Empire Builder

Where does the straight line to a massive $2.5-billion regional medical health facility begin? Why, with the parking garage of course!

And where to put it? Why on one of the last bits of the shrinking green space in central Halifax, next to the Natural History Museum and the Bengal Lancers’ stable .

That was clear to the Honorable Lloyd Hines, the Minister of Transportation and Infrastructure Renewal from 2017-19 in the provincial government of Premier Stephen McNeil. Before election to the provincial Legislature he was the warden of Guysborough county , known for “indulgent” and “opportunistic” use of his corporate credit card when hosting potential investors in northeastern Nova Scotia.

It would not be right to say of Hines that he dreamed up the Halifax infirmary expansion project all by himself.  It was part of the provincial medical establishment’s plan to tear-down aging hospital facilities and to rebuild and enlarge others on a central medical campus to be known as the QEII Health Sciences Centre.

A small part of the plan was a 900-car parking garage to replace the present one that would go to make way for hospital expansion. At around $30 million, it represented just over one per cent of the total planned spending. When Hines announced it in 2019 he described it as “mundane” but also “vitally important” to the rest of the project.

Sadly, perhaps, the future of the QE2 project is now uncertain. It seems no contractor is prepared to take it on for the current budgeted expenditure. Maybe later, when the economy is more predictable, when more construction workers are available, when other smaller projects are completed then . . . maybe.

Hines, though, did his part. He nobly, stubbornly pushed for the new garage in face of widespread opposition to further loss of park land in peninsular Halifax. For that surely the building should memorialize his name.