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Originally Posted by urbandreamer
4) site history is fascinating: there used to be car race track here in the 1930s-50s. It's somewhat connected to the Halifax Explosion/train station site if you're willing to read about it.
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This area was first really developed as an industrial park starting in about 1880 when a spur line was built along with a factory for the Nova Scotia Cotton Manufacturing Company. It employed about 600 people but that building burned down in the Halifax Explosion along with some exhibition buildings nearby. A lot of the "devastation" pictures of the explosion are of this area.
It is gone now but one of the old brick industrial buildings survived until 2015 or so on this site:
https://www.google.com/maps/@44.6582...7i13312!8i6656
The Halifax Forum is actually a repurposed agricultural exhibition building; it was not built as an arena. The main exhibition hall was destroyed in the explosion. The city is restoring the Halifax Forum, undoing some of the ugly renos of the 70's-90's.
It's too bad so few of those old brick buildings survived because they might have added some nice texture and warmth to an eventual redevelopment. I think a good redevelopment of this area would recreate a bit of that feel instead of using only cold glass/metal materials (everything these days seems to be grey/white).