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The downtown’s biggest suck will plague local businesses for another 12 months, at least.
Construction on the Halifax Convention Centre won’t be complete until at least December, 2017.
That’s roughly a two-year delay from original plans for a January, 2016 opening, which were subsequently pushed back to this September, and then again recently delayed to next spring.
Nearly two dozen local, national and international events that had been booked for next year—including the Knowledge Discovery, Data Mining and Data Science Research conference, the International Foundation of Employee Benefit Plans and the Canadian Society of Safety Engineering—are now left holding their dicks.
According to a press release from Trade Centre Limited, this most-recent delay is to accommodate aesthetic changes (including a fancy new brick) that Argyle Development’s Joe Ramia wants to make to the Market Street side of the building. Those substantive changes were presented to HRM’s design review committee back in April
“The public engagement process that resulted in a complete redesign of the Nova Centre has made for a better project, however it has also impacted approval processes and the construction timeline,” said Ramia in a press release.
The $500-million Nova Centre will house the publicly-funded $165-million Halifax Convention Centre, as well as a yet-unnamed hotel, commercial and office space.
Trade Centre Limited projections from 2010 estimated the new convention centre would house 6,800 events in its first 10 years. Former TCL president Scott Ferguson said two years ago that it was his goal to attract 15,000 delegates in the centre’s first three years of operations.
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This article appears in Nov 17-23, 2016.
Idiocracy
Dear Coast,
The new Nova Centre us being built and will indeed open, much to your chagrin. Complain and criticize all you want but it won’t stop it from happening.
I realize you’ve never gone through a build or even a renovation so you would have absolutely no concept of building delays. To publicly criticize the project seems like sour grapes. And by throwing out the nuisance lawsuits as proof it’s a bad idea clearly states you have no understanding of economic development.
Stop being a child. It’s not just annoying but unbecoming of an adult. Join hands and sing kumbaya if need be, but stop filling your pages with junk.
You were such a good publication; what happened?
This article belongs in “love the way we bitch”