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HALIFAX, N.S. —

The owner of Yellow Cab Halifax will replace the taxi company’s west end dispatch office with an eight-storey residential development.

Halifax and West Community Council unanimously approved Justin Ghosn’s plans for the corner of Almon and Gladstone streets after a public hearing at a Feb. 18 meeting.

Along with the Yellow Cab office, the site is also home to a meat shop, Royal Canadian Legion Branch 129 and Strictly Singles Sportscards.

In the new building, there’ll be up to 86 residential units -- at least 35 per cent of which have to be two-bedroom units -- ground floor commercial space and 50 underground parking spaces.

What do the neighbours think?

Two people spoke at the public hearing. Both live in the seven-storey building across the street and are worried about increased traffic and reduced parking in their neighbourhood.

“Hopefully people are walking and biking, but a lot of people still drive,” said Ethel Langille Ingram. “And they’re also bringing in goods and services for these (new commercial spaces). It doesn’t appear that that has been taken into account.”

The traffic impact study conducted for the developer by a New Brunswick-based consulting engineering firm said there’d be no impact on traffic, especially given the removal of the existing businesses and parking lots.

“Considering that the proposed development is replacing four existing uses, the net change in traffic will likely be negligible or possibly even a reduction compared to existing,” the study said.

However, according to municipal planner Darrell Joudrey, that impact study did not consider added traffic from the proposed Richmond Yards development, located nearby on Almon Street, because that proposal, which would add more than 300 residential units to the area, hasn’t been approved yet.

Are there any affordable units?

Coun. Lindell Smith said he heard more from residents in the district about a lack of affordable housing in the project, but he doesn’t blame the developer.

“I’d love to be in a place where we could say we were requiring some form of affordable housing, but we’re not there yet,” Smith said.

Council’s Peninsula Planning Advisory Committee also expressed a desire to see affordable units in the building when it considered the proposal last summer.

Speaking on behalf of the developer, Cesar Saleh from WM Fares Group told the council that incorporating an agreement to provide units below market value in the development agreement* would’ve been too difficult.

“To try to find language to put in a legal document on affordable housing, it’s quite complicated. We have tried it in the past. It’s not a simple matter to tackle in a few lines in a development agreement,” Saleh told the council.

“I hope you appreciate that it’s not something simple and the marketplace is going to have to learn how to move forward with this issue now that the Centre Plan* is in place.”

The development agreement approved at the meeting means the developer has to start the project within three years and complete it within six.

*A development agreement is a legal document signed by the city and a developer outlining what the developer is allowed to build on a specific site.

*The Centre Plan is the new set of land-use planning bylaws that governs development on the Halifax peninsula and in Dartmouth within the Circumferential Highway. This development was considered outside of the Centre Plan process because the application was submitted more than a year ago, before the plan went to first reading.

Zane Woodford is a Halifax-based journalist with SaltWire.com

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