By giving Joe Ramia’s Nova Centre project an exemption to the city’s planning laws, the province unfairly gave Ramia the ability to compete for tenants now housed in Thiel family properties, says a brief filed with the court. The Thiels own several properties in the financial district, including the BMO building, the TD Centre, and the Royal Bank Tower. Collectively,...
Department of Environment fails to provide legally required annual review
In 2007, the Nova Scotian legislature passed an ambitious piece of legislation called the Environmental Goals and Sustainable Prosperity Act, EGSPA, which is called “eggs-puh” in wonk circles. EGSPA was spearheaded by then-Environment Minister Mark Parent, a preacher turned politician who represents the best of the old-school of the Progressive Conservative party. Parent parented EGSPA, pushing the...
Raucous crowd greets fracking review panel
by Chris Benjamin David Wheeler’s fracking roadshow reached Halifax last night and received its most boisterous heckling yet. Wheeler, president of Cape Breton University and sustainable business guru (he convinced the province to burn trees for energy), chairs an “independent review panel” investigating the potential for fracking in Nova Scotia. Last night’s meeting was the...
Cumberland Regional Development Authority: another chapter in the “economic development” grift
This morning the province released a damning audit of the Cumberland Regional Development Authority. The audit, performed by accounting firm PricewaterhouseCoopers, runs 700 pages. Necessarily, reporters will today skim the audit for the choicest details, and the resulting articles will sensationalize the abuses. There’s nothing wrong with that, and I’m going to do a bit of it...
Nova Centre supporters are panicking, and for good reason
In May, the Thiel family, which owns much of the financial district and who are embarking on an ambitious development project called 22nd Commerce Square, asked the courts to review the province’s issuance of an unprecedented exemption to Nova Centre developer Joe Ramia; the exemption allows Ramia to bypass normal city development approval processes. In June, the Heritage Trust...
Franklin Holtforster, the manager of the disastrous Bluenose II restoration, calls himself a Rapacious Capitalist Bastard
“You know how construction projects always go to hell and are over budget and always late? Ours don’t,” Franklin Holtforster told the Ottawa Business Journal in a puff piece on Holtoforster’s company, MHPM Project Managers Inc. MHPM is of course the firm “managing” the disastrous (re?)construction of the Bluenose II. Explains writer Rob Gordon in today’s Globe […]
Nova Centre developer sues Heritage Trust, asks for “tens of millions of dollars” in damages; read the suit
Through his development company, Argyle Developments, Nova Centre developer Joe Ramia is suing Heritage Trust and each of its 27 directors, and seeks “tens of millions of dollars” in damages, claiming that: Heritage Trust has consistently acted contrary to its mandate and opposed various development projects within HRM not in line with their objectives. The...
Commonwealth Games investigation part two: where the money went
Public money, private players: The Coast uncovers the paper trail of where $8.5 million in public money was spent by the Halifax 2014 bid committee. by Tim Bousquet This article first appeared in The Coast, on March 13, 2008. A year ago last Saturday, Halifax’s Commonwealth Games bid collapsed in acrimony. Politicians pointed fingers at […]
Commonwealth Games Investigation part one: Halifax 2014 big plans
Game over: An air of secrecy surrounded Halifax’s bid to host the 2014 Commonwealth Games, even after the bid’s very public collapse in March. For the first time, we reveal a complete picture of what was happening behind the scenes. by Tim Bousquet Seven months after Halifax’s Commonwealth Games bid collapsed, there still hasn’t been […]
How Halifax’s concert scandal played out
With new details such as how Rush got bum-rushed, The Coast tells the most complete story to date. by Tim Bousquet This article was first published in The Coast, on December 5, 2011. Last spring, Halifax’s now-infamous “concert scandal” broke when city staffer Cathie O’Toole revealed that mayor Peter Kelly and the city’s deputy CAO, […]
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