TOWERING
AMBITIONS
Imagine Spring Garden Road is a $10-million streetscaping project the likes of which Halifax has never seen. And the process is almost controversy-free. Have we figured out how to do these things? BY ALEC BRUCE
T
he irony doesn’t escape Paul Vienneau, Halifax Regional Municipality’s accessibility advisor to the chief administrative officer. He recalls a blustery day in November rushing for a meeting in his wheelchair before sidewalk enhancements on Spring Garden Road stopped him cold. “I hit a shitty dirt ramp,” he says. “To go around would have been a pain in the ass, so I went home.” Still, he’s not unhappy with the $10-million public infrastructure and beautification project that has turned much of the stretch between South Park and Queen streets into more moonscape than streetscape over the past six months. “I talked to the foreman later and he
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apologized,” he says of the sidewalk incident. “I appreciated that.” Vienneau insists that despite the disruption and inconvenience, the massive upgrade, which was scheduled to wrap up in December, will “make a real neighbourhood” where people don’t just shop or punch a clock. And in a city whose residents have historically taken a dim view of their municipal government’s countless civic improvement schemes and ground-breaking fiascos, many appear to agree with him. This time, like him, they say it’s been worth it. “People tweet me and email me all the time,” says Waye Mason, the HRM councillor for the area, who lives
