Tartan Downs: From Racetrack to “Mini-Neighborhood”

During last week’s CBRM council meeting for March, a “non-profit” called the Urban Neighborhood Development Association presented preliminary plans for an amazing, mixed-income housing development on the site of the former Tartan Downs harness racing track in Sydney.

Don’t worry, I haven’t lost all critical perspective here, but I have to say, if this development turns out to be illusory, at least it will have been a higher caliber of illusion than we’re used to around these parts.

The land in question — 24 acres — was purchased by Cape Breton University in 2019 and UNDA (which was formed in August 2019 as the Pier Place Association) was tasked with overseeing its development. Watching the presentation, I found myself wondering about the exact nature of the relationship between UNDA and CBU and was pleased when District 3 Councilor Cyril MacDonald, after expressing enthusiasm for the plan, asked UNDA president Kent MacIntyre to confirm that this was a “CBU owned and driven” project. To which MacIntyre replied:

No…when we deal with CHMC and Nova Scotia Housing, they prefer to deal with a non-profit organization, they’re not interested in loaning money to institutions, so we’ve created a non-profit with its own separate board, we’re arm’s length from the university, although we’re using university property to move forward…This organization, the Urban Neighborhood Development Association, will be the ones going forward looking for the money. And I’m sure that, at some point in time, CBU will backstop some of the money for us. But, for all intended purposes, it’s our organization that’s doing all the dealings with CMHC and Nova Scotia Housing.

UNDA doesn’t actually seem to be an “organization,” it seems to be a board, which MacIntyre described as “very strong” with a “wealth of knowledge and experience in these types of ventures.” Its members are listed in the presentation without their job titles/affiliations, but when you look those up and add them in (as I’ve done below) you’ll see that UNDA is at “arm’s length” from CBU only if the arm in question belongs to a six-month old:

• David Dingwall, CBU president
• Gordon MacInnis, CBU VP of finance and operations
• Shauna Kelly, CBU chief of staff to Dingwall
• Doug Connors, CBU director of housing and ancillary services
• Kent MacIntyre, CBU manager special projects and community engagement
• Kevin Pembroke (not confirmed, but presumably of Pembroke Construction in Glace Bay)
• Jennifer Deleskie (VP of business development and public affairs at Membertou)
• John P Phalen (CBRM public works manager, although at the time the Pier Place Association was established, he was the manager of economic development. How Phalen can sit on the board of a “non-profit” developing property within the municipality that employs him baffles me, surely that’s a conflict of interest?)

According to the Joint Stocks Registry, Fred Deveaux of Cape Breton Community Housing — who sits on the Nova Scotia Affordable Housing Commission — is the treasurer/secretary of UNDA, although his name doesn’t appear in this list for some reason.

tartan-downs-development

UNDA’s registered address is 1250 Grand Lake Road, i.e. CBU.

The actual answer to Councilor MacDonald’s question seems to be, “Yes, this is a CBU owned and driven project.” And really, MacIntyre admitted as much when he said UNDA was created to apply for funding because CBU on its own wouldn’t qualify and that CBU will probably “backstop” any money UNDA borrows for the project. This raises a number of questions for me, but I just got contact information for UNDA about 10 minutes ago, so will try to get some answers for next week.

MacIntyre told council UNDA has been “working with a team of professionals” that includes Halifax-based architects MacKay-Lyons Sweetapple, engineering firm CBCL and Toronto-based design and planning firm Urban Strategies since 2020. To date, he says they’ve spent “about $500,000” and that total is rising “briskly.” (Where did this money come from, you ask? That wasn’t discussed during last week’s meeting either.)

MacIntyre also told council they’d already met with “some of your senior people in the planning and development department” and are “working nicely with your staff as well.” (He didn’t mention they had a senior CBRM staffer on their board, which probably makes things even nicer.)

But I’ve started out rather negatively, so I will address my big problem with this development — the fact that it will not be truly “affordable” to the CBRM residents most in need of housing —  in a separate article and use this one to focus on some of the positives.

 

Sydney’s Piazza Navona?

The architectural firm attached to the project, MacKay-Lyons Sweetapple, is the firm behind Queen’s Marque, and I may even forgive them their part in that unfortunate use of the Halifax waterfront if they pull off what they’ve proposed for Sydney.

Lead architect Miranda Bailey noted that the opportunity to develop a site of this scale — 24 acres — within “a fully developed neighborhood as well as city” is “rare” and explained their decision to “celebrate” the site’s history as a race track by retaining the oval shape of the track itself.

One of the architects’ inspirations was Rome’s Piazza Novana — a bustling city square that was originally a hippodrome (a stadium for chariot races) built by the Emperor Domitian, a “ruthless but efficient autocrat” who ruled from 81 to 96 AD, when he was murdered.

 

Here’s a ground-level view I found on Wikimedia Commons:

 

Obviously, the Ashby version will have fewer Renaissance- and Baroque-era buildings and fountains and more green space than cobblestones, but it also looks like car access will be privileged in the Tartan Downs Development in a way it isn’t in the Italian square. The rendering below suggests pedestrians and cyclists in the development will continue to play second fiddle to cars and buses:

 

Mind you, that’s the case in virtually all the other international examples cited in the plan — the houses are separated from the green space by busy streets. I’d be interested to hear what the Active Transit people had to say about this, given the Tartan Downs development is already being touted as a model for future developments in the municipality. How can you be thinking in terms of electric vehicle charging stations and energy efficient buildings (as the developers are), and not thinking of bike lanes?

 

 

Although the architects’ vision for Tartan Downs remains rooted in a world where everyone owns a car, they do go to some lengths to hide those cars. This first slide shows four elevated green spaces that will be built over the grade-level parking lots:

 

And this slide gives you a better idea of how this will work — you can see the entrance to the parking lot on the right hand side, between the buildings, with the green space on top. People will look out over trees and grass instead of parked cars.

 

Townhomes

The finished project will have “a minimum” of 430 units, which MacIntyre described as “rental units” although the proposed master plan uses the phrase “attainable ownership” to describe the 15-20 single-family homes to be located near Upper Prince Street. (I emailed the architects to say I had some questions about the project and ask where I should direct them, but as of publication time, I had not received a response.)

 

Of those 430 units, 240 — 55% — will be “affordable,” meaning, rented at 80% of the market rate, and 190 — 45% — will be rented at market value. (As noted, I’ve gone into this issue of affordability at length this week in a separate article.)

Bailey said that for the “circuit” of the former racetrack, they are considering a mix of double and triple-stacked townhomes and four-story apartment buildings offering a mix of one-, two- and three-bedroom units.

The presentation uses the terms “townhomes” and “townhouses” interchangeably while avoiding “row houses” or “terraced houses” (although the townhouses pictured above in Bath and Edinburgh are most often described as classic “Georgian terraces”). There do seem to be differences between the terms, but I’ve been reading conflicting explanations as to what they are, so I think for now I’ll just note that by “townhouses,” MacKay-Lyons Sweetapple seems to mean a row of houses that sit right on the street — without front yards. Here are some townhouses the firm designed on Falkland Street in Halifax:

 

 

The Tartan Downs development will include 35,000 square feet of commercial/community space, some of which will be located on the ground floors of the apartment buildings, although there is a plan to include a community building of some description (right now either a squat, blue cylinder or a squat, blue rectangle) somewhere in the development.

This slide shows the mix of housing under consideration:

 

And this slide, of the completed development, shows the possible distribution of the different types of housing:

 

 

Accessibility

CMHC has minimum environmental and accessibility requirements for projects funded under the National Co-Investment Fund (which seems a likely source of investment for this project, although it wasn’t actually named) and will “prioritize” applications that exceed these minimums.

In terms of environmental efficiency, CMHC wants applicants to demonstrate their projects are:

…designed to achieve a minimum 25% decrease in energy consumption and Greenhouse Gas (GHG) emissions outlined in the requirements of the 2015 National Energy Code for Buildings (NECB) or the 2015 National Building Code (NBC) (“base case”), or a 15% decrease relative to the 2017 National Energy Code for Buildings.

“Environmental sustainability” is listed as “guiding principle” of the Tartan Downs development and is defined to include electric vehicle charging stations, the integration of an existing brook into the development and energy efficient buildings and infrastructure. The presentation didn’t get into details about this, so I’m not sure if these energy efficiencies will meet or exceed CMHC’s minimum requirements.

In terms of accessibility, CMHC gives applicants two options: either ensure 20% of dwellings meet accessibility standards and that common areas are “barrier-free” or ensure the entire project (common areas and dwelling units) has “full universal design.” (You can see all the technical criteria for these options in the document I linked to above.)

Last week’s presentation didn’t delve much into the issue of accessibility, but “Sensitive Design + Placemaking” is one of the project’s guiding principles and it includes “universally accessible and adaptable design,” suggesting the developers have gone for option two.

 

Phase 1

The project is expected to take four years and will be completed in phases. The first phase, which UNDA hopes to begin by end-2022, will see the construction of 130 units — a combination of stacked townhouses and two apartment buildings. (The number of affordable versus market units in this first phase wasn’t mentioned but would be good to know.)

 

 

Bailey, the lead architect, said the masterplan is flexible and there’s an opportunity to increase housing density if that seems to be desired but that’s something they hope to get feedback from the public on.

The presentation ended with comments and questions from councilors (I covered District 12 Councilor Lorne Green’s concerns about horse bones and rats at some length last Friday). Reaction to the project was overwhelmingly positive, with District 10 Councilor Darren Bruckschwaiger going so far as to suggest that since there was “no ask here on the table for us” (other than a letter of support), the CAO “will have to find a few bucks to help to get rid of the rats.”

The question of funding is an interesting one — MacIntyre wouldn’t even put a price tag on the project, except to say it will cost “tens of millions of dollars.” UNDA has engaged Hanscomb (“trusted cost advisors for the construction industry” and a company that CMHC apparently likes to work with) to produce cost estimates which MacIntyre said they should have within the next “30 to 40” days, at which point they will let the public know what the project is going to cost.

While we’re waiting, I’ll say that word about “affordable” I promised you. But I’m going to do it another article — so click here.