Halifax development on hold after heritage building destroyed
CBC
A large development in central Halifax is on hold after a heritage building involved in the project was destroyed.
Taylor Dean was in her Carlton Street apartment with her roommate early last Friday afternoon when there was a "massive bang."
"We had no idea where it came from. Our house shook a little," Dean, 22, said Wednesday.
Dean, a Dalhousie University pharmacy student, said she often passed by the site at 1452 Carlton St. en route to class and knew that the plan was to lift it with a crane Friday — so at first she thought maybe the noise was a result of normal construction.
"But … we ran out on the back deck and you could see like something was not right," Dean said.
The house, built in 1861, fell and shattered when it slipped from the crane that was lifting it for a relocation effort.
As of Wednesday, the remnants of the home remained in a pile of rubble. No one was hurt in the collapse, although a piece of the house crashed into the cab where the crane operator had been sitting.
The provincial Department of Labour said Wednesday that two stop work orders had been issued for the site, and one was still in place. They are investigating the incident.
Phil Leil, owner of a crane company involved in the move, said the situation was an accident, but "nobody knows what happened."
CBC contacted developer Peter Rouvalis for comment, but did not receive a response before publication.
The collapsed home, and 1456 Carlton St. beside it, are part of the Carlton Victorian Streetscape where most of the homes were built between 1860 and 1906.
Dean said she wasn't surprised to see the collapse, given the state of the Carlton properties.
"They're pretty rotted now, like it's kind of hard to do anything with them," she said.
According to the development agreement, the plan was to lift the two Carlton Street heritage properties to put in a new foundation. They would then be reinstalled, and two other nearby College Street homes — one of which is also a registered heritage property — would be moved to sit on the same foundation.
P.E.I.'s Public Schools Branch is looking for 50 substitute bus drivers, and it'll be recruiting at three job fairs on Saturday, June 8. The job fairs are located at the Atlantic Superstore in Montague, Royalty Crossing in Charlottetown, and the bus parking lot of Three Oaks Senior High in Summerside. All three run from 9 a.m. until noon. Dave Gillis, the director of transportation and risk management for the Public Schools Branch, said the number of substitute drivers they're hiring isn't unusual. "We are always looking for more. Our drivers tend to have an older demographic," he said.