When the announcement was made three years ago, the development plan for the former Bloomfield school on Agricola Street was heralded as a soon-to-be success story.
The plan called for a commercial and public space that also included more than 400 housing units, 40 per cent of which would be affordable housing.
But three years later, the building is still untouched.
Now, the community group that pushed for the redevelopment says it’s backing out of its partnership with Housing Nova Scotia, which was awarded the project.
“We see this site sitting here on a daily basis getting neglected and it deserves better,” said Susanna Fuller, co-chair of Imagine Bloomfield.
The group was formed in 2003 with the goal of redeveloping the property into a community-based space.
In 2012, Halifax council gave approval to sell the site to Housing Nova Scotia, which is a provincial government corporation.
After a few years of planning and public consultation, Imagine Bloomfield says the project has simply stalled.
“We just felt it was time to question what was taking so long and we do feel that there’s a window of opportunity in the north end and it’s now or probably the past five years to really do something special here,” said Fuller.
“If that means Housing Nova Scotia doesn’t do the project, if that means it goes back out to RFP, we really don’t know at this point. But we needed to step out of the partnership so that we could be the vocal advocacy voice that we have been in the past.”
Area councillor Jennifer Watts is also frustrated because a development agreement application hasn’t been filed yet. She has asked city staff for a report on the status of the sale.
“We have not actually proceeded in any tangible way and we now are over three years later without actually an application into our department,” she said.
Housing Nova Scotia CEO Dan Troke says he understands the frustration, but says the project is on track and that a lot of work is being done internally.
He could not say when the development agreement will be filed or when ground will be broken.
“For us, the next couple of weeks we’ve got some work we’re doing around relationships with the private sector — so looking at what we’ve learned from other jurisdictions looking at how that would play out if we were to go down that road here in Nova Scotia,” Troke said.
“Couple more weeks of due diligence and then essentially, it’s work that we continue to move forward which would ultimately lead to a development agreement with HRM.”
Troke says the corporation is making sure all the planning work is completed in a financially and socially responsible way.
“That’s why we’re taking the time that we are on the front end of this and while I appreciate some folks might find that a little frustrating in the time that that happens, it’s what you really need to do and I suspect taxpayers would hope we would be doing,” he said.
Both Fuller and Troke said the two groups are on good terms and would be willing to work together again.
Meanwhile, Watts estimates the city is paying $85,000 a year on upkeep for the site.
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