By Andrew Macdonald
This week, I spotted land surveyors at the Canada Post bunker at Almon and Young streets.
The massive letter sorting facility sits on eight acres, offering space for a massive new apartment and condo district should it be developed. Two land surveyors were on the property.
Whether that means Canada Post might unload the property remains the $64M question. Land surveyors are often called in when a property is being sold, so it caught my attention.
Canada Post also operates a large letter sorting facility in Dartmouth, on Topple Drive.
Canada Post sits on eight acres at Almon and Young streets. In the background is the two-tower Monahan Square. I spotted land surveyors on the huge tract, which HRM has identified as a future redevelopment residential district. (The Notebook photo).
While a letter sorting structure in the age of the digital world might not seem busy, Canada Post claims it is the largest delivery entity for online retail shopping.
But, mailing letters are a dying breed, and one has to question if the Almon Street post office facility is the best use of its eight acres off of Robie Street.
If you live in Antigonish and mail a letter to New Glasgow, a 50-minute commute, your letter gets processed in the Halifax Northend, before being trucked back to northeastern Nova Scotia.
This week I spotted land surveyors sizing up the large parking lot at the eight-acre Canada Post facility on Almon and Young streets. (The Notebook photo).
How Canada Post justifies the Almon Street bunker remains to be seen.
Halifax Regional Municipality has earmarked the bunker for major redevelopment under its Centre Plan.
The post office facility is on the same street where developer Danny Chedrawe is currently building multiple apartments dubbed Richmond Yard, and it is also near his Gladstone apartment and condo offerings, built on property he acquired in 2003 from Canada Lands Company, a federal government Crown agency that sells surplus government lands.
In recent years, Canada Post sold off its Antigonish Post Office, which opened in 1971 when Liberal don Allan J. MacEachen cut the ribbon.
Canada Post sits on an eight-acre tract in Halifax Northend. (The Notebook photo).
Canada Post also sold the Philatelic Centre in Antigonish, not so long ago, so the post office has been in liquidating mode.
Earlier this week, I spotted two land surveyors on the Halifax tract, – and I can only speculate on the sighting as preparations for Canada Post to unload the acreage.
Developers would salivate over such a prospect, and with the city in a housing crisis — and short 25,000 housing units — any redevelopment play would make a serious dent in the city’s housing crisis.
That might mean Ottawa and the Nova Scotia government might favour such a possibility to create a new massive residential district on the post office’s eight acres.
To understand the Almon Street bunker in the heart of the Halifax Northend being a potentially massive development district, I spoke to Colliers Halifax commercial real estate vice-president Aaron Ferguson about the possible redevelopment of the post office facility.
Canada Post’s letter sorting facility on eight acres in the Halifax Northend might not be the best use of the property, suggests commercial broker Aaron Ferguson. (The Notebook photo).
“We have not heard anything specific as it relates to that facility or Canada Post strategy as it relates to some of their real estate locally,” says Ferguson.
“Anything I would say is simply just speculation. I think anyone can look at that site and draw their own conclusion that the facility that is there is probably not the highest and best use for that property, especially nowadays given the growth Halifax is experiencing and level of interest from a development perspective.”
He says Halifax regional council last year adopted its Centre Plan to spell out how developers can build apartments and condo high rises on Peninsula Halifax and Downtown Dartmouth.
“You can see under the Centre Plan that that particular site has been identified under the plan as a comprehensive development district,” says Ferguson.
The purpose of the Centre Plan to guide developers, and its inclusion of the Post Office tract, “would leave me to (say) the city has identified this site for some sort of future comprehensive mixed-use development.”
HRM has said it will build a new Halifax Forum arena. It abuts the large Canada Post facility in Halifax Northend. (The Notebook photo).
The tract abuts the Halifax Forum, which the city proposes to redevelop, and also the lands of the Mayflower Curling Club, which has issued a tender call to the development community on a possible residential highrise there. A developer would then lease space to the curling club.
The lands also abut the huge tract owned by John Bragg, bordering Robie Street. Brag rents to Rona and the rest of his tract is a gigantic surface parking lot.
About 15 years ago, Bragg’s CEO David Hoffman suggested the frozen blueberry entity and proprietor of Eastlink, could eventually see residential highrises on its mostly undeveloped lands, which still have remnants of a rail track.
The vast property parcels would make a community within a community if developed in unison.
“That entire Almon Street corridor would almost become a neighbourhood onto itself,” adds Ferguson.
The Northend has become a hot real estate commodity, and newer apartment buildings such as Monahan Square, Point North and St. Joseph’s Square all have waiting lists.
With all the new apartments in the Halifax Northend, I think the case can be made for HRM to hire architects to go over the designs presented by developers. Shown is Monahan Square on Young Street. (The Notebook photo).
On the single-family home front in the Halifax Hydrostones, in the last year, two homes have sold for about $700,000, as The Notebook has covered in previous editions.
A Canada Post delivery truck was spotted in the Hydrostones. Notice its claim as the largest company to deliver online retail parcels. (The Notebook photo).
“It is incredible the amount of growth we have been seeing. There have been some extremely nice developments that have taken place. It is exciting to see the city grow. The Northend of Halifax is really taking shape,” Ferguson tells The Macdonald Notebook.
