Say you’re a former advertising executive turned “port developer” and February 2022 finds you in the seventh year of your exclusive contract to turn the Port of Sydney into a transshipment hub for ultra-large container vessels (ULCVs) with pretty much nothing to show for yourself. Initial deals with the ChineseRead More

Full disclosure: I thought 2021 was going to be vastly different from 2020 but instead, it unfolded like we’d given 2020 a 12-month extension on its contract. The COVID pandemic continued to loom large in everyone’s lives although, as you’ll see, I modified my response to it. I spent muchRead More

This morning, I am going to take on some of the hot takes I’ve seen on CBRM council’s recent waterfront development decision. As you probably know by now, during last Tuesday’s meeting, council, rather than entertaining a new proposal from Martin Chernin’s Harbour Royale Development Ltd (HRDL), opted to issueRead More

Here are the important takeaways from this morning’s CBRM special council meeting on the proposed new CBRM Central Library:   Aurevoir, HRDL? Council took a major step toward ending the agreement that has given a private developer, Martin Chernin’s Harbour Royale Development Limited, control over the proposed new library. AtRead More

I watched yesterday’s CBRM General Committee meeting in its entirety and would like to give you a few highlights:   New Central Library First thought when I saw this item on the agenda: John Phelan is no longer on the library file. The former economic development manager (who returned toRead More

Grandstanding Okay, so on Tuesday, as I was burrowing through the documents I’d received from the feds relating to the 2012 sale of the Royal Cape Breton Yacht Club, I thought I might try to follow the CBRM Council meeting about the library at the same time. (You know howRead More

I just watched last week’s CBRM general committee debate over funding for the new central library and heard Mayor Cecil Clarke declare the project “dead” because the federal government has not come through with its share of the funding (either for a programming and internal operations study or for theRead More

The CBRM has received one response to its call for expressions of interest in developing the Sydney waterfront and, perhaps unsurprisingly, the only interest expressed came from a man who has been attempting to develop something on the Sydney waterfront for years. Sydney businessman Martin Chernin’s Harbour Royale Development LimitedRead More