When Geraldine Parker first bought her home on Maynard Street in 1976, she paid $26,000 for it. Thirty years later, when she thought about selling, the real estate agent pegged it at $219,000.

Parker didn’t sell.

“If I were to sell this house,” she says, “they’d put a bloody condo up here. Wherever there’s room.”

The 70-year-old lifelong North End resident is happy in her community, but she worries recent high-end housing developments might strip her neighborhood of its friendliness.

“In the condos? I don’t think they know one another,” she sighs. “You can’t even really call it a community.”

GENTRIFYING NORTH END HALIFAX

Gentrification is generally defined as the restoration or renovation of a poor, working class neighborhood. Many areas in North End Halifax are now considered gentrified by the onslaught of condominiums and townhouses on prime peninsular land.

“My God, it don’t look like enough room to build a brick you-know-what, but they’re putting a condo in there,” says Parker, who grew up in Africville. “Where are the people coming from and where’s the money?”

Fred Morley, executive vice president and chief economist with the Greater Halifax Partnership, expects up to 16,000 people to move to peninsular Halifax in the next year. The condo-buyers aren’t out-of-towner's, he says, but the result of an aging Halifax population.

Baby boomers’ kids are finally growing up and moving into their own places, says Morley, so they enjoy the cheap price tags, low-maintenance and prime location of North End condos. Meanwhile, the baby boomer's themselves are suffering from empty nest syndrome and downsizing from their large houses to smaller hassle-free units, or just a place to keep year-round while they spend their winters in Florida.

“Out of one house might come two or three or four new households,” says Morley.

From the city’s perspective, it looks great. Fewer commutes from Dartmouth, Bedford and Clayton Park means less people driving one-person cars (good for the environment) and fewer traffic jams on the peninsula (good for city roads.)

Not to mention, condo development spruces up deteriorating areas and increases property values.

‘WHERE IS THE MONEY?’

There’s no question: gentrification produces economic wealth. As services improve and new developments are erected, the value of North End land on which the condominiums are built increases.

Capp Larsen, a member with the Halifax Coalition Against Poverty, says the poorer residents in the area rarely see any of that money.

“Condo developers are not here to invest in the community,” she says. “They’re not here to improve anybodies lives. They are here to make a profit.”

There are two ways developers are pushing the poor out of the area, says Larsen. For one, they buy vacant lots and build from scratch, which increases land values and the cost of living in the area beyond what some residents can afford.

Alternatively, developers buy residential buildings, take over and discontinue the leases, then convert those buildings into units previous tenants can’t afford to rent. Landlords are legally allowed to increase rent prices uncontrolled on the basis of renovation, she says.

“As it stands now, I think Halifax really caters to condo developers,” says Larsen. “Really, it’s a huge blow to the housing market, since not everybody can afford to buy their own house or buy a condo.”

The result? Plenty of resentment from those who have spent their whole lives in the area.

“That’s their community,” says Larsen. “That’s where they’re going to school, that’s where their family is… It’s more than just ‘I rent this building.’”

UNWELCOME GUESTS

On the corner of Russell Street, off Gottingen, the Hydrostone Place condominiums are nearing completion. They advertise high-end units in the heart of the North End, which prospective buyers can own for as little as $300,000.

A graffiti tag on one of the construction signs reads: “DIE YUPPIE SCUM!”

Aly Rehemtulla heads the Hydrostone Place project, which is the flagship development of the IMP Group. He shrugs off the negative graffiti as freedom of expression, saying the threats aren’t unique to his project. In fact, he says the condos are a welcome addition to the neighborhood.

 

“I think the community sees it as an enhancement,” says Rehemtulla. “I think our project brings a higher profile to the area.”

So far, only three of the 25 high-end condo units have been sold, but the model unit will be finished in May, at which point Rehemtulla predicts sales to take off.

He says the development is key to helping local businesses and breathing life back into a struggling North End shopping district.

“I don’t think you’ll see it overnight, but I think you’ll see the whole area revitalized,” says Rehemtulla.

A LONG ROAD TO REVIVE GOTTINGEN

Morley isn’t so sure.

Ever since the 1975 building of the Cogswell interchange, the twisted mess of concrete near Purdy’s Wharf, he says the Gottingen Street shopping district has been lifeless. It turned a five-minute stroll downtown into a 15-minute excursion.

Now add the changing economics of retail: instead of shopping at trendy boutiques like those that used to grace Gottingen, Morley says most shoppers will drive out to Bayer’s Lake or Dartmouth Crossing to get better prices at the big-box chains.

All things considered, he says, there’s no reason condo development will revive Gottingen Street unless the residents consciously choose to shop in the area.

But that isn’t stopping developers.

“There’s a shortage of land in peninsular Halifax,” says Rehemtulla. “I think in the next ten years you’ll see more and more development.”

Geraldine Parker says when developers run out of buildings to renovate in the North End, they might eventually try to buy Uniacke Square to transform it into condos, pushing the tenants off peninsular Halifax to wherever they could afford to live.

Councilor Dawn Sloane hopes it won’t come to that.

“If they sold that property, where would they put everyone? Where would everybody go? It would be another Africville, so they’re not about to do that.”

She pauses.

“They’ve learned from the past… well, I hope they have.”