Change is Coming in Musquodoboit Harbour
By Richard Bell
The public will get their first chance to hear development details on a major new development project in Muquodoboit Harbour at an HRM Planning “public information meeting” on January 17, 2024, at the Eastern Shore Community Centre, 67 Park Road, Musquodoboit Harbour, at 7:00pm. This meeting was originally scheduled for December 18, 2023, but was cancelled because of weather.
The meeting is part of the process where HRM reviews approval of a development agreement to allow the subdivision of a 7.acre lot that will be the new home of the Birches Nursing Home as a 48-unit shared housing with special care facility. This development agreement and the building of the new Birches is happening in parallel with a multi-year construction of a new residential and commercial development called Harbour Garden Village on land adjacent to the new Birches site.
There are four principal players in this story: the HRM Planning Department, Province of Nova Scotia, the Birches Nursing Home, and John Wesley Chisholm. Two of these players drove the action: PNS agreed to follow through with the promise of the previous liberal government to replace the aging Birches Nursing Home. And John Wesley Chisholm, who is on a mission to realize a long-simmering vision of building a dense, walkable community and commercial housing development in the scruffy woods behind the Musquodoboit Railway Museum.
The property in question is a 47-acre parcel of land (PID 40192528). The Musquodoboit Harbour Farmers Market has long sought to put up a permanent, all-season building right across the railroad tracks from the museum. And a prior owner of the parcel had gone as far as laying out a plan to build dozens of units of housing in a complex designed for seniors.
Most well known as a TV producer and musician, Chisholm has produced over 500 TV shows often about ocean science, shipwrecks, and history for the National Geographic and the Discovery Channel. Locally, he is most well-known for his 11 season series Hope for Wildlife. But Chisholm has been a long-time investor in other businesses and properties including the Lawtons in MH.
Chisholm has owned property and been part of the MH community for 25 years. About two years ago, he saw that the property behind the Railway Museum was for sale. He started talking with community members about local needs, and how developing the site could provide a vital new core of housing and community services. Out of these discussions, Chisholm birthed the idea that evolved into his proposal to build Harbour Garden Village.
A November 7, 2023, cover letter to HRM Planning from the consulting firm representing Chisholm, describes the Harbour Garden Village project as follows:
“The vision for the future Harbour Garden Village development is to provide craftsman style housing and create a community where it is possible to live, work, walk and play. Enclaves of clustered housing around a square of shops and offices will be specifically designed to support local economic development and foster interaction between neighbours.
“Harbour Garden Village could consist of six enclaves each with 12 single family homes, as well as four sets of row houses each with 6 units and four apartment buildings, each made up of 6 apartment units and six shops. Overall, this would result in 72 single family homes, 24 row houses, 24 apartments, and 24 commercial spaces (each 600 square feet) for a total of 120 residential units. Within the village there would also be a boutique hotel with 24 rooms, space for the community farmers market, woodshop, botanical garden, self storage barn and raised deck parking with 100 spaces.” On the development website, there’s details about weaving 24, community-managed, affordable homes into the project."
Even with his business experience Chisholm says this unique ‘outside the box’ property development is a new challenge.
But the process got much more complicated after Chisholm learned that the province wanted the Birches Nursing Home to relocate to a new facility quickly. “People were telling me they didn’t want the Birches to move away from Musquodoboit Harbour,” Chisholm said in a late December interview, “and I thought being located next to Harbour Garden Village could benefit both the residents and the staff of the new Birches. So, I approached them.”
Chisholm initially offered a 4-acre parcel fronting on Highway 7 to the Birches for free. But after looking at the site, and inspecting the rest of the property, the Birches asked Chisholm for a 7.2 acre parcel higher up and off Highway 7, which Chisholm agreed to provide the prime property for free if the province could kick in some money to support the new public roads that the project would require.
Still, HRM Planning would have to agree to “subdivide” the existing lot and complete a development agreement. And as developers had been complaining about for years, getting through the subdivision process was often a time-consuming, difficult, and frustrating process.
While these negotiations were proceeding, the province was growing more and more frustrated with the notorious slowness of the entire HRM Planning approval process, and passed legislation on November 5, 2021, giving the Minster of Housing (John Lohr) the power to designate Special Planning Areas within HRM where the Minister would be in charge. On March 22, 2022, Lohr approved the first nine special planning areas across HRM. And on January 17, 2023, Lohr approved the designation of a tenth Special Planning Area for the 47-acre parcel of land intended as the future home of the Birches and Harbour Garden Village.
When Lohr issued this designation, Chisholm hoped that HRM Planning would move quickly to approve the subdivision, given how hard the province was pushing on the Birches to get “shovels in the ground.”
Lohr, however, proved reluctant to use his new powers, after some ferocious push-back from HRM Mayor Savage the HRM Council, who made it very clear how angry and upset they were about the province’s naked power grab.
So, well into the fall of 2023, it remained unclear whether HRM Planning would sign off on subdividing the lot before the province insisted that the Birches find another site.
Now, as the province and city are closer to an agreement, the city has scheduled a required public engagement meeting to share the details of the plan, explain what’s been done so far in terms of studies, reports, and design, and get public feedback on the new Birches build.
The Birches is now projecting a spring start to the new project, if approved.
[The map at the top of this article shows the existing PID 40192528, owned by John Wesley Chisholm's company HarbourGarden Village. If HRM Planning approves the subdivision of this PID, the new Birches Nursing Home will be located on the western side of the current PID.
You can find all the HRM Planning documents for the development agreement to permit the subdivision of PID 40192528. (“PLANAPP 2023-01496-PID 40192528 Musquodoboit Harbour)”
https://www.halifax.ca/business/planning-development/applications/planapp-2023-01496-pid-40192528-musquodoboit-harbour
Harbour Garden Village has its own website with drawings of the various housing and commercial parts of the plan: https://harbourgarden.ca ]