New residence plan approved by council

But arena relocation is still a mystery

Dalhousie’s plan to relocate the Memorial Arena is one step closer to being put into place after the Peninsula Community Council voted tonight in favour of rezoning the area to allow for a residence and student services building.

The decision had been pushed back after a public hearing in December so that city council staff could work with Dal to address the issues that Dal’s neighbours brought up in the hearing.

The staff recommended that the council approve the rezoning of the corner of South Street and LeMarchant, and the council did just that. But the decision was not without its hesitations.

The site of relocation was a main concern of the community in December. However, Dal hasn’t filed for a permit to rebuild the arena at all.  “I know they haven’t had much a discussion with the staff,” Councilor Dawn Sloane said, asking where the arena would be rebuilt. “And I know people were kind of concerned about it being over by Dalplex.”

The new site of the arena wasn’t resolved, but Councilor Sue Uteck said Dal has made a commitment in the past that no further construction will take place south of South Street, and the current administration is looking into whether or not that promise legally needs to be kept.

The public hearing also brought up the problems of parking – the new residence will get rid of 13 parking spaces, although campus still has more spaces than are required – traffic during construction and afterward, noise, and the physical boundary between the building and the surrounding neighbourhood.

Dal is required to come to council to get a permit for the building. But Susanna Fuller, a recent Dal grad in the audience at the council meeting, said the meeting’s discussion reflected badly on Dal. “The fact that this has to come to council to be decided, says to me that Dal probably didn’t do a really good job of engaging the neighbourhood, and that’s something important,” Fuller said about the issues brought up at the public hearing. “There needs to be a bit of back and forth.”

“I think it’s fine to have another residence,” she said. “But I don’t know what the neighbourhood really wants.”

The buffer zone between the new building and the residential area was contentious with residents at the hearing, and the cause was championed this time around by Sloane. “We know what happens with this kind of area. It becomes grass, usually looks like crap most of the time, and there is no real buffer between human building and human.”

Dal will be meeting with the community at the end of January to decide the best way to landscape between the two areas, said Uteck, and a pedestrian survey will be done in the spring to see if new crosswalks will need to be put into place at the corner.