The view is tightly cropped but this shows what George Street used to be like. There was a 7 storey CN building from circa 1910 to go with the Dennis, the old Custom House, the Royal Bank head offices, and stately five storey H. C. Silver building. Farther down near the water everything was torn down; those buildings were more modest but look at what they add to the scene in the picture below.
https://www.flickr.com/photos/rdb466/26774632086/
Had this area been preserved in the 1960's it would have been a gem of a heritage district with quality similar to what you find in Old Montreal or Quebec City (Halifax even used to have cobblestones). What's left is still impressive but the losses have been enormous. The well-preserved heritage district, in retrospect, would have been much more valuable than the bland 70's and 80's office buildings and parking lots that ended up here (the city wouldn't even have had to do without the office buildings; they could have just gone somewhere else). Hopefully the city will learn from its mistakes and preserve what's left rather than squandering some of the last bits of the architectural legacy it was lucky to inherit.