Opposition to Skye Halifax growing
Posted Nov 20, 2012 06:51:15 AM.
This article is more than 5 years old.
Halifax Regional Council is expected to vote today on whether a controversial office tower should be built in the downtown core, amid fresh opposition.
A 40-member citizens group has penned a letter to Mayor Mike Savage urging council to vote down United Gulf’s proposed Skye Halifax project.
“We ask instead that you send a strong message of support for the HRM By Design Downtown Halifax Plan to whom so many citizens gave so selflessly and which is working so well, and in so doing, send a message of confidence in the vibrant and prosperous future we all desire for our urban core,” stated the letter dated Nov. 18.
The letter is signed by several architects including Andy Fillmore of Dalhousie University School of Planning and Architecture, as well as former Halifax Downtown Coun. Dawn Sloane and Heather Ternoway, former Chair, HRM District 12 Planning Advisory Committee.
The letter goes on to call the project “a very dangerous Trojan Horse” and something which “threatens to derail downtown’s fragile renaissance.”
Skye Halifax is proposed as a two towers, standing 44-stories each, on top of a four-storey podium in the former Tex-Park site. The towers are bent to give the impression of sails caught by the wind.
The $350-million project is 172 metres high, 66 metres over municipal high regulations, and it would cut through sightlines from Citadel Hill.
Coun. Waye Mason (Peninsula South – Downtown) is against granting the project an exception to the rules.
“If we’re going to say anytime anybody has an idea we’re going to do an exception to the plan, than that’s going to be all across HRM,” Mason told the Rick Howe Show Monday. “All of the plans…that we’ve all be working on for the last 15 years are suddenly just guidelines that we can suddenly just ignore whenever somebody has some money.”
