On Monday, January 14, 2008 the Main Street

Streetscape Plan was released to the public.

Subsequently, in May 2008 Regional Council approved the Main Street Plan and has authorized work on a secondary planning strategy to implement the recommendations. Council at the same time endorsed a vote by area businesses to create a Business Improvement District funded through a tax levy.

Construction of a demonstration pocket park at the corner of Woodlawn Road and Main Street will begin in the summer of 2008.

(Click here to download plan and other documents)

(Click here for a short history of Main Street)

The Main Street plan is the culmination of two years of public consultation on the future of the Main Street Business Improvement District, and Regional Plan centre. Consultation includes property owners, the public, business owners, and planners.

The result is a plan which is elegantly simple and acheivable. A plan with a strong vision:

The Main Street area will become a dense, mixed use village core with great pedestrian spaces, goods and services, and facilities that invite residents to walk or bicycle to obtain daily needs and in so doing informally interact with their neighbours.

Council has already acted on many of the recommendations including down-zoning the entire business district to C-2 zoning which prevents both warehousing and billboard uses, and allows for mixed use residential and neighbourhood commercial. As well, bike lanes in a portion of the secondary study area have been constructed.

Council has also provided advance funding for some of the projects in the plan and work is moving forward on developing a specific Land Use By-Law (LUB) and Municipal Planning Strategy (MPS) for he area. The new LUB and MPS will provide the tools and encouragement necessary to private landholders to begin redevelopment and updating of their properties.

Area businesses have established a Business Improvement District Association, as recommended in the plan.

This plan is about forward thinking and taking a visionary approach to preparing for the future instead of reacting after change has occurred as has too often been the case in municipal planning in North America. The plan responds to public, statistical, and business predictions of what the future potential for the area is - a future that sees East Dartmouth as a growing, critical link in neighbourhood commercial, public transportation, and residential development. By trying to predict change, it is more likely that the area will develop over the 30 year lifespan of the plan in the way residents and businesses hope.

In the first ten years of the plan, Main Street becomes a tree lined arterial with improved pedestrian amenities and with entry parks, or gateways, at each end of the area.

One of the most important parts of the plan is to improve the active transportation possibilities in the area. The Main Street hub is currently a critical hole in the municipal Active Transportation network. Residents indicated through surveys and at workshop meetings that the ability to move between the residential and commercial areas on bicycle and by foot is a priority. The creation of a wayfinding information system is an important part of the plan to make the area feel and be accessible to non-vehicular transportation.

Greenspace is also important to the plan. Moving away from the concrete jungle concept of the 1970s and 1980s, the inclusion of trees and greenery in the medians and along the roadways provides environmental benefits as well as social benefits. Small entry parks are also included by redeveloping HRM owned greenspaces to improve their appearance and function for big impact at minimal projected cost. Trees along the roadway, combined with the replacement of highway style lighting with pedestrian oriented lighting, encourages the village feel the plan attempts to achieve while also slowing traffic as a visual illusion of a narrowed roadway will be created. Over time changes to traffic habits, growth of greenery, and refurbishment of sidewalks and crosswalks, will encourage walking by new area residents and shoppers visiting the area.

A Brief History of Main Street

In order to direct a future for Main Street, it is necessary to understand how its current configuration originated. The history of Main Street provides a rationale for its current physical form. In the late 1700’s Governor Wentworth asked his good friend Theophilis Chamberlain (a graduate of Dartmouth College in England) to plan the first grand New England township for the Loyalists in what is now called Preston. The Maroons and the Black Loyalists were relocated to the area in the late 1700’s by Chamberlain.

The area of the Preston Road around the study area was proposed to be the farming greenbelt around the Township and large family farms populated the area until the late1940s. The development of the Main Street commercial corridor began as the main thoroughfare from Downtown Dartmouth to Preston and Montague (it was called the Preston Road until 1935).

From the time of the settlement, Preston Road was a vital link between Preston and the Dartmouth Ferry. Preston residents used the road to bring their goods to market in Halifax, often traveling the entire distance on foot. In 1891, a pipeline was constructed carrying water from Lake Lamont to Downtown Dartmouth along a corridor that is now Lakecrest Drive. The Westphal area remained primarily a farming community until the late 1940s, when Main Street was being planned to become the commercial community core for Dartmouth that would augment Downtown Dartmouth while catering more specifically to Preston, Westphal and Montague. The Angus L Macdonald Bridge and the prevalence of the automobile significantly influenced residential development in the neighbourhoods around Main Street. By the 1960”s, suburban residential neighbourhoods existed on both sides of Main Street.

In the late 1960s Main Street saw significant new commercial development including a bowling alley, the K-Mart Mall, the Dominion grocery store and the only McDonald’s in Canada with take-out only. In the 1970’s an eight-storey office tower was constructed and the prospects for Main Street were strong. But at the same time Mic Mac Mall was developed and became serious competition for the Main Street commercial core.

Today strip sprawl, expansive parking lots and streetscapes which cater to automobiles characterize Main Street. However, the potential to recapture a grander vision for a real community core still exists in the study area. These types of commercial core redevelopment projects are occurring with greater frequency all over North America as communities come to understand the economic value of place-making.

DOCUMENTS FOR DOWNLOAD

Main Street 4th Public Workshop Minutes, May 20, 2010

(PDF 87.8 KB)

Business Improvement District Information Handout

Community Herald Article on Main Street - January 10, 2008

Main Street January 2008 Meeting Second Press Release

Main Street January 2008 Meeting First Press Release

Main Street January 2008 Public Meeting Poster

Business Improvement District Letter to Businesses

Main Street Re-Development Opinion Article (2007)

Main Street Re-Development Opinion Article (2006)

Minutes from the June 2006 Community Meeting

Active Transportation Map for Main Street