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Originally Posted by Keith P.
What I wrote to inspire this diatribe bears no relation to your comments. I said:
"The $15 million oval which closes on many winter days due to weather conditions would have perhaps been better realized with a more practical design."
A municipal public skating rink was talked about for years, with the Grand Parade often being suggested as a location a la Rockefeller Center in NYC. But many other locations were possible, and perhaps several could have been constructed around the municipality. But nooooooo. HRM had to yield to decision-making by social media noise and keep the Canada Games oval. It is massive and can only really accommodate speed skating training sessions and very long laps by the public. It is in a location that is challenging for those who do not live on the peninsula. Even more strangely for a facility designed for winter use it seems to close every time we get winter weather. And of course because of its specialized nature HRM spent a bundle essentially rebuilding the whole thing and then adding buildings around it, along with staff bureaucrats to run it and offer free equipment, etc.
More simple municipal rinks could have been built for far less, with needed but not lavish facilities. They could have been dispersed to places that would encourage more of that activity you note - I suspect few Tantallon, Cole Harbour or Lower Sackville residents use the Oval on a regular basis. They could have even hosted a hockey game or two when public skate sessions were not offered. But we ended up with none of that. In short, that money could have been spent far more wisely and for greater benefit and utility to those paying for it. That fits my definition of frivolous spending.
Museums are money pits, plain and simple. Few of the younger generation ever set foot inside them unless they are truly remarkable. Museums in old buildings that need significant renovation, remediation and maintenance are even bigger money pits. Even the Art Gallery of NS, despite god-knows how many 10s of millions spent on its buildings, now says that they are unsuitable for the storage and display of works of art and they need a new purpose-built facility.
I do not want the Post Office building torn down. But I do not want HRM to take it on either, especially when (as you say) they already have an apparently untouchable building in the old SGR library that nobody seems to want.
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I think it's a bit of a stretch to refer to my comments as a "diatribe"
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a forceful and bitter verbal attack against someone or something.
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...but regardless you make some good points. This isn't the first time there has been a discussion on this board about the oval in which you've made your opposition to it quite clear, however, but let's leave it in the past.
I will make these points about your comments:
1) Any outdoor ice surface would be subject to be closed in unfavourable weather - the oval isn't unique in that respect.
2) The oval received much public support to be made permanent after the Canada Games, which as you know does wonders for political will in making it happen.
3) One advantage of the oval configuration is that everybody skates in the same direction, and the curves are not as tight as skating circles in an arena-sized ice surface (memories of public skates in the Bowles Arena many years ago). It is much more pleasurable to skate in a less-confined area such as the oval.
4) Its location is within the most populous area of the city, which is the most logical place to put a landmark skating surface. People living in the far reaches of Tantallon, Sackville, or Cole Harbour would probably just go to a local frozen lake to skate (a feature not contained within the developed peninsular area of Halifax).
5) IIRC, it's the only facility in the area suitable for speed skating training - which is a plus, actually, not a negative.
Your views on museums may or may not be true. I still haven't seen the information you referred to earlier. I will say that not having a museum of history is something Halifax is lacking that a "real" city typically has, not just towers (I only say this from reading comments in the past about Halifax not being a "real" city - and I write it partially, at least, in jest).
I will say that I completely enjoyed visiting several museums in my visit to Ottawa a couple of years ago - but I will say they were a little crowded (with many young people as well as adults), so it was sometimes difficult to get a good view of all the exhibits. So museums do work if they are done right. Yeah I know Ottawa has double our population, but we don't have half their museums either...
Is the post office building the best location for it? Not sure, but it sounds like we are talking whether we should even have a museum or not. I guess we could continue to follow the status quo and just let our kids sit home and play video games (sarcasm).
Good discussion regardless. Thanks for giving my writings careful thought.
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Good point.
There are so many ways that this could be done while respecting the building. As Keith had mentioned in a post in another thread, even the addition was well integrated into the older building and would be an ideal way to transition from old to new - keep the facade of the addition while building up through it and maintain the old post office structure as original... the potential is outstanding.
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