Lucasville, N.S., residents concerned over proposed 118-unit apartment building

Plans for an apartment complex in Lucasville, N.S., are not sitting well with a number of residents in the area.

Dozens of people attended what was billed as an emergency public meeting on the issue at the Wallace Lucas Community Centre Thursday night.

The proposed 118-unit building in the 500 block of Lucasville Road is the latest in a series of developments residents say have been quietly approved by the Halifax Regional Municipality.

They say the end result is reshaping the historic African Nova Scotian community without residents’ consent.

“We’ve got traffic ... between 5,000 and 10,000 cars go through this road already, so it’s going to add to that. We have a community centre here that cannot house the amount of people that we already have within our boundary,” said Devon Parsons with the Lucasville Vision Committee.

“We have no transit, we have no sidewalk, so there’s many things that need to be fixed before anyone should even think about wanting to put a 118-unit apartment building on Lucasville.”

Residents are asking the city to pause all Lucasville developments until residents have completed their own planning process and cancel permit extensions granted without factoring in the area’s historic and cultural designation.

A petition is also being circulated with more than 700 signatures.

With files from CTV Atlantic’s Bruce Frisko.

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