I watched Westmount native Doug Doucet, founder of Bedford-based Doucet Developments—and a suite of related companies—present his plans for waterfront development to CBRM council last night. Much of the presentation (which also featured Chris Baldwin, his chief financial officer) focused on Doucet himself and his companies and why it’s aRead More

Editor’s Note: This is Part III of a series that will continue until I find some answers or give up, whichever comes first. You’ll find Part I here and Part II here.   I had a some assistance with my research this week and was able to plow through twoRead More

The new board chair of the Port of Sydney Development Corporation (PSDC), James Kerr, presented to CBRM council during its regular November meeting last week, a topic I touched on briefly in last week’s Fast & Curious, because Kerr announced the board had decided to make its minutes public andRead More

Backroom deals During Tuesday’s CBRM council meeting, CAO Marie Walsh revealed — very matter-of-factly — that she and regional solicitor Demetri Kachafanas had met with developer Martin Chernin after the expiration of Chernin’s waterfront pre-development contract to discuss a new proposal. She even admitted that she and Kachafanas had presentedRead More

Last night’s council discussion regarding Harbour Royale Development Limited’s new Sydney waterfront proposal was fascinating in many ways but the most interesting aspect to me (besides the outcome, which was council refusing to entertain it and voting instead to issue a new request for proposals for CBRM-owned land on theRead More

Since it was announced the NSCC Marconi Campus would move from its location next to Cape Breton University to the Sydney waterfront, I have been curious as to how the site was chosen — and what other sites were considered. Last week, I got the answer to the second partRead More

I have an update on last week’s district energy study story, with some information gleaned from the Federation of Canadian Municipalities (FCM). The full cost of the study was $175,400. The CBRM and Enwave Energy applied to the FCM for funding (with the CBRM as “lead applicant”) and received $74,700Read More

If you were a cash-strapped community of communities looking to cut your greenhouse gas emissions and had $100,000 to spend, how would you spend it? Would you blow the boodle on a preliminary study for a “district heating and cooling system” in Sydney’s downtown core? A system that would serviceRead More

“Doublethink,” a term coined by George Orwell in 1984 (the book, not the year), is defined by the American Heritage Dictionary as “believing two contradictory ideas at the same time” and I think it describes the CBRM’s approach to waterfront development. This past week, I had reason to have aRead More

Sea change A spectator (you know who you are) pointed me to this item from the tender for architectural and engineering services for the new Marconi Campus on the Sydney waterfront (before, I might add, it was also picked up on by the Cape Breton Post): Climate risks include increasedRead More