Developer moves ahead with demolition prep
Tenant dispute remains unresolved
A Halifax developer continues to prepare a north-end apartment building for demolition despite having its permit revoked and an ongoing tenant dispute.
Since last week, workers have been gutting the interior of Ardmore Hall on the corner of Oxford and North Streets following an environmental assessment of the property requested by Halifax Regional Municipality.
The developer, Mosaik Properties, had plans to tear down the building this month to make way for a sevenstorey, 130-unit building. But HRM revoked the company's demolition permit after an excavator was brought to the location last month and destroyed a tenant's apartment. A stop-work order was also issued by the city and provincial Department of Labour and Advanced Education.
The tenant was the only remaining occupant of the building and is appealing his eviction to Nova Scotia's Residential Tenancies board.
The man no longer lives at the location but he's hired a lawyer and the tenancy dispute is ongoing. The building can't be torn down until the dispute is resolved. The city's legal division is investigating the matter but so far no legal action has been taken against Mosaik Properties.
The Chronicle Herald made repeated attempts to reach Mosaik properties, but did not get a response.
Mayor Mike Savage said he “certainly expects that charges will be laid” but wouldn't comment on what he thinks the appropriate penalty should be. The city had also issued the developer an order to remedy on Dec. 2, two days before the tenant's apartment was destroyed. The order was in response to the tenant's apartment being flooded out.
HRM spokeswoman Erin Dicarlo said the city permitted the work to remove hazardous material from the site based on results of the assessment and remediation plan. She said the developer shared the results of the report verbally with municipal staff. The property owner told the municipality that hazardous materials needed to be removed based on the assessment. The work is being done by an environmental remediation company hired by the property owner. The stop-work order issued by the Department of Labour was lifted to allow for the work to be completed.
But removal work was being done in the building prior to the assessment. Workers were removing windows in the building on Dec. 9. Another city spokeswoman said that inspectors from the province and HRM were made aware of the work contrary to the stop-work order and that it was being addressed with the contractor.
The municipality's stopwork order only prevents the building from being torn down. According to HRM, the developer can appeal the decision to revoke the demolition permit to the Nova Scotia Building Advisory Committee.
A construction engineer in Quebec said it appears the developer has found a way to work around the rules to move forward with the demolition. The man asked not to be identified out of concern that he might get in trouble with his employer.
“This is part of the demolition, before you tear down a building you need to know what you're getting into," he said. “If there's a lot of asbestos in the building that will be a nightmare and you need to remove all of those hazardous materials before tearing the building down.”
Mayor Savage dismissed the engineer's suggestion that the developer is circumventing the rules, saying “I suspect that the developer isn't getting everything he wants out of HRM.”
Savage said the remediation work is necessary to secure the site and protect the community from hazardous materials, including asbestos in the building.
“There are obviously materials that we obviously don't want to harm people,” said Savage. “It's a site that's clearly had impacts on it ... There are materials in there that we feel people should be protected from."
Joan Fraser lives on Seaforth Street across from the building and said she's concerned with the growing mountain of debris that has collected outside the building and the potential risk it poses to the surrounding community. She said the city should have informed the neighbourhood about the work happening at the site. She said she's made several calls to City Hall and other officials looking for a copy of the environmental assessment but to no avail.
“The fact that they continue to work when they were told to stop, it's more proof to me that developers have too much power in this city and the citizens have no say.”