So its Wednesday before the long weekend, and with the turning of the seasons I am once again sitting in the shade on the Woodside ferry, itself gentle rocking in the light swells coming from the mouth of the harbour.
This means my 10-15 minute essays on whatever I am thinking about on my commute to work have also returned.
ACT 1 – Setting the Stage
Despite the usual mid-summer media doldrums there was still a lot of coverage of HRM By-Law trying to shut down Caribbean Twist.
The new, black owned, busy and delicious Caribbean Twist restaurant at 3081 Gottingen Street had been told that they had to close because the building was “not zoned for a restaurant.”
This is how it was presented by media but being a nerd, I know there is no specific restaurant zoning, so I started digging. What is the real technical problem here? Surely this building has always been commercial? There is no difference in Commercial zoning, if you have it you can be a restaurant. What gives?
Better said than most, certainly sums up what I have been thinking, I turn this space over to Laura Penny and her article from the Herald.
I LIVE ON Argyle Street, between two of Halifax’s most talked-about vacant lots. The new central library and the proposed convention centre may be a few short blocks away from one another, but they represent very different ideas about the role of government.
The library serves hundreds of thousands of HRM residents, and has been doing so from a cramped old building for quite some time. Critics of the new library, including some of the commentariat on this newpaper’s website, have been quick to cry government waste. Fifty-five million?!? You can get books on the Internet if you want to waste your time — ew! — reading. Read more…
We shall see if this gets published on the DBTC site:I am in favor of a new or expanded WTCC.
I do not, at this time support the current proposal.
Wanting more information does not make one a visionless small town hick.
I am waiting for an actual business plan, having concerns over the architecture, the SIP P3 model, worrying about giving the private developer office towers twice the size allowed on those blocks under HRMbD and ALSO gives the private developer $100 million of taxpayers dollars.
People talking about this as a “catalytic building” in down town are just using buzz words to paper over the lack of actual hard information. Show me, Paul, show me, WTCC, show me how our 4th largest CC in Canada will not lose money every year, will not cost additional millions, will not spiral down into disrepair like all the other P3 projects the province has launched.
Show me how our isolated, hard to get to, but beautiful and picturesque destination will succeeded, and not fail, like the recent Vancouver CC.
Asking hard questions and getting no answers and then digging in your heels is only natural. Pro-WTCC2 advocates trying to paint a picture of caution and inquiry as being backwards and timid is, at best, insulting.
The Coast HRM council twitter is reporting that city hall just voted for paving, but against bike lane extensions. Aparently 13 councillors all feel bike lanes are un-needed.
Anyone who follows me on Facebook or Twitter knows I just spent two weeks in Tuscany with my family, and being the nerd I am, I kept taking pictures of infrastructure. A photo essay will come later, with bus tickets, closed streets, etc, but tonight I want to show how the world class capital of the Tuscany region, Florence, a city of 400,000 people, a UNESCO world heritage site, does bike lanes:
Two Way Bike Lane in Florence, Tuscany, IT
Note that it was more important to this world class city to have two way dedicated, isolated bike lanes than to have two way traffic for cars.
HRM needs to get a clue.
The Forum
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