As the Bloomfield saga drags on, a Toronto developer laments what could have been

Richard Cuthbertson · CBC News

· Posted: Apr 30, 2025 5:00 AM EDT | Last Updated: 8 minutes ago

Thousands of condos and apartments person been built, there's a shot pitch, assemblage and taste centres, a market store and overmuch more, each portion of a monolithic redevelopment of a erstwhile neglected downtown Toronto neighbourhood.

It's hard to ideate a sharper opposition than between the translation of that city's Regent Park neighbourhood and the ever-stalled redevelopment of Halifax's perennial municipal headache, the erstwhile Bloomfield schoolhouse tract connected Agricola Street. 

All the much painfully apparent because the developer down the Regent Park task tried, but failed, much than a decennary agone to person Halifax officials of the time that they should travel a akin exemplary with Bloomfield.

"Bloomfield, I believe, is, was, a mislaid opportunity, a missed accidental for the city," says Mitchell Cohen, the main enforcement of Daniels Corp., the institution down the enactment successful Regent Park.

In 2012, his institution submitted a connection to the Halifax Regional Municipality to bash for Bloomfield, which the metropolis was trying to off-load, thing akin to the enactment Daniels Corp. was already doing successful Toronto connected a acold bigger scale.

In essence, it would beryllium a public-private partnership. Daniels wouldn't effort to bargain the Bloomfield onshore oregon compete with different developers to beryllium the apical bidder. Instead, it would spouse with the city, Cohen said. There would beryllium a premix of marketplace and affordable housing, and assemblage space.

Some of the details were undefined, Cohen said, but that was the point. The task would beryllium shaped by the needs and desires of the assemblage successful the area, particularly the section radical Imagine Bloomfield, a method emulating the Regent Park model.

Daniels Corp. would marque wealth connected the for-profit aspects of the project. For its part, the municipality would person "skin successful the game," helium said, and would inactive ain the land, giving it a greater accidental implicit what was built. 

But alternatively of flat units and assemblage buy-in, 13 years later the astir that's happened to the Bloomfield tract are the excavators brought successful a fewer weeks agone to demolish what the vacant and dilapidated buildings inactive intact pursuing a February fire.

The Daniels connection each those years agone "didn't tick each the boxes" and was efficaciously "thrown out" by metropolis officials, Cohen said. While Toronto made a "courageous decision" with Regent Park, helium said determination was "zero" effect from Halifax.  

"All of the things that we would person done astatine Bloomfield, we person done astatine scale," said Cohen, who has written a publication called Rhythms of Change, Reflections connected the Regent Park Revitalization.

The Bloomfield onshore is 1 of 3 erstwhile schoolhouse sites connected the Halifax peninsula the metropolis sold to developers successful 2020 and 2021, but which person languished ever since.

Halifax Mayor Andy Fillmore, who was elected past fall, said helium doesn't privation to dwell connected what's gone wrong, but it's wide the metropolis indispensable enforce tighter redevelopment timelines and conditions for those who bargain onshore from the municipality successful the future.

"I would similar to spot properties not sitting arsenic agelong arsenic this and others person sat," helium said successful an interrogation astatine the Bloomfield site, arsenic an excavator sorted and piled demolition debris.

In the lawsuit of Bloomfield, the metropolis archetypal tried to sell the tract successful 2012, but a surprise $15-million bid by the provincial Crown bureau Housing Nova Scotia fell isolated wrong four years. The spot was subsequently sold to Banc Investments Ltd. successful 2021 for astir $22 million.

Banc besides paid the metropolis $37.6 cardinal for the erstwhile St. Patrick's High School tract connected Quinpool Road, present a field. The institution has not responded to requests for remark astir its plans for either site.

Not acold away, the merchantability of the long-vacant St. Patrick's-Alexandra schoolhouse to a developer yet closed successful 2020. A demolition licence was issued mid-April.

All 3 sites person buyback agreements, wherever the municipality tin repurchase the spot if operation hasn't begun by a definite date. In the lawsuit of Bloomfield, that deadline is adjacent January. The metropolis would request to wage 90 per cent of acquisition terms — conscionable little than $20 million.

Fillmore said he's successful favour of doing truthful if operation does not get underway, violating the presumption of the merchantability agreement, and helium argues it would beryllium a bully woody for the metropolis due to the fact that the worth of the onshore has "appreciated terrifically" since 2021. 

"I deliberation it's perfectly incumbent connected a metropolis authorities to instrumentality enactment truthful that we don't person derelict gathering sites successful the mediate of a lodging crisis," helium said.

But Susanna Fuller, who was portion of the Imagine Bloomfield assemblage group, is dubious the bulk of municipal councillors volition hold to walk millions of dollars repurchasing the land.

One of the lessons, she said, is for the metropolis to enactment successful overmuch much stringent provisions and timelines for improvement erstwhile it sells land. If those are broken, the buyback terms should beryllium good beneath the archetypal merchantability price, she said, oregon possibly the spot should adjacent beryllium forfeited backmost to the city.

There would beryllium a trade-off, of course. Developers taking connected much hazard would beryllium unwilling to wage the aforesaid precocious prices they would for onshore that came with nary strings attached.

"The mode that we merchantability disconnected nationalist spot truly needs to beryllium overhauled," she said.

"Our metropolis shouldn't person the deciding origin beryllium however overmuch wealth developers are paying. It should beryllium what is the nationalist bully that could travel retired of this site, peculiarly connected the peninsula wherever we cannot marque much land."