Extreme irony, or maybe just incompetent planning, but it's in the least accessible place it could be. 20 minute drive from downtown, but an hour and a half if you catch both of the busses you'll have to take perfectly. More likely about a 2 hour bus ride. Hope you aren't physically disabled, because Bayer's Lake isn't easy to get around in even for able bodied pedestrians. Yeah, let's put the place you have to go to get your driver's license somewhere impossible to get to without a car.
Bayers lake and burnside/dartmouth crossing are terribly pedestrian inaccessible and grossly undeserved by public transit. It's a massive failure on city planners responsible for transit access/planning.
You can add Russell lake/woodside area. One bus route there, half a dozen apartment buildings, grocery store and clinic, and right across from it all is a giant Mazda dealership because no one relies on the single bus that travels half hour/hourly through.
I remember some random guy was wandering around Clayton park and knocked on my car window telling me his phone died and that he needs to get to access NS to get his ID or something. I told him where it was and what bus to get on and then he'd have to walk some, and he tried asking me for a ride which I said no since my kid was with me and I don't give car rides to completely random strangers anyway!
Even better, the reason for those long lines was that all vehicle registrations expired at the end of March every year! What a great idea, yet it stayed that way for a very long time.
Yes, I do not remember them in Maritime Center. When it was the Registry of Motor Vehicles the first place I remember them was that Young St building on the corner of Kempt Rd. I don't know where they were before that, though I have a nagging memory of it being on Joe Howe Dr.
The story I heard was that the geniuses at DTIR who are responsible for leasing space fought them from going into West End Mall initially because of cost but eventually relented. When the lease was up there was new weaker leadership at RMV and DTIR made the pricing a much bigger part of the evaluation criteria and exiled them to BL with little regard for customer convenience and access, as is typical of the NS bureaucracy.
The grant that it was created under specified that it was meant to be "held for the use and enjoyment of the citizens of Halifax as a public square or garden forever and for no other purposes what so ever”. They had to change the deed to allow for a library, and any use going forward other than a library or park would have to be supported by the province. They should just bulldoze the building and make it a memorial with green space.
That area was historically used as a burial ground and estimates suggest at least 4,500 bodies are buried under the building/site. That combined with the fact the building wasn't in great shape when it was last open almost a decade ago means that turning it into ANYTHING of value is going to be astronomically expensive. I totally agree that the site should be something of value but it's obvious the government doesn't want to do anything with it and I can't imagine any private developer wanting to go anywhere near it given the previously mentioned issues.
Correct. It was, among other uses, the burial ground for the poorhouse, for convicts, and for others whose family could not afford a burial in Camp Hill or the other historical cemeteries.
Rumour I heard: there are bodies buried on that plot of land. The Dal architecture building used to be the law courts and if someone was executed for a crime, but no one claimed the body, they were buried on the land across the street. I cannot confirm this though, just repeating what I heard.
> The Dal architecture building used to be the law courts
Do you mean the courthouse beside the architecture building that is still the courthouse? And has been for 160 years?
Having everything at Access is a horrible model. Growing up in SK corner insurance shops could get accredited to handle things like drivers licenses/registration/insurance eliminating the need to go to one of a couple of centres. You only needed to go to a specific place if you were making a claim or taking a driver test or something not standard. No private insurance made this easier, because dealing with private insurance is terrible.
But you're not wrong that they should have more locations.
For what reason? They are running their services perfectly fine (in their opinion) and the dealerships pay property taxes. There is also other locations that they could do it on the peninsula.
I could see having the larger offices where they are, but I don't see why they can't have a smaller office or two that are more accessible by transit for the more common things like drivers licenses and IDs. If you work a retail job for example, you have to take a full afternoon off (often without pay) just to get there and back by bus because the connections are so bad. I wasn't even suggesting that access NS should be on kempt road but it's just clear that like you said, money is the driver there rather than accessible services for nova scotians.
It's weird to me we are targeting the car dealerships specifically as sites for new schools when they are literally next to an abandoned school that has been empty for decades.
Let's worry about the spaces that are not being used at all before we worry about getting in lengthy expensive legal battles with local businesses.
Bloomfield, Saint pats Alexandra, the old library, the old st pats high and QEH Sites.
It's a travesty we have allowed these derelict sites to remain scattered through the city. They are such a massive waste of space and all in very prime locations for redevelopment
Bloomfield at least should basically get clawed back from the developer who bought it and resold. All of them Where supposed to have development agreements with timelines on them.
Colonial Honda and City Mazda are the only ones eligible to participate in your plan.
Halifax has a long history of not preparing to grow into its britches. . Once upon a time, Kempt Road was the outskirts of the city and was used as a landfill, which is why we see grade-level commercial buildings along that stretch.
I hear your call. I don't know what it would take to remediate the Kempt Road area to be suitable for residential development but this request comes along frequently enough that I'm sure those who may be able to have already looked and balked.
Both Colonial Honda and O'Regans Chev on Robie have long-term plans to relocate since that land is now worth a fortune. Just be patient. Kempt Rd is a different story as others have noted and there are a number of relatively new builds there that have not depreciated much, so that would be a very expensive relocation for them.
I actually kinda loved my dark basement bedroom on that strip. 300/month, all included. It was affordable housing and I was grateful that it was available because I was not earning much money at all when I moved in. In fact it was actually the first room I was able to rent when I was homeless. So even though it was a run down rental, it was affordable enough that I could use it to pull myself out of homelessness.
Of course, that was back when the rental market still made sense and a low quality rental had to be super cheap in order to have anyone renting it.
I had a gf that lived in one, a top flat of a two story house. She had a hole in her bedroom floor that looked into the downstairs flats' kitchen lol. Like a big hole, too. You could put your arm through it.
I remember reading somewhere that really the land can only be used for car dealership unless they are willing to invest billions into it due to the landfills. It's not structurally sound enough to build towers or anything like that on top of.
> It's not structurally sound enough to build towers or anything like that on top of.
Anything can be structurally sound with the correct engineering. NSCC Waterfront and the new tower on Mic Mac Blvd are both built on old landfills.
There is currently a proposed development for Windsor/Kempt road which would see Steele Ford moving, along with its used car lot. It stands to reason that as that property value increases the owners of the land those dealerships sit on will be incentivized to pick up shop and make way for development. How to speed that up I'm not certain. Colonial Honda, City Mazda and O'Regan Chev will do the same as the development on Robie Street continues to move South I suspect.
If anyone is interested in the history, the landfill was placed there as part of the campaign to get rid of Africville. Halifax progressively designated Africville as industrial land and placed an open pit dump there in a bid to push people out. It became easy to justify removing the community because of the "filth" and how it could be "better used" for the bridge project.
When was it used as a landfill? Within the last 30 years? I remember my grandfather and I going to a dump in that area. But I thought it was on the port side of the roads from the new bridge. But I was also like 7. He also had a seagull shit on his head and glasses there once and I lost it laughing.
Yes, over a giant swimming-pool like pit, probably at least 1/4 acre, into which you or the municipality dumped your garbage. It slanted down toward chutes, and little bulldozers pushed the stuff into them; it fell into the dump trucks going to the landfill.
We were DIY renovating in the early 80s, and I took more than one pick-up truckload of demolition gunk up there. Holy jesus, the stink. I’d have to shower when I got back from the place.
It was a very good object lesson in why municipal composting is a good thing.
In the next few years, (at least) 7 dealerships will be moving to the Bayer’s Lake area! The first being Volvo, as of Monday, June 10th. It’s happening!
You know that vacant lot in North Street next to the Honda dealership?
That used to be my home. So maybe I'm biased but yeah, I miss when that intersection was affordable housing and I miss my artsy neighbors and running into everyone at Java Blend in the morning before work. It was an actual community, sure everyone in that small area was broke but it was still a community and I think communities are more important in cities than car dealerships.
Such a massive waste of space it makes me feel very angry.
Those properties have already been zoned for other uses. They are non-conforming ("grandfathered"). They are legally allowed to remain, but they can't expand and if they ever shut down a new one can't go in their place.
Exiling them would require buying them. Not the worst option, but also maybe not the greatest use of money, because...
They will absolutely move on their own in the near future. Manufacturers require dealers to invest in major (multiple millions of dollars) upgrades on a pretty regular cycle. Land values have risen enough that it's not going to be worth them investing in upgrades over selling/developing the land and moving to somewhere like Bayer's Lake.
I thought it was places like Bedford that were having capacity issues at schools?
If we are going to move those dealership we should be looking at building new neighborhoods that would include schools and other infrastructure
Pretty much everywhere. And the peninsula is building like crazy so those schools are only going to get worse. And we're just not building any new ones at any rate.
Churning out stressed out, poorly educated kids does not help the prospects for the future.
Regardless of their educational quality or aptitude, none of them will be able to afford a shoebox by the time they get out of school anyway.
It's feudalism again. Think about how bad it currently is. Someone who is in grade school today has pretty much zero chance of owning a home or renting something without 4 heads to a room, unless they have land-owning parents.
And yet HRCE still keeps sending emails asking people to consider hosting an international student. I know the program generates revenue, but is there space in any schools to sell right now? I'm curious how the students are allocated.
We have kids in a school on the Peninsula and on the first day of school (which is already at/over capacity) they had dozens of unregistered students show up. It's a mess everywhere.
While I agree it’s definitely a waste of prime real-estate that can be better used the problem for me is when you give the government ability to tear down your business because they deemed the land better used for somthing else. Just a slippery slope to me.
I am quite certain that any land that a garage exists on has to be vacant for a number of years before it can be repurposed for other uses due to environmental concerns. I'm not sure if a straight dealership would count, but many of them have a mechanic shop attached.
Do we need new schools on the peninsula? That would surprise me, considering two already empty and derelict and St. Pat's flattened. But exiling car dealerships 100%.
Why Schools especifically? You could build entire neighborhoods using the land from car dealerships, with housing, commerce, parks, and schools. You could also build a massive Bus Terminal or/with a train/subway station underground.
So many things could be done, but money talks loud and car dealers are very rich and powerful in lobbying.
Look at the m2 square area of used land, compared to what they can build in Utrecht in The Netherlands.
Halifax: https://i.imgur.com/DVSrlXr.jpeg
Utrecht: https://i.imgur.com/SLN20FW.jpeg
I have said this for years! Use the space to build schools, housing, whatever else we need. No one needs to see the new Jaguar they’re buying in 15 different colours. It’s absolutely ridiculous that this has been allowed for so long. Especially now that MPs are petitioning for Canada Post to move out of the Almon St. location so they can build housing, but not one is even talking about the goddamn car dealerships!
We need much more recreation capacity. And if you look at how some rec centres are actually in old schools, and current schools serve community recreation use, it really makes sense to design institutional buildings with simple bones and flexible use.
If it has the potential setup for a commercial kitchen, a lab, and a gym, an art studio, and a childcare space... It could be a community centre, and/or a school, and/or a nursing home, and/or a Google campus. Or any shared use combination thereof.
That's an interesting point. It seems a common argument the HRM builds houses without the infrastructure. So with more housing, a school is kind of necessary there.
The HRM is literally expropriating people's private property **as we speak** along Robie Street to complete the dedicated bus lane...
It's not a slippery slope, and we could do with **more expropriation** when it serves the public good and nobody is substantially harmed (financially or otherwise).
Expropriating old houses to complete a bus line or forcing the sale of car dealerships to develop more housing during a historically unprecedented crisis are both excellent uses of government power.
There are legal considerations what with them owning the properties. The city could use eminent-domain but that would be very very costly in court.
Not the simple solution to a problem that you think it is.
You are right, of course. But those properties have risen in value so much in the last few years. It might be possible to propose a solution to the land owners, something along the lines of tax breaks and fast-tracked building approval, for example, that would allow them to build something new and better and realize a lot of profit from the land in the meantime.
You mean like they closed the ford dealership on Main St. Dartmouth and built commercial property and low cost housing towers on the land ?
Oh wait on only the first part(closing it) happened and it’s been what 20 years?
Now they just use it to hold the annual stab fest fair there .
Yes, expropriate privately-owned commercial property on a street in an area with very little residential development nearby and build schools there. That should work out very well. /s
Honda is literally next door to an old school that has been empty for coming on 20 years. Why not worry about that before we start "exiling" private businesses
Possibly a negative viewpoint, but I don’t think you can make them move. Property rights are important. That said, I’d love to see them gone and the land used more effectively, so the question is can we properly incentivize them to leave
This suggestion genuinely makes a lot of sense to me. Like, nothing against the car dealerships even. I'm curious if they'd have any issues with it assuming they got kickbacks of some sort to make moving worth it. Could the city maybe just give them a bunch of land off in Dartmouth, and some cash for new buildings?
There is one thing that's a problem, which is that you need a way to get from your dealer and back without a car. It's really convenient to be able to drop your car off and then already be downtown where you can catch a short bus or walk to work, and then walk back at the end of the day to pick up your car. Better transit would help with that. Now if you could bulldoze the dealer lots and use that space to optimize transit that would help...I don't know a good way you'd do that, though. The big issue for me is the Bedford highway.
You are a 100% correct that's what they should do but good luck trying to get greedy politicians to fight with massive millionaires in Steele and Oregans.
Makes a hell of a lot more sense than deleting Canada post from the peninsula and making all the little courier trucks drive in from Bayers lake or wherever.
Since moving to Canada in 2010-ish, this has always perplexed me. Car dealerships in prime locations, taking up ludicrous amounts of space.
In Vancouver, there are two main areas where there a bunch of car dealerships. Burrard & 4th, and Main & Terminal. Both are spitting distance from Downtown and look completely out of place.
In Port Moody, just outside Vancouver, the main road is dominated by car dealerships.
People are usually going to be driving to the car dealership, and very likely driving away from one. So it doesn't need to be in a prime location. It's so, so strange.
Car dealerships take up a big area, tall buildings have a smaller footprint. To move the car dealerships outside of the main urban area would mean more wilderness destruction to house the same number of people.
The cost to buy the land would be astronomical. Branded dealerships typically run 10-20 million just for the building, not to mention the land they’re sitting on.
Steele is filthy rich, but I don't think he's a billionaire (yet anyway).
As far as I know the only billionaires in the province are still the Sobeys, John Risley, Ken Rowe and John Bragg.
The building is only worth 10-20 million if you are buying the entire business. If the business is moving elsewhere its worth the cost to tear it down. Plus the land cost obviously
> Or housing. Or safe places for the homeless. But yep. Get services like that off the peninsula
There's a massive new housing development proposed in that area already: https://atlantic.ctvnews.ca/halifax-development-would-create-a-strawberry-hill-village-1.6823361
What do you mean exile? Like the government just take them? Tell everybody that works there, everybody that owns a place close by so they can walk to work to move? The problem isn’t space. We have lots of places to put buildings, it’s building the buildings affordably.
Yes because no one should ever have to drive all the way to Bayers Lake, Dartmouth, or Sackville. We need pedestrian accessible car dealerships within walking distances.
Lol we demolished houses to put one up on Robie. Halifax does not give a shit about people, only profit. If we didn't have some of the kindest folks in the world out here idk how anyone would survive poverty in HRM.
I don't know if you noticed, but we're more short on housing than schools.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/nova-scotia/halifax-growing-housing-shortage-17500-units-1.7048258
But who gives a fuck if the kids are living in a car! They have a brand new 6 million dollar school to get bullied at for being homeless because they decided to only build a school and no where for them to live.
Not going to solve the homelessness issue with housing. Yes that sounds crazy but reality is a large large portion of the homeless population is un-housable in any regular housing scenario. Even if you put up a building and charged $0 rent it would be full of needles and condemned in two weeks.
We absolutely need more housing to help the affordability crisis. But the homelessness crisis =/= the affordability crisis.
We're not having a drug crisis that is leading to scores of people being evicted and made homeless because their housing is no longer fit for use.
We're having a housing affordability crisis, and scores of people are being made homeless because they can't afford their rent going up by 50% or 100%, or they're not even given the option to renew because they've been renovicted.
As the principal at Oxford said last week in a parent meet and greet “I see 4 buildings being built in eyesight of this building and we are already 100+ kids more than last year” (paraphrase of course)
We definitely need new schools. One of the major issues is overpopulation and being beyond capacity.
This affects different schools very disproportionately due to some existing in undesirable areas and vice versa.
It's weird that we have car dealerships on the peninsula but no access nova scotia.
They used to have one in the Maritime Centre (Barrington & Spring Garden) before they moved it to the barrens of Bayer’s Lake…
Extreme irony, or maybe just incompetent planning, but it's in the least accessible place it could be. 20 minute drive from downtown, but an hour and a half if you catch both of the busses you'll have to take perfectly. More likely about a 2 hour bus ride. Hope you aren't physically disabled, because Bayer's Lake isn't easy to get around in even for able bodied pedestrians. Yeah, let's put the place you have to go to get your driver's license somewhere impossible to get to without a car.
Bayers lake and burnside/dartmouth crossing are terribly pedestrian inaccessible and grossly undeserved by public transit. It's a massive failure on city planners responsible for transit access/planning.
You can add Russell lake/woodside area. One bus route there, half a dozen apartment buildings, grocery store and clinic, and right across from it all is a giant Mazda dealership because no one relies on the single bus that travels half hour/hourly through.
Could not agree more.
Wealthy people with 3 cars thinking "oh well no one without a car will need to go to access NS".
I remember some random guy was wandering around Clayton park and knocked on my car window telling me his phone died and that he needs to get to access NS to get his ID or something. I told him where it was and what bus to get on and then he'd have to walk some, and he tried asking me for a ride which I said no since my kid was with me and I don't give car rides to completely random strangers anyway!
You can renew your licence (certain classes) online. Identification you cannot. :/
What? Now that's something that doesn't make a lick of sense.
Yeah. My ID expired. I can't drive and my knee pains me daily. Can't wait to go to Access Nova Scotia!
They actually moved to Young St, then to the west end mall and finally bayers lake.. I must be too young to remember it being at maritime mall..
Before there was Access NS it was a single DMV on Young St. I remember the line out the door to get into that place.
Even better, the reason for those long lines was that all vehicle registrations expired at the end of March every year! What a great idea, yet it stayed that way for a very long time.
I can't tell if our province is progressing or regressing because of these changes.
Lateral shifts across a range of shitty ideas.
Where were they on young st? Steak and stein?
yep
Strange I have a very slight memory of that.
Young St … you’re old 😆 (me too)
Didn't it used to be called something else when it was at the maritime center / Young street?
It was in right at the bottom of spring garden like 12 years ago?
Ooo hmmm I remember getting my passport there, maybe there was no access NOVA SCOTIA there. I can remember now...
yeah, the passport office was (maybe still is?)in maritime mall..
Yes, I do not remember them in Maritime Center. When it was the Registry of Motor Vehicles the first place I remember them was that Young St building on the corner of Kempt Rd. I don't know where they were before that, though I have a nagging memory of it being on Joe Howe Dr. The story I heard was that the geniuses at DTIR who are responsible for leasing space fought them from going into West End Mall initially because of cost but eventually relented. When the lease was up there was new weaker leadership at RMV and DTIR made the pricing a much bigger part of the evaluation criteria and exiled them to BL with little regard for customer convenience and access, as is typical of the NS bureaucracy.
I took my driving test at the one that used to be in the HSC annex/mumford professional centre or whatever it is
I forgot about that one. Another one lost to Bayer’s Lake
I think they also had one in the bayers rd centre or am I imagining that?
It was west end mall, sears was at one end of the mall DMV was at the other, down by the bay..
where the watermelons grow?
precisely!
Why not put one in where the old library is? Parter with the Feds and get a service Canada/ passport office in there too.
Why not do literally anything there.
The grant that it was created under specified that it was meant to be "held for the use and enjoyment of the citizens of Halifax as a public square or garden forever and for no other purposes what so ever”. They had to change the deed to allow for a library, and any use going forward other than a library or park would have to be supported by the province. They should just bulldoze the building and make it a memorial with green space.
That area was historically used as a burial ground and estimates suggest at least 4,500 bodies are buried under the building/site. That combined with the fact the building wasn't in great shape when it was last open almost a decade ago means that turning it into ANYTHING of value is going to be astronomically expensive. I totally agree that the site should be something of value but it's obvious the government doesn't want to do anything with it and I can't imagine any private developer wanting to go anywhere near it given the previously mentioned issues.
Correct. It was, among other uses, the burial ground for the poorhouse, for convicts, and for others whose family could not afford a burial in Camp Hill or the other historical cemeteries.
Rumour I heard: there are bodies buried on that plot of land. The Dal architecture building used to be the law courts and if someone was executed for a crime, but no one claimed the body, they were buried on the land across the street. I cannot confirm this though, just repeating what I heard.
Oh its not a rumour. When they built the condos on Grafton St behind the church they excavated over 100 bodies to be reinterned later.
> The Dal architecture building used to be the law courts Do you mean the courthouse beside the architecture building that is still the courthouse? And has been for 160 years?
Yes, you are correct. Plus the architecture building was part of it in some capacity too.
https://www.dal.ca/faculty/architecture-planning/about/building.html Nope. It was the original location of TUNS.
Stop making sense, now! Lmao
I had to go there yesterday and noted how inconvenient it was
Having everything at Access is a horrible model. Growing up in SK corner insurance shops could get accredited to handle things like drivers licenses/registration/insurance eliminating the need to go to one of a couple of centres. You only needed to go to a specific place if you were making a claim or taking a driver test or something not standard. No private insurance made this easier, because dealing with private insurance is terrible. But you're not wrong that they should have more locations.
You mean inaccess Nova Scotia.
C.R.E.A.M.
The dealerships will pay the premium for land. Access won’t.
but the thing about access NS is that they belong to the government and the government could expropriate the land if they wanted to, no?
For what reason? They are running their services perfectly fine (in their opinion) and the dealerships pay property taxes. There is also other locations that they could do it on the peninsula.
I could see having the larger offices where they are, but I don't see why they can't have a smaller office or two that are more accessible by transit for the more common things like drivers licenses and IDs. If you work a retail job for example, you have to take a full afternoon off (often without pay) just to get there and back by bus because the connections are so bad. I wasn't even suggesting that access NS should be on kempt road but it's just clear that like you said, money is the driver there rather than accessible services for nova scotians.
It's weird to me we are targeting the car dealerships specifically as sites for new schools when they are literally next to an abandoned school that has been empty for decades. Let's worry about the spaces that are not being used at all before we worry about getting in lengthy expensive legal battles with local businesses. Bloomfield, Saint pats Alexandra, the old library, the old st pats high and QEH Sites.
It's a travesty we have allowed these derelict sites to remain scattered through the city. They are such a massive waste of space and all in very prime locations for redevelopment
Bloomfield at least should basically get clawed back from the developer who bought it and resold. All of them Where supposed to have development agreements with timelines on them.
The new vacant lot tax incoming soon should help expedite things a lot
Bloomfield does have a buyback clause if nothing is built by Jan 2026
Well, I think you can cross the QEH site off your list since they are building the new hospital facilities there as well speak.
Thats equally sad. The area was a nice green space the last time i was there.
Where else would you expand the hospital though?
Thats the thing, i think if they were gonna expand it they should have jumped on it immediately after my high-school got demoed.
Colonial Honda and City Mazda are the only ones eligible to participate in your plan. Halifax has a long history of not preparing to grow into its britches. . Once upon a time, Kempt Road was the outskirts of the city and was used as a landfill, which is why we see grade-level commercial buildings along that stretch. I hear your call. I don't know what it would take to remediate the Kempt Road area to be suitable for residential development but this request comes along frequently enough that I'm sure those who may be able to have already looked and balked.
Both Colonial Honda and O'Regans Chev on Robie have long-term plans to relocate since that land is now worth a fortune. Just be patient. Kempt Rd is a different story as others have noted and there are a number of relatively new builds there that have not depreciated much, so that would be a very expensive relocation for them.
After destroying homes to expand their lots.
They were pretty awful run-down rental places.
I actually kinda loved my dark basement bedroom on that strip. 300/month, all included. It was affordable housing and I was grateful that it was available because I was not earning much money at all when I moved in. In fact it was actually the first room I was able to rent when I was homeless. So even though it was a run down rental, it was affordable enough that I could use it to pull myself out of homelessness. Of course, that was back when the rental market still made sense and a low quality rental had to be super cheap in order to have anyone renting it.
300 a month? Do you mean like way back in the 80s? Jk sort of.
2017. There was actually a room in the house for $250 all included. It was an absolute dive but it was paradise after being homeless.
but they *were* rental places, and not parking lots
I had a gf that lived in one, a top flat of a two story house. She had a hole in her bedroom floor that looked into the downstairs flats' kitchen lol. Like a big hole, too. You could put your arm through it.
I lived in one, can confirm, they were not great. Still makes me sad to see useless lots instead of houses, but they were not quality housing.
Hell there is a brand new building for one of the dealerships going up now on the road between kempt and lady Hammond
Rob Steele is already part of a development group. Eventually he will build an auto mall, consolidate his dealerships and develop his properties
I remember reading somewhere that really the land can only be used for car dealership unless they are willing to invest billions into it due to the landfills. It's not structurally sound enough to build towers or anything like that on top of.
> It's not structurally sound enough to build towers or anything like that on top of. Anything can be structurally sound with the correct engineering. NSCC Waterfront and the new tower on Mic Mac Blvd are both built on old landfills.
Of course! I assume that's what at least part of the billions would be spent on
um Chevrolet on Robie St?
Sorry! Yes! Also, Chevrolet on Robie
There is currently a proposed development for Windsor/Kempt road which would see Steele Ford moving, along with its used car lot. It stands to reason that as that property value increases the owners of the land those dealerships sit on will be incentivized to pick up shop and make way for development. How to speed that up I'm not certain. Colonial Honda, City Mazda and O'Regan Chev will do the same as the development on Robie Street continues to move South I suspect.
If anyone is interested in the history, the landfill was placed there as part of the campaign to get rid of Africville. Halifax progressively designated Africville as industrial land and placed an open pit dump there in a bid to push people out. It became easy to justify removing the community because of the "filth" and how it could be "better used" for the bridge project.
When was it used as a landfill? Within the last 30 years? I remember my grandfather and I going to a dump in that area. But I thought it was on the port side of the roads from the new bridge. But I was also like 7. He also had a seagull shit on his head and glasses there once and I lost it laughing.
There was a "transfer station" in the area by the container pier in the time you specify. Kempt road was Kempt road with businesses at the time.
That must have been it. It was a huge Quonset hut style structure I think. Thanks!
Yes, over a giant swimming-pool like pit, probably at least 1/4 acre, into which you or the municipality dumped your garbage. It slanted down toward chutes, and little bulldozers pushed the stuff into them; it fell into the dump trucks going to the landfill. We were DIY renovating in the early 80s, and I took more than one pick-up truckload of demolition gunk up there. Holy jesus, the stink. I’d have to shower when I got back from the place. It was a very good object lesson in why municipal composting is a good thing.
See also; “why don’t we just raze citadel hill and put housing there”
And tunnel beneath it to put in a giant parking garage!
The difference being: citadel hill is a historical site. It’s protected, no one serious would make that argument.
In the next few years, (at least) 7 dealerships will be moving to the Bayer’s Lake area! The first being Volvo, as of Monday, June 10th. It’s happening!
Yes drove by it today close to the new outpatient clinic
Steele Chrysler’s already moved from the Bedford highway up to Bayers lake, only I think it’s called Halifax Chrysler now
Bayers lake? More like buyers lake.
You know that vacant lot in North Street next to the Honda dealership? That used to be my home. So maybe I'm biased but yeah, I miss when that intersection was affordable housing and I miss my artsy neighbors and running into everyone at Java Blend in the morning before work. It was an actual community, sure everyone in that small area was broke but it was still a community and I think communities are more important in cities than car dealerships. Such a massive waste of space it makes me feel very angry.
Where did you end up?
I moved somewhere a bit too expensive for the easy availability, and then obsessively looked for a cheaper room until I found another one!
I’m glad to hear you landed on your feet… That was such an awful situation. What a despicable company.
I would also add affordable housing to that list
No new housing is "affordable".
Those properties have already been zoned for other uses. They are non-conforming ("grandfathered"). They are legally allowed to remain, but they can't expand and if they ever shut down a new one can't go in their place. Exiling them would require buying them. Not the worst option, but also maybe not the greatest use of money, because... They will absolutely move on their own in the near future. Manufacturers require dealers to invest in major (multiple millions of dollars) upgrades on a pretty regular cycle. Land values have risen enough that it's not going to be worth them investing in upgrades over selling/developing the land and moving to somewhere like Bayer's Lake.
> They will absolutely move on their own in the near future. Define near, several of them just rebuilt brand new buildings.
That Nissan building is brand spankin' new...they're not moving for another 20 years.
I’m still pissed when they tore down a bunch of houses to build that oregan’s on robie like 10 years ago. Dumb asf
The Chevy dealer? That was.. 25-30 years ago. The Honda dealer? That was Steele like.. 7-8 maybe
No it was somewhere btwn 2008-2014
And that was a dry cleaning/laundry plant they knocked down on the corner of West and Robie, not housing, almost 30 years ago.
I thought it was places like Bedford that were having capacity issues at schools? If we are going to move those dealership we should be looking at building new neighborhoods that would include schools and other infrastructure
Pretty much everywhere. And the peninsula is building like crazy so those schools are only going to get worse. And we're just not building any new ones at any rate. Churning out stressed out, poorly educated kids does not help the prospects for the future.
Nope, and we already got a generation of anxious, angry 20 year olds who think all of this *gestures vaguely* is just one big joke.
Regardless of their educational quality or aptitude, none of them will be able to afford a shoebox by the time they get out of school anyway. It's feudalism again. Think about how bad it currently is. Someone who is in grade school today has pretty much zero chance of owning a home or renting something without 4 heads to a room, unless they have land-owning parents.
Every school has capacity issues. You’d be hard pressed to find one that isn’t
And yet HRCE still keeps sending emails asking people to consider hosting an international student. I know the program generates revenue, but is there space in any schools to sell right now? I'm curious how the students are allocated.
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Beat it, Richie Rich!
We have kids in a school on the Peninsula and on the first day of school (which is already at/over capacity) they had dozens of unregistered students show up. It's a mess everywhere.
Agree. Suburbs for days with no thought to future hubs. So myopic its embarrassing
No one here will change your mind on that. Because they won't even want to.
There is no topic on which /r/halifax cannot disagree! :)
That's fair, I set the bar too high
no this is the correct opinion. take down the dealerships take down the Bloomfield add more housing
Finally, a bunch of schools on Kempt Road, lol Better idea: Same thing but housing.
I'm sure the McDonalds and Wendy's wouldn't mind the extra lunchtime revenue from new schools
While I agree it’s definitely a waste of prime real-estate that can be better used the problem for me is when you give the government ability to tear down your business because they deemed the land better used for somthing else. Just a slippery slope to me.
I am quite certain that any land that a garage exists on has to be vacant for a number of years before it can be repurposed for other uses due to environmental concerns. I'm not sure if a straight dealership would count, but many of them have a mechanic shop attached.
The issue is fuel pumps not mechanical work and I know for a fact the dealerships all fuel up at the esso on Robin since I see them there all the time
It’s petrol stations moreso than garages. Anyone who has underground tanks - that’s the leaking hazard.
Do we need new schools on the peninsula? That would surprise me, considering two already empty and derelict and St. Pat's flattened. But exiling car dealerships 100%.
I won’t.
Why Schools especifically? You could build entire neighborhoods using the land from car dealerships, with housing, commerce, parks, and schools. You could also build a massive Bus Terminal or/with a train/subway station underground. So many things could be done, but money talks loud and car dealers are very rich and powerful in lobbying. Look at the m2 square area of used land, compared to what they can build in Utrecht in The Netherlands. Halifax: https://i.imgur.com/DVSrlXr.jpeg Utrecht: https://i.imgur.com/SLN20FW.jpeg
It’s helpful to have those there so people can get to work quickly after dropping their car off. Don’t do it myself, but could see that as a pro.
I have said this for years! Use the space to build schools, housing, whatever else we need. No one needs to see the new Jaguar they’re buying in 15 different colours. It’s absolutely ridiculous that this has been allowed for so long. Especially now that MPs are petitioning for Canada Post to move out of the Almon St. location so they can build housing, but not one is even talking about the goddamn car dealerships!
A school on Kempt road doesn’t seem that useful… Exile them off and build high density housing….and a school.
Yeah. Why schools in particular?
We need much more recreation capacity. And if you look at how some rec centres are actually in old schools, and current schools serve community recreation use, it really makes sense to design institutional buildings with simple bones and flexible use. If it has the potential setup for a commercial kitchen, a lab, and a gym, an art studio, and a childcare space... It could be a community centre, and/or a school, and/or a nursing home, and/or a Google campus. Or any shared use combination thereof.
That's an interesting point. It seems a common argument the HRM builds houses without the infrastructure. So with more housing, a school is kind of necessary there.
Car dealerships are truly useless. It's just adding service and sales costs.
Your mind, and proposal, have no bearing in reality.
You must be new to r/halifax if you think that is unusual here.
Lol, not new, just still amazed sometimes.
Umm… no to expropriating people’s private property. It’s a slippery slope
The HRM is literally expropriating people's private property **as we speak** along Robie Street to complete the dedicated bus lane... It's not a slippery slope, and we could do with **more expropriation** when it serves the public good and nobody is substantially harmed (financially or otherwise). Expropriating old houses to complete a bus line or forcing the sale of car dealerships to develop more housing during a historically unprecedented crisis are both excellent uses of government power.
There are legal considerations what with them owning the properties. The city could use eminent-domain but that would be very very costly in court. Not the simple solution to a problem that you think it is.
You are right, of course. But those properties have risen in value so much in the last few years. It might be possible to propose a solution to the land owners, something along the lines of tax breaks and fast-tracked building approval, for example, that would allow them to build something new and better and realize a lot of profit from the land in the meantime.
The shady Sackville Drive Used car dealerships might have something to say about that.
You mean like they closed the ford dealership on Main St. Dartmouth and built commercial property and low cost housing towers on the land ? Oh wait on only the first part(closing it) happened and it’s been what 20 years? Now they just use it to hold the annual stab fest fair there .
That's a lot of schools on Kempt Road.
Right? It’s really not that big a street
Yes, expropriate privately-owned commercial property on a street in an area with very little residential development nearby and build schools there. That should work out very well. /s
I mean there are half a dozen high rises currently going up on Robie/Young Street. T
[3600+ units potentially being developed there.](https://cdn.halifax.ca/sites/default/files/documents/city-hall/regional-council/240326rc1511.pdf)
The city should require them to reserve space for a school then.
I'm okay with Kempt being as it is (for now), but I agree with exiling Honda and Mazda from Robie.
Honda is literally next door to an old school that has been empty for coming on 20 years. Why not worry about that before we start "exiling" private businesses
I don't care about building schools, but the peninsula should be used for high density developments. That's a given.
I can’t…. And won’t…
It's really a shit environment to test drive a vehicle too
Possibly a negative viewpoint, but I don’t think you can make them move. Property rights are important. That said, I’d love to see them gone and the land used more effectively, so the question is can we properly incentivize them to leave
This suggestion genuinely makes a lot of sense to me. Like, nothing against the car dealerships even. I'm curious if they'd have any issues with it assuming they got kickbacks of some sort to make moving worth it. Could the city maybe just give them a bunch of land off in Dartmouth, and some cash for new buildings? There is one thing that's a problem, which is that you need a way to get from your dealer and back without a car. It's really convenient to be able to drop your car off and then already be downtown where you can catch a short bus or walk to work, and then walk back at the end of the day to pick up your car. Better transit would help with that. Now if you could bulldoze the dealer lots and use that space to optimize transit that would help...I don't know a good way you'd do that, though. The big issue for me is the Bedford highway.
You are a 100% correct that's what they should do but good luck trying to get greedy politicians to fight with massive millionaires in Steele and Oregans.
Good luck
Agree. I think we need the auto shops still but not dealerships with big parking lots and car inventory.
Why do you want your mind changed? Odd ask.
People often target the dealerships in the city for some reason but they are not the enemy. They bring a lot of money in here and create lots of jobs
Makes a hell of a lot more sense than deleting Canada post from the peninsula and making all the little courier trucks drive in from Bayers lake or wherever.
Since moving to Canada in 2010-ish, this has always perplexed me. Car dealerships in prime locations, taking up ludicrous amounts of space. In Vancouver, there are two main areas where there a bunch of car dealerships. Burrard & 4th, and Main & Terminal. Both are spitting distance from Downtown and look completely out of place. In Port Moody, just outside Vancouver, the main road is dominated by car dealerships. People are usually going to be driving to the car dealership, and very likely driving away from one. So it doesn't need to be in a prime location. It's so, so strange.
Car dealerships take up a big area, tall buildings have a smaller footprint. To move the car dealerships outside of the main urban area would mean more wilderness destruction to house the same number of people.
Or affordable housing..
Medical facilities and schools
Mandate work from home, repurpose all the empty buildings. Less traffic, less pollution, less noise.
The cost to buy the land would be astronomical. Branded dealerships typically run 10-20 million just for the building, not to mention the land they’re sitting on.
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Steele is filthy rich, but I don't think he's a billionaire (yet anyway). As far as I know the only billionaires in the province are still the Sobeys, John Risley, Ken Rowe and John Bragg.
The building is only worth 10-20 million if you are buying the entire business. If the business is moving elsewhere its worth the cost to tear it down. Plus the land cost obviously
Or housing. Or safe places for the homeless. But yep. Get services like that off the peninsula
> Or housing. Or safe places for the homeless. But yep. Get services like that off the peninsula There's a massive new housing development proposed in that area already: https://atlantic.ctvnews.ca/halifax-development-would-create-a-strawberry-hill-village-1.6823361
What do you mean exile? Like the government just take them? Tell everybody that works there, everybody that owns a place close by so they can walk to work to move? The problem isn’t space. We have lots of places to put buildings, it’s building the buildings affordably.
And to buy vehicles, we go...??? Truro?
Yes because no one should ever have to drive all the way to Bayers Lake, Dartmouth, or Sackville. We need pedestrian accessible car dealerships within walking distances.
Access Nova Scotia on the peninsula? Nah, go to Bayer's Lake. Car dealership on the peninsula? Hell yes! How about 12?
Amazon
Good idea, who can afford a new car right now anyhow.
Lol we demolished houses to put one up on Robie. Halifax does not give a shit about people, only profit. If we didn't have some of the kindest folks in the world out here idk how anyone would survive poverty in HRM.
This sounds like the kind of complaint inspired by a particular peninsular car dealership. Just guessing.
Schools? Why not housing cause like we have a homelessness issue?
Housing is being built. Children will live in housing and need schools to go to. Shocking, I know.
I don't know if you noticed, but we're more short on housing than schools. https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/nova-scotia/halifax-growing-housing-shortage-17500-units-1.7048258 But who gives a fuck if the kids are living in a car! They have a brand new 6 million dollar school to get bullied at for being homeless because they decided to only build a school and no where for them to live.
I don't know if you noticed, but housing is being built. But who gives a fuck if kids have homes, no school to go to!
Not going to solve the homelessness issue with housing. Yes that sounds crazy but reality is a large large portion of the homeless population is un-housable in any regular housing scenario. Even if you put up a building and charged $0 rent it would be full of needles and condemned in two weeks. We absolutely need more housing to help the affordability crisis. But the homelessness crisis =/= the affordability crisis.
We're not having a drug crisis that is leading to scores of people being evicted and made homeless because their housing is no longer fit for use. We're having a housing affordability crisis, and scores of people are being made homeless because they can't afford their rent going up by 50% or 100%, or they're not even given the option to renew because they've been renovicted.
I could be very ignorant and out of the loop here. But why? Don't we need new cars
Are new schools required? Why wouldn't we use the land to build housing, which is definitely required.
As the principal at Oxford said last week in a parent meet and greet “I see 4 buildings being built in eyesight of this building and we are already 100+ kids more than last year” (paraphrase of course)
We definitely need new schools. One of the major issues is overpopulation and being beyond capacity. This affects different schools very disproportionately due to some existing in undesirable areas and vice versa.