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It’s Navid Saberi’s third attempt at building on the site of the former Tex-Park parking garage in downtown Halifax but this time he’s fairly confident it will meet with the city’s approval.

“We’ve been talking to the city for about a year now,” Saberi told me in an interview.

Saberi is the CEO of United Gulf Developments Ltd., which has owned the coveted piece of downtown real estate for much of the current century.

In 2005, United Gulf initially planned to build what would became known as the Twisted Sisters project on that lot bounded by Granville, Hollis and Sackville streets. The 27-storey twisted towers were eventually approved by council, and later by the Nova Scotia Utility and Review Board after heritage groups appealed the development, but United Gulf allowed the permit to expire in 2010.

In 2012 the company came back with what was described at the time as a “much grander proposal” called Skye Halifax. The original design for Skye Halifax was twin 44-storey towers curved to look like a pair of billowing sails catching the wind.

That design would have been 106 metres higher than allowed by HRM by Design, which prompted the city’s design and review committee to twice reject the proposal.

Now Saberi is again proposing to build two structures on the property, but this time both are 22-storeys high and costing about $180 million to construct. The in-and-out nature of the design, Saberi says, helps to reduce the wind effect around the buildings.

“First I’m putting in four levels of parking on the site, which is significant because the site is over 40,000 square feet so that is going to give us quite a few ... parking spaces,” says Saberi, later calculating that it works out to be about 480 spaces underground.

The buildings are two rectangles, one situated north to south on the site and the other east to west. Saberi says he’s not sure whether they’ll both be condos or one will be condos and the other apartments.

Based on the hot apartment market currently in Halifax, he jokes, he might decide to make it all apartments.

At the ground level, he says, it will be designated for retail and restaurants. From Granville down to Hollis, Saberi says he left an opening to allow the public to walk through the property.

“The city wanted a continuous podium but leaving this opening, I felt leaving this open will be a neat way of doing it,” he says.

Part of the United Gulf plan calls for a 105-unit boutique hotel on the second, third and fourth floors, stretching across the site and linking both buildings with the entrance on Hollis Street.

Above the hotel will be residential and the two entrances for the residential space will be on Granville Street. The units are flexible, which will allow the residents to configure the space to fit their needs — one, two or three-bedrooms or more.

Saberi says the plan calls for a pool and a running track on the roof of the building.

If he gets all the approvals required to go ahead with construction, he says United Gulf will finish the Boss project on Dutch Village Road on the former site of Halifax West High School, and then proceed to begin construction of Skye Halifax by the end of 2020.