, local, businesses.”

Lugar said the developers proposing these projects would actually restore some buildings to their former state.

“They will be protected with more confidence because we know who owns them and they don’t want to tear them down. They are part of a greater community that these developers are building. In this case, I would say yes, I support them (buildings) being moved. Moving is better than losing.”