HALIFAX—They didn’t even want an eight-storey apartment building and now Dartmouth residents are getting a 16-storey hotel instead.

After a chaotic public hearing in September 2018, the area community council approved an eight-storey residential building with commercial space on the ground floor at the corner of Prince Albert Rd. and Glenwood Ave. It was a compromise from the developer’s original plan for a 15-storey, then a nine-storey building, but area residents at the meeting were still completely opposed to the development.

The residents’ complaints centred around concerns that the proposal, at eight storeys, was too tall, too dense, didn’t fit the neighbourhood, would worsen traffic, and make wind conditions worse on Lake Banook’s canoe and kayak course.

They derided area Councillor Sam Austin for voting in favour of the eight-storey project, cursing at him and declaring he’d never be re-elected.

But looming over the discussion and the years-long fight against the proposal was an old planning rule that allowed the developer to build a 16-storey hotel.

Now the developer, Monaco Investments Partnership, is playing that card.

“I don’t think anyone seriously thought that there’d be a 16-storey hotel on such a small piece of land in an area of Dartmouth that really doesn’t have any sort of use like that going on,” Austin said in an interview.

“It does seem outlandish, but here we are.”

Because the area is zoned “general commercial” in the decades-old Dartmouth Municipal Planning Strategy, the developer is free to build a commercial structure as tall as it wants without any municipal council approval. They just need a development permit and a construction permit.

“If a proposal meets the requirements of the zone and the general provisions of the bylaw, no public engagement, no public hearing and no specific decision of Regional Council is required,” municipal spokesperson Brendan Elliott said in an email.

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Elliott said the developer received a construction permit for a 16-storey hotel on Sep. 28, just a few weeks after the community council meeting. A development permit was issued in May 2018.

Austin said one of the three owners of the development company, Tony Maskine, contacted him last week to set up a meeting and share the new plans.

“He no longer wants to build the eight-storey residential building that we all came to after a long fight,” Austin said.

“Not everybody liked the compromise, but that’s what we’d come to. Along the way, in the last six months, he’s changed his mind and now he wants to build a 16-storey hotel.”

Lawyer Nancy Rubin sent an email to the Star on behalf of the developer, saying they wouldn’t be participating in interviews, but they’d taken the public’s concerns into consideration during the planning process.

“There have always been two options and plans for this property — a multi-unit residential building or a hotel,” the statement said.

“For the longest time, the residential building made most sense due to the needs of the community and market conditions. In the 10 years that have passed, those needs changed and the market conditions for a hotel became more favourable.”

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The statement said the developer’s research showed there was a need for a hotel in the area.

“With this development, we look forward to providing a quality hospitality service and the continued growth of the community and surrounding area,” it said.

But Austin said a legal challenge against community council’s decision tipped the scales for Maskine.

Jeff Weatherhead, a nearby resident, filed an appeal of the community council’s decision to the provincial Utility and Review Board, or UARB, in September. His appeal was heard in December and dismissed in February, with the UARB upholding council’s decision to allow the eight-storey development.

“What (Maskine) told me was that when it was appealed, they then seriously looked at the hotel because they didn’t know how long they’d be caught up in legal wrangling,” Austin said.

“The developer indicated that once this was appealed, they didn’t know how long that would take, they didn’t know whether it would be further appealed, and they didn’t know whether they’d even win.”

In a blog post on Tuesday, Austin called the project a “mockery of both the upcoming Centre Plan and the seven-year process to get to an approved midrise residential project.”

The Centre Plan, years in the making and delayed multiple times, will form a new set of land-use bylaws to govern development in the regional centre of the municipality – peninsular Halifax and Dartmouth within the Circumferential Highway – for the next decade or more. It’s the result of years of public consultation, and the path toward final approval for the first half of the plan starts this week at a meeting of council’s community design advisory committee.

The draft Centre Plan would allow a 20-metre-tall, mixed-use commercial and residential development — equal to about six storeys—at the corner of Prince Albert Rd. and Glenwood Ave.

A 16-storey hotel is “far offside of what the community vision is,” Austin said.

“This would be a fine project in downtown Dartmouth. It does not belong there,” he said.

Austin is now exploring options with municipal staff, and is considering bringing a motion to council to try to stop the hotel project, but he’s not sure there’s anything the municipality can do.

“It’s a long shot, but this is a fight that’s absolutely worth having because this is just so utterly wrong,” he said. “It’s such a slap in the face to all the work that was done there in terms of public engagement.”

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